The Odd Women
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Five odd women—women without husbands—are the subject of this powerful novel, graphically set in Victorian London, by a writer whose perceptions about people, particularly women, would be remarkable in any age and are extraordinary in the 1890's. The story concerns the choices that five different women make or are forced to make, and what those choices imply about men's and women's place in society and relationship to each other.
Alice and Virginia Madden, suddenly left adrift by the death of their improvident father, must take grinding and humiliating "genteel" work. Pretty, vulnerable, and terrified of sharing their fate, their younger sister Monica accepts a proposal of marriage from a man who gives her financial security but drives her to reckless action by his insane jealousy.
Interwoven with their fortunes are Mary Barfoot and Rhoda Nunn, who are dedicating their lives to training young women for independent and useful lives, for emotional as well as economic freedom. Feminine and spirited, they are seeking not to overthrow men but to free both sexes from everything that distorts or depletes their humanity—including, if necessary, marriage. Into their lives comes Mary's engaging and forceful cousin Everard Barfoot, and as he and Rhoda become locked in an increasingly significant and passionate struggle, Rhoda finds out through the refining fire what "love" sometimes means, and what it means to be true to herself.
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I don't really know what to say about this book... I think I went in expecting the wrong thing entirely. I thought this would be a study on feminism and the emancipation of women, but the author probably isn't that interested in that. I later read someone say that three words summarised Gissing's whole body of work very aptly: “Not enough money.” This book is actually much more about how people landing in this awkward class that was still high enough on the socioeconomic ladder to demand adherance to conventions and rules, but also not rich enough to afford them comfortably, and yet not poor enough to completely disregard those conventions.
Most of the characters here are pretty annoying, both men and women alike. All are selfish and self-centered to some extent, but it is true that the book does a pretty good job at depicting how their lives are almost destined to be ruined simply because all of them had Not Enough Money. I particularly detested Edmund Widdowson... before he married, he was already such a creep, and he only got worse after marriage. What a pain.
While there may be some interesting feminist ideas here, it's strongly comingled with a sense that Gissing may not quite fully agree with the emancipation of women himself, even though most of the female characters here advocated for it. It was sometimes as if their activism was being ridiculed, or that they were shown to actually still want to be in that dependent, submissive, wifely state, no matter how much they protest against it. It's a subtle thing though, so it wasn't ostentatiously annoying. Plus, the women here were also annoying in many ways, different from the men. I couldn't stand Rhoda Nunn and the way her story played out just annoyed me even more.
All in all... this book was just weird. I kept on trudging on with it, strangely fascinated by how annoying all these characters were to me. If studying the struggles of the lower middle socioeconomic classes in late Victorian times is your thing, this book is perfect. Not, however, if you want to read anything about the emancipation of women though.
