Cover of The Odd Women by George Gissing Ebook The Odd Women
Ebook · Sovereign

The Odd Women

Author
George Gissing
Series
Timeless Classics
Language
English
Length
458 pages
ISBN
9781911263449
Published
15 April 2016
Imprint
Sovereign
  • women
  • Victorian England
  • social challenges
  • economic limitations
  • education
  • independence
  • autonomy
  • societal expectations
  • gender roles
  • love

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Description

Victorian England’s ‘surplus’ women: the Madden sisters after the money goes, Rhoda Nunn and Mary Barfoot teaching independence, Everard Barfoot making trouble. Gissing’s Odd Women is work, lodgings, and the marriage market as a trap. Feminism before the word was easy. Some will type, some will marry badly, some will teach other women not to wait. Gissing is bleak and fair: independence is work, and work is not a romance. Independence as work, and work not a romance.

Author

George Gissing (1857–1903) was the most unflinching realist of late Victorian England — a novelist who wrote what others preferred not to see. In New Grub Street he exposed the bitter economics of literary life: talent ground down by poverty, compromise, and the market. The Nether World, Born in Exile, and The Odd Women extended that clear-eyed vision to slum existence, intellectual exile, and the precarious lives of unmarried women.

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