The Odd Women

"A vain and miserable life is the lot of nearly all mortals. Most women, whether they marry or not, will suffer and commit endless follies." Gissing "The Odd Women" Yet another classic piece of literature that most people aren't even aware of, let alone have ever read. What a writer this Gissing guy was! If you haven't discovered him yet, then I am pleased to make the intro. Start, as I did, with "New Grub Street" (one of my all-time favorites!) and if you enjoy that adventure, then definitely give this one a look-see as well. Gissing reminds me a bit of H. James, Maugham, and Dreiser all rolled into one. The story takes place in late 19th century England. It is essentially the tale of a group of `odd' women who are ailing as outcasts, simply because they are not married. Oh the horrors of being a single woman in the prim and proper Victorian world! But no need to fret, because these dainty, displaced dames all have someone to turn to in our main protagonist Rhoda Nunn. Before there was Mary Tyler Moore, there was Rhoda. The latter being a fearless feminist whose life work is to educate and motivate these spinsters to live independent lives sans men. However, Rhoda's mission takes a bit of a tumble when love finally comes a knocking upon her door. Will Rhoda toss in the towel and marry? Will she abandon her life work for a man and love? Order the book and find out! This beautiful book, like his above-mentioned classic, tells many stories within his main story. I also enjoy writers who love their characters and want you to love them too (i.e. Austen, Steinbeck, Balzac, Tolstoy, Dickens, et al...) and Gissing definitely falls into that category. His focus is almost entirely on people and what impels them (primarily, love and human relationships) to do what they do. He digs deep into his protagonist's hearts and minds and draws vivid, penetrating portraits of their souls. His writing is relatively easy to digest and straightforward. His prose does not venture off onto lavish descriptions of landscapes and characters, rather, like Dreiser, he slowly unravels his creations dynamic nature upon each page turned. A novel that was way ahead of its time in its criticism of a male-dominated, often times cruel society that had no problem oppressing women, especially single women. Gissing writes women like G. Eliot and Austen write men - exceptionally well. You can really tell that he himself spent a lot of time trying to understand the feminine mystique. It is also a novel that examines the dilemmas of the constant battle going on in us all - that perpetual see-saw we are all riding - opting between on our own desires and our own principles. An EXCELLENT READ! 4.7 STARS!!!

This is a lesser-known classic that deserves more recognition that it gets. It is a novel about the plight of single "old maid" women during the victorian era. Back then, women who would not or could not get married were condemned to a life of poverty and despair. They survived only by working in sweat shops and nearly starving to death. They were the objects of ridicule and amusement, fear and anxiety. This book delves into all of these facets and also that of the misery of married women who marry a man only to avoid being single. Although the book has a strong feminist bent, it is still good reading and opens one's eyes to the ill treatment that women formerly underwent in times past and the shocking attitude of society.

If you haven't already, read this book NOW. It is as relevant today as it was the day it was written, the day I first read it as a ninth-grader, and the 5-10 times I've read it since. I have been recommending this remarkable book to serious readers for 25 years and have never heard anything but praise for this incisive social commentary that is as important a work as all the "important" books everybody has heard of (think Edith Wharton, Ernest Hemingway, J.D. Salinger, Willa Cather, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Theodore Dreiser, etc.) except most people have never heard of it. Read and recommend!

The other review posted and the editorial reviews do a much better job than I could in summarizing this story. However, I would like to comment on its insight & current applicability.As mentioned, "The Odd Women" is about the women who don't get married for one reason or another. In the Brittish Victorian era, there was still a strong stigma against such women...that their one true goal & purpose in life is left unfulfilled. You enter into this cultural assumption almost as soon as you pick up the book. What is new in this book was the very beginnings of the feminist uprising. Women were starting to rebel against such unfortunate and uncontrollable circumstances in their lives. And they began - out of financial considerations - to learn more masculine disciplines in order to make their own way in the world. At first, you think that this is encouraging and will naturally lead to peace & prosperity for the women...after a bit of struggle to raise the glass ceiling enough to get the women in the doorway.I think where Gissing goes with the novel, however, is spectacular. Rather than showing such ideal outcomes, Gissing shows through Monica's character that the issue of women having careers wasn't just a matter of training. Women did not look to salvation through work. Most secretly longed for marriage while they were being trained, and some couldn't even focus their minds enough to take in the education. As shown through Monica's character, the women still would rather be trapped in loveless marriages than work.In addition to developing this kink in the feminist plan, Gissing develops Rhoda's character in an even more dynamic manner. His insight into her strict, stiff, uncaring manner was piercing. He showed how her facad was based on her need to prove herself worthy in some manner; and this need rose from her not having received the attentions from a man. By bringing a desirable man into her life, Rhoda's whole philosophical system breaks down. The power struggle between these two is worth reading, even if a little masculine in its outcome.In this way, Gissing continues to unveil how dependent these women's worlds still were on men. Even if they didn't want to be...even if they didn't have the choice to be, an idealic philosophy alone could not change these women's most secret desires and nature. It's a disturbing realization to behold.But Gissing isn't degrading women. His insight is penetrating...especially for a man of his times...but he balances out his story well. He shows in a good way how a professor's long-awaited marriage helps him to become a much more fulfilled, well-rounded man. And, though pathetic, Monica's husband is clearly lonely & lost without a woman by his side. Gissing shows the men in this tale to be completely as in need of women (and desirous of companionship with them) as the women are of men.In this way, Gissing's revelations lead one to somber despair. One realizes that the feminist uprising c

"In The Odd Women there is not a single major character whose life is not ruined either by having too little money, or by getting it too late in life, or by the pressure of social conventions which are obviously absurd but which cannot be questioned." --George Orwell George Gissing was a very odd man himself. Despite the fact that all his novels deal with social issues of the day, notably women, money, and class relations, he was neither a socialist nor a social reformer. He simply described in novels what he knew of degredation, misery, and the tortures "respectable" English society inflicted upon its outcasts and marginal figures. In The Odd Women Gissing chose to focus on the predicament of the extra females of Britain's disproporionate population ratio. These were the "odd" women who would never be matched with a man. Gissing's Madden sisters endured a representative sampling of the a dreary employment opportunities available for genteel but impoverished women in the 1890s. Of the two eldest Madden sisters, Alice was a governess until her health broke down; Virginia was lady's companion (poorly-paid drudge to an elderly tyrant) who has suffered from "mental lassitude" and taken to secret drinking. Another sister, a luckless "hard-featured" girl, is dead before the story begins; she taught in a girl's school until she committed suicide in despair. Monica, the youngest and only good-looking sister, spends twelve to sixteen hours a day on her feet in a large dry-goods shop and lives in an unsanitary dormitory with other shopgirls, some of whom supplement their wages by prostitution. Her sisters fear that Monica's health will also break down under this regime, and that she will lose her looks and her chance of marriage. Enter Miss Rhoda Nunn and Miss Elinor Barfoot, two enterprising women who have founded a school to teach "odd" women business skills to enable them to compete economically, or at least rise above the general level of ill-paid drudgery. Barfoot and Nunn are early feminists; they wish to live and teach other women to live without feeling diminished by their unmarried status. Monica Madden considers enrolling in their school, but she has managed to meet and attract a man, a middle-aged bachelor named Widdowson, whom she marries instead. The substance of the novel involves the wreck of Monica's life following her disastrous marriage, and Rhoda Nunn's struggle to deal with her relationship with a man she is attracted to, but whom she cannot marry or live with without suffering diminishment and the loss of her role as a teacher and leader. Gissing's book is a serious and sympathetic treatment of the much-discussed "woman question," and written from a point of view somewhat in advance of his time. The Odd Women has been mostly out of print for the last hundred years, and it is to be hoped that the recent appearance of three new editions heralds a long-delayed recognition of its merits.