Sarcasm is an adjusted stress reaction.

That one goes back a lot further than 1832 even - I don't know how much potential there was for women to change their class via religion in the early middle ages, but there's a fair amount of evidence that running a convent provided noble women with access to political power that they could only otherwise get by being a regent for their son or something else in that vein. See Radegund, kicking ass around 500.

I'd have to do some research to get back to the exact details of how things typically worked for lower class women coming into convents (I think that part of the problem is that there isn't a lot of evidence), but that the general picture historians are running with is that often class roles were reinforced (ie you would come into the convent from a certain class and generally be assigned in a role in the convent that reflected that class) but that there were still education and quality of life opportunities (including not having to pop out babies in medieval Europe) that you usually couldn't get outside of the convent.