Posted at 1:00 p.m.
Why this book?
We see today that some young women do not want the classic model, the couple and motherhood. I didn’t, I was raised with the idea of having a family, and I thought it was going to happen to me. At one point, it made me unhappy not to have children and I wondered. So I wish, with this book, to tell all women that life can be rich and full by being alone and free, that we can be completely fulfilled with this other way of life that we choose. For too long, it was considered that a successful life passed through the couple and the children. It is possible to live without children or partners, and to want something other than the predestined life from childhood.
There are still many clichés about old maids, aren’t there?
We pity and we judge old maids, there is a form of pity and condescension towards them. Even if the term is old-fashioned, the clichés remain. We have the idea that it is a woman who has not been chosen, a woman who has a life without history and without relief, who lives alone or with her many cats! We think that they are ugly or neglected, that they don’t play the game of seduction, we even imagine them to be frigid. They are also thought to be selfish, stingy and sad.
Society is hard on them, because it’s as if you couldn’t choose to live alone?
Yes, it is a form of punishment, because they are accused of being choosy, of having taken too long to choose. The woman-single-childless-over-40 combination is very difficult to accept, because we know that it is no longer a temporary state, but a definitive one. There is this idea that fulfillment goes through motherhood, so we don’t understand why women are happy and fulfilled without starting a family, these are anomalies. We think that humans are this social animal that is not made to live alone, so these women who claim this loneliness are anomalies.
What are the advantages of your lifestyle, which you yourself call old maid?
Time. The hours we gain by not being taken up by daily logistics and by family and marital obligations, which we accept and which take up a lot of time in life. Mental time is the great revelation. There is a mental charge of love that does not exist. This mental charge is to maintain a state of joy in the couple, within your family, the mental charge to ask yourself if you are beautiful enough, intelligent enough to seduce the other. There is a clearing of the mental space which is very strong, just like that of living without compromise. I have a form of availability and a freedom that seem to me much more difficult to maintain when you are in a relationship or in a family.
You evoke the different images of old maids through the ages and popular culture, because the images of old maids are also uninspiring.
In the Middle Ages, women walled themselves in alive, because they did not want to marry or enter a convent. They were called recluses, they existed from the VIIIe in the 16the century. Popular culture does not highlight old maids, they are often secondary roles, those of old aunts or neighbors whose we do not understand why they have not found a husband or even an office colleague who is a little out of step or more old women talking to pigeons. There’s Mary Poppins, who has a positive image, but we don’t really know she’s a spinster, just like Catwoman. And the famous Bridget Jones is a passing spinster, a bachelor in search of love and a future husband.
Is there an old maid mentality?
Women come to see me in bookstores and many tell me that being an old maid is a mentality. It’s not being single and childless. It’s more than that. It’s a way of being a little idealistic, we have a high idea of love that we don’t want to ruin too much with everyday life, and we also have this desire to remain free.
Old Maid — A Proposal
Marie Kock
Discovery Editions
210 pages