Spinster tags "spinster" (meaning "...unmarried woman, typically an older woman beyond the usual age for marriage") as "derogatory" and "a good example of the way in which a word acquires strong connotations to the extent that it can no longer be used in a neutral sense." The 1828 and 1913 editions of "Merriam Webster's Dictionary" defined spinster in two ways: "1. A woman who spins, or whose occupation is to spin. 2. Law: An unmarried or single woman." By the 1800s, the term had evolved to include women who chose not to marry. During that century middle-class spinsters, as well as
Spinster defrauded and abandoned on her wedding day; an event that shaped the rest of her life, and by extension, those around her. Another stereotype of the spinster that has appeared in literature is the quick-witted and sometimes quick-tempered independent woman, who has remained unmarried by choice, as in "Spinster Thurber's Carpet" (1897), Pauline Phelps's popular short story and play about an unmarried woman who decides during the Revolutionary War that she'd rather have a carpet than a husband. The popular and shrewdly intelligent detective Miss Marple was a spinster heroine in Agatha Christie's series of crime novels, which later became