Amazon.com Product Description (ISBN 0300039220, Paperback)

This sensitive account focuses on the women who chose to remain single in antebellum America. Based on a study of the lives and writings of over one hundred Northeastern women, it describes the reasons why they rejected marriage and the joys and frustrations they encountered in adhering to the tenets of the cult of "Single Blessedness." By demonstrating how these women asserted themselves as individuals, Chambers-Schiller presents them as among the first to articulate the value of female autonomy and as pioneers in expanding the boundaries of women's progress toward equality.