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
The Spinster and Her Enemies the threat they posed to male dominance", and with exposing "enormous male opposition" to what Summerfield referred to as "gyn/affection". She wrote that while Jeffreys depicted the hold of the "ideology of compulsory heterosexuality" as absolute, further documentary evidence was needed to determine the extent to which this was true between World War I and the 1970s. Jane Egerton described "The Spinster and Her Enemies" as a major work in "The Sexual Imagination from Acker to Zola: A Feminist Companion" (1993). The feminist Rene Denfeld criticized "The Spinster and Her Enemies" for being part of a repressive, anti-sexual trend within