The Odd Women, by George Gissing

I found out about this novel by English novelist George Gissing by way of Irish writer Naoise Dolan, who wrote Exciting Times. In a short video she said it gave a good representation of the economic lives of poor women in the 19th century.

The story is basically about a young woman whose father has died while she was young, throwing her and her older sisters into precarious financial circumstances. Monica Madden works as a shop girl. She doesn’t even get paid a wage, but rather works for food and lodging. Her life is one of miserable drudgery. The only way out of such penury is marriage. When she is courted by a man 20 years her senior, Edmund Widdowson, she doesn’t know what to do. Edmund is a conservative, retired, self-made man. He’s not an exciting prospect. But with limited options, Monica decides to marry him, with disastrous results.

There are a few other courtships in the novel, notably between the fiery proto-feminist Rhoda Nunn and the rakish Everard Barfoot, in which a lot of progressive ideas about the marriage and the role of women are explored. While the novel does highlight the economic plight of women without men as protectors, either fathers or husbands, it mostly concentrates on the problems of marriage. It basically aligns itself with the women’s movement of the time, calling for more respect for women and financial independence.

Gissing’s The Odd Women is for the large part enjoyable and engaging. Some of the philosophical sections could be a little weak and foggy (to 21st century readers, anyway) and the melodramatic plotting near the end gets a little tiring. All of that aside, The Odd Women makes for important and relevant reading and proves itself to be ahead of its times. Recommended.