I love being alone and am honestly not sure if I could ever share my space with another mouth-breathing human again, but, having said that, there is no denying that this is a lifestyle that comes with its own set of challenges. It’s damned expensive, for one thing, and you will need to learn how to deal with spiders, unopenable jars, and being sick all my yourself, for another. It can also get lonely from time to time.
I have enormous admiration for any woman that has walked this path before me and am always happy to swap stories and share tips. So, imagine my excitement when I recently discovered a book from 1936 in my local charity shop, titled Live Alone and Like It: A Guide for the Extra Woman, by one of the original “female bachelors”, Marjorie Hillis (1889-1971).
Marjorie Hillis was an American author who worked as an editor at Vogue in New York. She was 47 and still single when she wrote the book, having lived by herself in Manhattan’s stylish Tudor City complex since she was 29. This should give you an idea of how dated some of the advice is going to be. The idea that a twenty-something could afford to live alone in central New York is just a fantasy in 2025. However, I wasn’t going to let that put me off. “Lay it on me, Marjorie,” I thought.
‘One of Hillis’s key arguments is to be proactive in your social life’The very first thing that Hillis addresses is attitude. Living alone is not for the faint hearted (especially in 1936) and feeling sorry for yourself will be of no help whatsoever. “Everybody feels sorry for herself (to say nothing of himself) now and then,” she writes. “But anyone who pities herself for more than a month on end is a weak sister and likely to become a public nuisance besides.” I find that if you imagine her talking to you in a transatlantic accent, with one eyebrow raised, it’s the most fun.
When it comes to the dreaded stigma that inevitably comes with being what Hillis calls a “one-woman ménage”, her advice is simple: “Defiance is not a bad quality to have handy.” By which she means, don’t put yourself in a position where anyone would dare to feel sorry for you. Arrange your own life, exactly as you like it, be bold, forge friendships, have hobbies, and go on adventures.
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Reading through Hillis’s book, I couldn’t help but think I would have been just fine in 1936, and then she hit me with it: “There is no reason why the woman who lives alone should look any different from the woman who doesn’t, and every reason why she shouldn’t.” She continued: “The notion that it ‘doesn’t matter because nobody sees you’, with dull meals and dispirited clothes that follow in its wake, has done more damage than all the floods of springtime.” Looking down at my tea-stained onesie and the open bag of bread I’d been picking at like a deranged duck, I knew I had failed this test.
She urges solo livers to indulge themselves as they would do a romantic partner. Take all that energy and give it back to yourself. Cook yourself nice meals, serve them on fancy plates, and spoil yourself with “cold cream sessions”. Fix your hair and your nails. Buy yourself flowers, and make sure you have “a trim little cotton frock that flatters you on an odd morning when you decide to be violently domestic”. In other words, maintain your standards and care for yourself as you would a partner.
‘I actually bought some old school cold cream and slathered my face in it, while lazing around in the bath each night, reading “a spicy book”‘This was the hardest part of my experiment and proved to be the one I enjoyed the most. Yes, it was a huge effort to make and serve myself three loving meals a day, but I have to say, I actually started to look forward to what I was going to eat. Even as I type this article, I have a little plate of tasty snacks next to me. The irony of this is that countless women are out there prepping and cooking meals for entire families, but aren’t caring for themselves. Here I was with no one to cook for and still not caring for myself properly. I will absolutely maintain the effort involved to cook for myself as if I was cooking for someone else.
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I don’t know if I will keep up with the daily fashion parade but slugging my face in cold cream every evening has been a revelation. I’m definitely keeping that up. This was self-care on an epic level.
I was surprised by just how progressive Hillis’s book was. Of course, some of the advice is dated. For example, I don’t need to learn about buying alcohol as a single woman because the neighbours might think of me as “a woman with an affliction, like insanity or epilepsy”. Her advice on dating is fairly succinct too, “whatever you decide, you’ll think you regret it. You’ll hate the shabby end of romance, and you’ll detest missing it all together”.
But, her advice on self-care, the right attitude, and maintaining one’s standards have actually proved very useful and certainly worth remembering. I intend to be “violently domestic” in a nice frock far more from now on.
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