Widow

A widow is a woman whose spouse has died. A man whose spouse has died is a widower. The state of having lost one's spouse to death is termed widowhood or viduity.

Widowhood has been an important social issue, particularly in the past. In families in which the husband was the sole provider, widowhood could plunge the family into poverty, and many charities had as a goal the aid of widows and orphans. This was aggravated by women's longer life spans.

However, in some patriarchal societies, widows were among the most independent women. Widows sometimes carried on their husbands' businesses and were consequently accorded certain rights, such as the right to enter guilds.

There were implications for sexual freedom as well; although some wills contained dum casta provisions (requiring widows to remain unmarried in order to receive inheritance), in societies preventing divorce, widowhood permitted women to remarry and have a greater range of sexual experiences. The Wife of Bath in Geoffrey Chaucer's Canterbury Tales refers to having been widowed five times, permitting her greater sexual experience.

See bereavement, orphan, black widow, merry widow.

In typesetting, a widow is the first line of a paragraph, set before a page break so that the rest of the paragraph is on the following page. Widows and orphans (the last line of a paragraph appearing alone on the following page) are usually considered unattractive and are suppressed by moving the line to the next page.

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