Married and Unmarried in 1800s

 The life for women in the early 1800s in Britain was that of many obligations and few choices.  Some even compare the conditions of women in this time to a form of slavery.  Women were completely controlled by the men in their lives. First, by their fathers, brothers and male relatives and finally by their husbands.  Their sole purpose in life is to find a husband, reproduce and then spend the rest of their lives serving him.  If a woman were to decide to remain single, she would be ridiculed and pitied by the community.
in the book Great Expectation by Charles Dickens, Miss Havisham is damped on her wedding day and as a result she decides to never live her house again. in the 1800s for a woman to not be married was seen as a shameful thing, there for Miss Havisham way of avoiding the humiliation though extreme was to hide in her house.
Also in the book great expectation we find out that Miss Havisham was a very wealthy woman, therefor if she were to get married her husband would have automatically gotten all she had.

http://staff.washington.edu/cgiacomi/courses/english200/historicalbriefs/women.html