A common theme in American literature of the mid-nineteenth century is a push toward self-realization for both single male and single female characters. Marriage becomes less an expectation and more a reward for the individual who has become developed and fully realized as an individual.

THE SINGLE MAN: "THE PARADISE OF BACHELORS"

Perhaps the most famous short story that depicts a mid-nineteenth-century view of bachelors and spinsters is Herman Melville's (1819–1891) "The Paradise of Bachelors and the Tartarus of Maids" (1855). In this tale the narrator finds that bachelors spend their spare hours in the luxurious surroundings of a gentle-man's club. His final assessment of the paradise is:

It was the very perfection of quiet absorption of good living, good drinking, good feeling, and good talk. We were a band of brothers....