Spinster World War prevented many within a generation of women from experiencing romance and marriage, or having children. The image of the old spinster with a fading photo of her dead World War I soldier boyfriend on her fireplace mantel was common in films of the 1950s and 1960s. Likewise, in the American classic novel "Gone with the Wind" (1936) about the Civil War, numerous references are made to grieving fiancées, women who were "wanted, if not wed", and to the shortage of single, able-bodied (and thus "marriageable") men at war's end. In modern peacetime societies with wide opportunities for romance,
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"