27 thoughts on “Top 5 Spinsters in Historical Costume Movies

    1. Miss Bingley is still young (she’s only in her early 20s, around the age of Elizabeth and Jane, isn’t she?), pretty, and wealthy, so I don’t doubt she got married to someone rich and well connected once she realised Darcy was out of her reach:)

  1. How could you miss out the wonderful Martita Hunt in the equally wonderful David Lean 1946 “Great Expectations”? It had everyone and everything. The scene where Pip first meets Magwitch (Finlay Currie) still haunts my dreams.

    1. Also, Jean Simmons, who played the young Estella in the Lean version, later played Havisham in a television production in 1991.

  2. Miss Austen Regrets/Becoming Jane! Or the ladies of Cranford.

    Also, I know she’s not a spinster by the end of the movie, but I LOVE Katharine Hepburn’s Rose in The African Queen.

      1. ‘As I must leave off being young, I can sit by the fire and drink as much wine as I like.’ Miss Austen with No Regrets!
        There’s also Charlotte Lovell in ‘The Old Maid’ – can’t get more spinsterish than that!

  3. How about Marilla Cuthbert from “Anne of Green Gables”? She’s tough as nails yet soft as kitten fur. :) <3

    1. Oooh, yes! I reread Anne of Green Gables last year and was surprised at how much more I identified with Marilla than with Anne. Outside of Marilla’s lack of imagination, of course. :)

    2. But it has to be Colleen Dewhurst’s Marilla not the Netflix version with Geraldine James or Sara Botsfoth in the 2016 version.

      1. Yes. I’m not a 1985-or-bust fan and I was actually really enjoying Geraldine James’ take in the first episode of Anne, but then starting with ep2 everything went to pot. Such a waste of talent on unbelievably crappy writing.

        1. Yes! I just reread the Anne of Green Gables series; Marilla was wonderful and had more humor than I remembered! Ms. Dewhurst is perfect.

  4. I love almost all of these (haven’t seen “My Brilliant Career”). Charlotte cracks me the hell up. I don’t really love that story but she was hysterically funny and irritating. Miss Havisham is always fabulous — I actually really enjoyed Gillian Anderson’s take on her. But Elizabeth will always be my girl. I think I was like 12 when I discovered her, and that she never married, and was like HELL YES, GIRL YOU RULE THAT COUNTRY. As a perpetually single (by choice) person, I appreciate her forever independence.

  5. The Aunt Agatha Poldark (from the 1975 series), played by Eileen Way, was also a wonderfully snarky spinster. I wish I could find a picture of her!

    1. Oh, yes and especially the younger sister played by Victoria Hamilton.
      Would Dorcas qualify bc she CHOSE not to marry.

  6. I lovingly submit Cousin Bette. Some spinster seamstresses just want to watch the world burn.

  7. Flora Robson did play Elizabeth I in Fire Over England, with Laurence Olivier. You chose a photo of her playing Elizabeth ! in The Sea Hawk, opposite Errol Flynn.

  8. As much as I relate to Poor Charlotte, the Room With a View spinster I really want to be is dashing lady novelist Eleanor Lavish.

  9. This post is kind of a shot in the arm for me today! This year! Or even this decade! I now have major #spinstergoals and plan to embrace eccentricity, badassery, kindness, yarn, cats, pink bathrooms, and brains in my spinsterhood. (Also, I know how to spin, so I’m a spinster in two ways, which delights me.)

  10. I believe the picture of Glenda Jackson as Elizabeth I was from Mary Queen of Scots, not .Elizabeth R. (I always disliked that gaudy floral partlet.)

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