"For liberty is a better husband than love to many of us."--Louisa May Alcott

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 the rejected marriage and the joys and frustrations they encountered in adhering to the tenets of the cult of "Single Blessedness."

Lee Chambers-Schiller sketches the historical forces that allowed middle- and upper-class daughters to leave home in search of personal and economic independence, and...