remittance woman

remittance woman (plural remittance women)

1. (chiefly historical) A woman paid a remittance to live abroad, especially because considered undesirable at home.
   • 1908, Ella Rhoads Higginson, Alaska, The Great Country:

     Here, in the western solitude, lived for several years—the veriest remittance woman—the girl who should now, by the right of love and honor, be the Princess of Wales; and whose infant daughter should have been the heir to the throne.

   • 1984, Anita Brookner, Hotel du Lac, Penguin, published 2016, page 81:

     ‘I see her, some years hence, a remittance woman, paid to live abroad, in such an hotel, in various Hotels du Lac, her beautiful face grown gaunt and scornful, her dog permanently under her arm.’