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,
Spinster a television series. In Jane Austen's "Emma", the character Miss Bates is a spinster, and Austen (who never married) gives her stereotypical negative characteristics such as garrulousness. Bob Dylan's song "The Lonesome Death of Hattie Carroll" (1963) tells the true story of a murder at a spinsters' ball in Baltimore in 1963. Paul McCartney, while in the band the Beatles, composed the hit song "Eleanor Rigby" (1966) about the loneliness and death of a spinster (though he never used the term in the lyrics). The country song "Delta Dawn", made famous by Tanya Tucker, overviews the plight of a woman