etc. Damn, I thought, Nothing on! Rated G? How boring. I was wrong and glad of it. Lydia was unmarried, perhaps, but, thankfully for her, not a "spinster" or "old maid," and good for her!! Yet how subtly this was conveyed. Makes you wonder. (Richard, you bounder! you cad!)
shareTechnically, since she was never married, she is a spinster. Old maid is the derogatory way to say the same thing. The fact she had a fling with Richard doesn't matter. In those days it would have been assumed an unmarried woman had never had sex so the term 'spinster' seems associated with sex but it's not. Sex has nothing to do with it.
share