Spinster still has a chance to be married." Yet other sources on terms describing a never-married woman indicate that the term applies to a woman as soon as she is of legal age or age of majority (see bachelorette, single). The title "spinster" has been embraced by feminists like Sheila Jeffreys, whose book "The Spinster and Her Enemies" (1985) defines spinsters simply as women who have chosen to reject sexual relationships with men. In her 2015 book, "Spinster, Making a Life of One's Own," Kate Bolick has written, "To me, the spinster is self-reliant and inscrutable. We think we know what
The Spinster and Her Enemies The Women's Forum". "The Spinster and Her Enemies" received positive reviews from the biographer Phyllis Grosskurth in "The Times Literary Supplement", the historian Lillian Faderman in the "American Journal of Sociology", and Penny Summerfield in "Victorian Studies". The book was also reviewed by Anne Summers in "Sociology of Health & Illness", Judith Wishnia in "Contemporary Sociology", the historian Marilyn Lake in "Signs", and Ruth Doell in the "Journal of Homosexuality", and discussed by Margaret Hunt in "Feminist Review". Grosskurth, writing in 1986, called "The Spinster and Her Enemies" one of the best studies on the "struggle of women in history"