The Odd Women

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.

The Odd Women was my first (and hopefully not last!) Goodreads readalong. I had never heard of this book or George Gissing before this. It was enjoyable to read and the pages turned quickly. It started off with a bang, and then kind of dissolved into a mishmash of “who has the worst romantic relationship”. I have to admit that the book slowed down for me a couple of times, when ideas were being repeated and repeated. Still, I liked what the book had to say about women and making a life for themselves whether married or not. I highly suspect that what the reader takes from this novel will be highly dependent on the reader personally.
I felt myself cringing when the male characters had control of the narrative. Almost everything Widdowson and Barfoot had to say was about controlling or reigning in the women in their lives. There are no forward-thinking male characters in this story at all.
Few of the characters grow. Rhoda, to me, seemed to be the same as the Rhoda we meet at the beginning of the story. I'm not sure Monica grew much. She was stronger I guess. Poor Virgie.
In the end, it was a good read and has more interested to read works from this time period.