The Odd Women by George Gissing

George Gissing’s 1893 novel tells the story of the Madden sisters, Alicia, Virginia and Monica. Their father’s death leaves them in poverty and forces them to seek ways to support themselves – this at a time when career options for genteel women were close to nonexistent. The two elder sisters find work as governesses or lady’s companions and just barely manage to make ends meet, living lives of respectable poverty and quiet starvation. In addition to this, the fact that they have to work has of course social consequences, one of them being that it bars them from the career followed by most Victorian women: marriage. Monica, the youngest of the Misses Madden, works as a shopgirl, and her youth and beauty make Alicia and Virginia hope that she’ll escape becoming one of the odd women the title refers to – “odd” both because as single women they were regarded as strange, and because they remained unpaired.

The Odd Women is also the story of Rhoda Nunn, a childhood friend of the Misses Madden. Rhoda Nunn and her friend Mary Barfoot run an institution in Great Portland Street, and their lifework is to teach young women the skills they weren’t normally taught at the time: self-reliance, independence, and specific job qualifications such as typing and how to do clerical work; all so that marriage didn’t have to remain their only option. Rhoda Nunn reminded me of the women I read about in Singled Out, as it’s very much her belief that a single woman’s life doesn’t have to be one of emptiness and misery. There are actually many other characters and plotlines in The Odd Women, but as they’re introduced as the story progresses, I’ll end my synopsis here.

The Odd Women is a sensitive and insightful account of the plight of unmarried women in the Victorian age, as well as an interesting and serious account of the struggles of early feminists. Although what is ostensibly its main theme – the lack of career options for women – is an area in which we’ve fortunately made much progress, one of the things that hit me the most about theThe Odd Women is how absolutely modern it feels. This goes both for the topics its deals with and for how it reads: anyone who’s wary of the Victorians’ customary verbosity and old-fashioned syntax needs to give George Gissing a try.

The most contemporary thing about The Odd Women was its treatment of romantic relationships and of the role and meaning of marriage as an institution. It was fascinating to see these Victorian women and men ponder personal, social and political questions that still matter so much to us today – namely the impact that the socioeconomic roles we associate with traditional marriages can have even on private relationships, even for those who don’t necessarily care for the conventional arrangement of the man as the breadwinner and the woman as exclusively a homemaker. Rhoda Nunn’s story actually reminded me a little of Harriet Vane’s: it’s not that the two are necessarily similar, but both women struggle with the intrusion of gender politics on their personal relationships, and they both fear – with good reason – the costs that a romantic relationship could have for their intellectual, creative and professional lives.

The Odd Women is also extremely modern in its treatment of the consequences of jealousy and power games; in its portrayal of an unhappy marriage; in its dealing with the concept of “weakness” and its acknowledgement that even the most well-meaning feminists can pressure women to live up to unrealistic standards; in its treatment of the questions of whether “femininity” is a natural or a social construct (suffice to say that Gissing is a man after my own heart), and of why those who try to naturalise gender differences do so; and in its acknowledgement that even though it’s undeniable that men held the power and were infinitely privileged, ideals of “manhood” also limited, then as now, what individuals were allowed to do, feel, think or be.

George Gissing treats Rhoda Nunn and Mary Bradfoot’s feminist ideals with nothing but seriousness and respect, but he also denounced the harshness that they tended to slip into. Early (and sadly not so early) feminists were often guilty of being completely blind to other forms of privilege, and such is the case with these two when it comes to class:

‘But surely you don’t limit your humanity, Miss Barfoot, by the artificial divisions of society.’
‘I think those divisions are anything but artificial,’ replied the hostess good-humouredly. ‘In the uneducated classes I have no interest whatever. You have heard me say so.’
‘Yes, but I cannot think—isn’t that just a little narrow?’
‘Perhaps so. I choose my sphere, that’s all. Let those work for the lower classes (I must call them lower, for they are, in every sense), let those work for them who have a call to do so. I have none. I must keep to my own class.’
‘But surely, Miss Nunn,’ cried the widow, turning to Rhoda, ‘we work for the abolition of all unjust privilege? To us, is not a woman a woman?’
‘I am obliged to agree with Miss Barfoot. I think that as soon as we begin to meddle with uneducated people, all our schemes and views are unsettled. We have to learn a new language, for one thing. But your missionary enterprise is admirable.’

This blind spot is lamentable, but it was all too common. Another pitfall that Rhoda Nunn just barely manages to avoid is becoming so hardened as to be insensitive towards those who don’t live up to her own ideal of strength and independence. This was a particularly dangerous tendency when it came to judging other women’s romantic or sexual choices – Rhoda Nunn seems to feel that doing anything other than behaving absolutely above reproach and being continuously “respectable” will compromise everything that she fights for. But—well, I don’t want to give the whole story away, so I’ll just say that she’s too complex a character to be reducible to any sort of stereotype of the lonely, embittered single woman. Still, the ideas she expresses early in the novel are a good example of the differences between Victorian feminism and feminism as we know it today—and of the similarities too.

The Odd Woman is a thoughtful, provocative and extremely engaging novel. I wasn’t completely happy with how some of the subplots turned out (it seems that even Gissing can’t resist the urge to punish wayward women), but in the face of everything else this novel has to offer, this is only a minor complaint. I must read more of Gissing’s work as soon as possible

Interesting bits:

Never had it occurred to Widdowson that a wife remains an individual, with rights and obligations independent of her wifely condition. Everything he said presupposed his own supremacy; he took for granted that it was his to direct, hers to be guided. A display of energy, purpose, ambition, on Monica’s part, which had no reference to domestic pursuits, would have gravely troubled him; at once he would have set himself to subdue, with all gentleness, impulses so inimical to his idea of the married state. It rejoiced him that she spoke with so little sympathy of the principles supported by Miss Barfoot and Miss Nunn; these persons seemed to him well-meaning, but grievously mistaken. Miss Nunn he judged ‘unwomanly,’ and hoped in secret that Monica would not long remain on terms of friendship with her. Of course his wife’s former pursuits were an abomination to him; he could not bear to hear them referred to.
‘Woman’s sphere is the home, Monica. Unfortunately girls are often obliged to go out and earn their living, but this is unnatural, a necessity which advanced civilization will altogether abolish. You shall read John Ruskin; every word he says about women is good and precious. If a woman can neither have a home of her own, nor find occupation in any one else’s she is deeply to be pitied; her life is bound to be unhappy. I sincerely believe that an educated woman had better become a domestic servant than try to imitate the life of a man.’

Widdowson, before his marriage, had never suspected the difficulty of understanding a woman; had he spoken his serious belief on that subject, it would have been found to represent the most primitive male conception of the feminine being. Women were very like children; it was rather a task to amuse them and to keep them out of mischief. Therefore the blessedness of household toil, in especial the blessedness of child-bearing and all that followed. Intimacy with Monica had greatly affected his views, yet chiefly by disturbing them; no firmer ground offered itself to his threading when he perforce admitted that his former standpoint was every day assailed by some incontestable piece of evidence. Woman had individual characters; that discovery, though not a very profound one, impressed him with the force of something arrived at by independent observation. Monica often puzzled him gravely; he could not find the key to her satisfactions and discontents. To regard her simply as a human being was beyond the reach of his intelligence.

Reviewed at:
Of Books and Bicycles
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