matronhood

Seeing that Olivia (with her chance-recovered virtue) and Sophia may both be expected to grow into the kind of matronhood represented by their mother, it needs all the conditions of fiction to surround the close of their love-affairs with the least semblance of dignity.

The Spirit of Place and Other Essays Alice Christiana Thompson Meynell 1884

Here is one who reposes after a long feast where no love has been; after girlhood without kindly maternal nurture; marriage without affection; matronhood without its precious griefs and joys; after fourscore years of lonely vanity.

The Newcomes 2006

She was twenty-six; but in her homeland this was matronhood.

Funeral Games Renault, Mary, 1905-1983 1981

The figure had taken a compact rigidity, an unfaltering inflexibility, all the world away from the elasticity of matronhood; and her eyes were clear and fixed like her figure, neither falling, nor rising, nor puzzling under other eyes.

Balcony Stories Grace E. King

'She was young, but a certain worn look told of the early trials of matronhood.

Australian Writers Desmond Byrne

The curate's only reply was a shrill whoop, followed by an agile leap into an upright position, and a wild grab at the terrified lady, whose thirteen stone of solid matronhood he whirled round his head and tossed across the room as if it had been a feather-weight.

The Idler Magazine, Volume III., July 1893 An Illustrated Monthly Various

Little Mrs. Hunter, on whom matronhood and maternity sat with the effect of large spectacles on a small child, inquired indulgently into the activities of her friends.

Jane Journeys On Ruth Comfort Mitchell 1918

Mrs. Emery retreated to the safe stronghold of matronhood.

The Squirrel-Cage Dorothy Canfield Fisher 1918

Elizabeth was tolerant of lovers, and Mary's little sentimentalities, like Mary's airs of virtuous matronhood, were often quite amusing to watch; but to-night, with David Blake as a fourth person in the room, Elizabeth found amusement merging into irritation and irritation into pain.

The Fire Within 1913

We soon discovered that, to Aunt Olivia, Mr. Malcolm MacPherson represented a merely abstract proposition – the man who was to confer on her the long-withheld dignity of matronhood.

Chronicles of Avonlea Lucy Maud 1912