<P> A common theme in the fiction writings of author / poet Sandra Cisneros is marital disillusionment; for example . in the poem "Old Maids" (1994). </P> <P> In the Charles Dickens' classic Great Expectations, the primary antagonist is Miss Havisham, a spinster embittered by being defrauded and abandoned on her wedding day; an event that shaped the rest of her life, and by extension, those around her . </P> <P> 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 . </P> <P> The popular and shrewdly intelligent detective Miss Marple was a spinster heroine in Agatha Christie's series of crime novels, which later became a television series . </P>

Where did the term hand in marriage come from