The Odd Women is an 1893 novel by the English novelist George Gissing. Its themes are the role of women in society, marriage, morals and the early feminist movement. The novel's title is derived ostensibly from the notion that there was an excess of one million women over men in Victorian England. This meant there were "odd" women left over at the end of the equation when the other men and women had paired off in marriage. A cross-section of women dealing with this problem are described in the book and it can be inferred ...
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The Odd Women is an 1893 novel by the English novelist George Gissing. Its themes are the role of women in society, marriage, morals and the early feminist movement. The novel's title is derived ostensibly from the notion that there was an excess of one million women over men in Victorian England. This meant there were "odd" women left over at the end of the equation when the other men and women had paired off in marriage. A cross-section of women dealing with this problem are described in the book and it can be inferred that their lifestyles also set them apart as odd in the sense of strange.
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The Odd Woman is an unusually nuanced novel about the plight of middle class unmarried women without financial resources in late 19th-century England. The main characters, as well as the secondary ones, are very well drawn. Even the villains have sympathetic sides. Such a feminist perspective, with empathetic aspects, is very unusual for the publication date of 1893, a year before the term "New Woman" was drawn.
