Fashion
Plates and Spinsters
Whenever I stop to consider the derivation of
certain words and phrases, I often wonder why I’d never thought before how they
came to be part of our English language.
“Fashion plate,” for example.
I knew, of course, that the term refers to someone,
usually a woman, who is dressed in the latest style. Recently I learned its
derivation while reading “Strapless,” a book written by Deborah Davis about the
artist John Singer Sargent and his model for the painting Madame X. In the book Davis
describes the life of upper-class women in Paris in the 1880s. She explains
that new dress designs were pressed onto plates which were then printed in the
local fashion magazines and newspapers.
And then last week during a lecture on the
history of American women, I learned about spinsters. During the 19th
Century, when the women who worked in mills as spinners of fabrics reached a
certain age, usually thirty, they were regarded as being beyond the age of
marriage. These “old” women were then referred to as “spinsters.”
It’s a different story today as “unmarried”
has replaced “spinster” which earlier in this century brought to mind an old
woman with wrinkled hands sitting in her rocking chair. Today you may call a
woman a fashion plate and you’ll be met with a smile. Call her a spinster and she might hit you
with her AARP card.
