Note 47 — Chapter VI · The Positive English Girl

Paradoxical as it may seem at first sight, it is however only too true that the worst kind of spinster is precisely this “perfectly cheerful, engaging, companionable and even thoroughly good-natured old maid,” because, like the cheerful cripple or the happy invalid, she is a living mockery of Life, passion and instinct thwarted. Her very adaptedness to her unnatural lot seems to the unwary an argument in favour of an unnatural lot, or at least not an argument against it. See chapter IX.