Being an old maid is like death by drowning, a really delightful sensation after you cease to struggle.

Ferber’s line uses a deliberately shocking simile to satirize the social stigma attached to unmarried women (“old maids”) in the early 20th century. The comparison to drowning suggests the initial panic of resisting an imposed identity—family pressure, pity, or ridicule—followed by a grimly comic “relief” once one stops fighting and accepts life outside conventional marriage. The wit is double-edged: it mocks the cruelty of the label while also acknowledging how resignation can become a coping strategy. The quote’s force lies in its inversion of expectations, turning a feared status into something survivable—if only after the struggle ends.