An eligible bachelor is a bachelor

Bachelor

A bachelor is a man above the age of majority who has never been married . Unlike his female counterpart, the spinster, a bachelor may have had children...

 considered to be a particularly desirable potential husband

Husband

A husband is a male participant in a marriage. The rights and obligations of the husband regarding his spouse and others, and his status in the community and in law, vary between cultures and has varied over time...

, usually due to wealth

Wealth

Wealth is the abundance of valuable resources or material possessions. The word wealth is derived from the old English wela, which is from an Indo-European word stem...

, or social status

Social status

In sociology or anthropology, social status is the honor or prestige attached to one's position in society . It may also refer to a rank or position that one holds in a group, for example son or daughter, playmate, pupil, etc....

.

In the United Kingdom

United Kingdom

The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern IrelandIn the United Kingdom and Dependencies, other languages have been officially recognised as legitimate autochthonous languages under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages...

, the heir to the throne or someone close in succession is often considered to be the nation's, or the world's most eligible bachelor, due to their social status, as has happened with Prince Charles and Prince William.

Jane Austen

Jane Austen

Jane Austen was an English novelist whose works of romantic fiction, set among the landed gentry, earned her a place as one of the most widely read writers in English literature, her realism and biting social commentary cementing her historical importance among scholars and critics.Austen lived...

's novels are often concerned with the heroine's relationship with an eligible bachelor. Jane Austen's Emma

Emma

Emma, by Jane Austen, is a novel about the perils of misconstrued romance. The novel was first published in December 1815. As in her other novels, Austen explores the concerns and difficulties of genteel women living in Georgian-Regency England; she also creates a lively 'comedy of manners' among...

particularly concerns a woman's attempt to obtain a husband for her friend by embellishing the truth. The gentleman in that case sees it as an example of the matchmaker

Matchmaking

Matchmaking is any process of matching two people for the purpose of marriage or a sporting contest.-Practice:In some cultures, the role of the matchmaker was and is quite professionalized...

's creativity

Creativity

Creativity refers to the phenomenon whereby a person creates something new that has some kind of value. What counts as "new" may be in reference to the individual creator, or to the society or domain within which the novelty occurs...

 and falls in love with her.

Homosexuals as apparent eligible bachelors

During the 1950s and 1960s, Rock Hudson

Rock Hudson

Roy Harold Scherer, Jr., later Roy Harold Fitzgerald , known professionally as Rock Hudson, was an American film and television actor, recognized as a romantic leading man during the 1950s and 1960s, most notably in several romantic comedies with Doris Day.Hudson was voted "Star of the Year",...

 was hailed as an eligible bachelor. In the past, if a man chose to remain an eligible bachelor for long he may have been suspected of being gay, and have been referred to euphemistically as a confirmed bachelor a role closeted gay men may have played. The term 'confirmed bachelor' has fallen from common usage, as past life patterns involving marriage, divorce and prolonged bachelorhood have been altered for men since the advent of the sexual revolution

Sexual revolution

The sexual revolution was a social movement that challenged traditional codes of behavior related to sexuality and interpersonal relationships throughout the Western world from the 1960s into the 1980s...

.

Sociology

Robin Lakoff

Robin Lakoff

Robin Tolmach Lakoff is a professor of linguistics at the University of California, Berkeley.Lakoff's writings have become the basis for much research on the subject of women's language. In a 1973 article , she published ten basic assumptions about what she felt constituted a special women's...

 argues that the term indicates an inequality between men and women, as an "eligible bachelor" chooses to be a bachelor, whereas an "eligible spinster" does not have a choice. Lakoff believes this use of language fosters, and grows from, sexual discrimination. Lakoff states "women are given their identity in our society by virtue of their relationship with men, and not vice versa."

See also

• Courtship
  Courtship
  Courtship is the period in a couple's relationship which precedes their engagement and marriage, or establishment of an agreed relationship of a more enduring kind. In courtship, a couple get to know each other and decide if there will be an engagement or other such agreement...
  
  
• Hypergamy
  Hypergamy
  Hypergamy is the act or practice of seeking a spouse of higher socioeconomic status, or caste status than oneself....
  
  
• Social status
  Social status
  In sociology or anthropology, social status is the honor or prestige attached to one's position in society . It may also refer to a rank or position that one holds in a group, for example son or daughter, playmate, pupil, etc....
  
  
• Romance novel
  Romance novel
  The romance novel is a literary genre developed in Western culture, mainly in English-speaking countries. Novels in this genre place their primary focus on the relationship and romantic love between two people, and must have an "emotionally satisfying and optimistic ending." Through the late...
  
  
• Alignment
• Essentialism
  Essentialism
  In philosophy, essentialism is the view that, for any specific kind of entity, there is a set of characteristics or properties all of which any entity of that kind must possess. Therefore all things can be precisely defined or described...
  
  
• Bateman's principle
  Bateman's principle
  In biology, Bateman's principle is the theory that females almost always invest more energy into producing offspring than males invest, and therefore in most species females are a limiting resource over which the other sex will compete...