Introduction Single and the City: Men and Women Alone in North-Western European Towns since the Late Middle Ages

Abstract

The history of single people, be they divorced, widowed or never married, has rarely been considered a happy one. Until the late twentieth century, the single status was not a desirable state in most cases. In a society that expected everyone to marry, singles were stigmatised, marginalised and had a hard time making ends meet. This image of vulnerable singleness dominates the historiography and permeates all early modern and nineteenth-century literature. In Jane Austen’s work, for instance, a woman with no fortune could not hope to survive if she did not have a husband. This is in sharp contrast to the image in contemporary mainstream culture and media. Fiction and films, such as “Bridget Jones” or television series like “Ally McBeal” that emphasise the singleness of the main characters, depict unmarried women, and to a lesser extent men, living in trendy cities, making their own money, answering to no one and living life to the fullest. The sitcom “Sex and the City” especially celebrates the urban single lifestyle. In their representation of empowered, confident singles, these series, which invaded our screens in the late 1990s, are indicative of how the status of singles has changed over the years.1