The bachelor thing

“Relationship status” is a regular feature of our lexicon, thanks to Facebook. Single, married and divorced are among the options. Bachelor and spinster are not. “Single” tells us very little about a person’s status, whereas “bachelor” fills in a great many empty spaces in its three little syllables.

The term has been in its current usage for many centuries. Shakespeare uses it in Julius Caesar (1599). Cinna the Poet asks, “What is my name? Whither am I going? Where do I dwell? Am I a married man or a bachelor?” The Oxford English Dictionary defines a bachelor as a man who has never been married. This means an eighteen year old could be a bachelor. But doesn’t the term engender a certain maturity?

In Victorian parlance, a bachelor was sometimes used as a euphemism for a gay man. Indeed, the London Times often described a homosexual as a “confirmed bachelor” in their obituaries of gay men, prior to legalisation.

Writing in the Atlantic Monthly in June 1898, Leon H. Vincent writes, “Almost any man can become a fairly respectable husband; but to be a successful bachelor implies unusual gifts”. This suggests that there are criteria involved in achieving such a title. It also tells us that the term was certainly not restricted to being a euphemism for a homosexual in that period. Indeed, it had a more prosaic definition altogether.

A bachelor has no dependants. Therefore he is likely to have more disposable income to spend on life’s treats. In John W. Luce’s 1906 book, A Bachelor’s Cupboard, he says that the bachelor wishes to become “bon vivant, epicure, connoisseur de vins and up on all the little things that combine to make him an authority on the things of single men of the world”. The bachelor has the gift of time. While the married man is tending to family life, the bachelor tends to his own.

Luce continues: “Who can be a more perfect host than a bachelor? He can be equally gracious and devoted to all women because of the absence of that feminine proprietorship which always tends to make the married man withhold his most graceful compliments, his most tender glances and his most winning smile”.

Often, the mid-nineteenth century view of the bachelor was of a free-wheeling and unfettered singleton. In The Paradise of Bachelors and the Tatarus of Maids, Herman Melville writes, “you could plainly see that these easy-hearted men had no wives or children to give an anxious thought. Almost all of them were travellers too; for bachelors alone can travel freely, and without any twinges of their consciences...”

On the other hand, literature and film often sets its sights on a bachelor who needs to find a resolution in his life through romance. How many stories have we read or seen where the bachelor abandons his credentials as a singleton and ends up in the warm embrace of love? In the 2002 Nick Hornby film adaptation of About a Boy, Hugh Grant appears to be a typical bachelor. “I am an island,” he shrieks. “I’m bloody Ibiza!” Of course the audience wouldn’t be happy unless he disregarded this principle and fell in love. Which he does. This formula is repeated in almost every popular film about single men.

What does this say about our uneasy relationship with bachelors? It is extremely difficult for a producer or studio to greenlight a film in which the bachelor doesn’t find love at the end. But perhaps some men truly never want to get married or be in a relationship. Those are the true bachelors, surely?

Historically, this uneasiness is prevalent too. Vincent continues, “It is possible to respect a bachelor, but it is impossible to be at ease with him. Not without reason does the world speak of a married man as ‘settled’”.

Does one decide to be a bachelor or do we impose the title? It would be unusual to hear someone describe themselves in this way. It is too frank. Equally, it seems rather invasive to confer it on somebody else. It assumes a very particular set of circumstances. This is the lone ranger, the master of his own destiny, the great untouchable. The old dog who cannot learn new tricks. “It’s too late for him. He is set in his ways,” I have heard older people describe even older bachelors.

There is something graver to consider too. Helen Dowd, writing in the Guardian in 2006, says, “single men labouring under the misapprehension that their lifestyles are one long string of fun and frivolity are in for something of a shock, as research shows that a generation of "toxic bachelors" are destined for an early grave”. According to the research of Professor Robert Kaplan, bachelors between the ages of 19 and 44 are 58% more likely to die before reaching 50 than men who are married or in a relationship. Does marriage put a necessary restraint on the vices of life?

The bachelor has always existed. Sometimes for different reasons. It is unlikely that it will ever appear as a box to tick on a form, but, if it did, would you feel comfortable marking it? 

ENDS