{"id":8232,"date":"2021-05-24T08:27:47","date_gmt":"2021-05-24T08:27:47","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/damesnet.com\/?p=8232"},"modified":"2021-05-24T14:18:48","modified_gmt":"2021-05-24T14:18:48","slug":"the-odd-women","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/damesnet.com\/?p=8232","title":{"rendered":"The Odd Women"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

George Gissing, Oxford World’s Classics<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

You\u2019ve got to be curious about a book called The Odd Women<\/em>, haven\u2019t you? When novelist Vivian Gornick described it as her comfort read, and said that there was a time when she read it every six months, I had to find out why.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It did not disappoint. Although it\u2019s a novel with several points to make, the verve of the narrative means that it never feels preachy. And if you\u2019re someone who likes to know not only your characters\u2019 innermost thoughts, but also what they had for breakfast, you\u2019re in for a treat.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Published in 1893, this is Gissing\u2019s contribution to the question of the New Woman. It probes the nature of marriage, women\u2019s work and their place in the world through the fates of three poor but genteel sisters, contrasting them with two resolutely entrepreneurial women committed to the cause of independence and meaningful employment for women.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The battle of the sexes rages through the pages and marriage emerges from the book looking rather threadbare. The beautiful Monica escapes the drudgery of life as a shop girl by marrying a comfortably-off older man, but it\u2019s a disaster. Coercive control may only have been recognised as a thing in recent years, but its mechanisms are clearly exposed here. Listen to Widdowson, Monica\u2019s husband, explaining why he doesn\u2019t like the company she keeps: \u2018I want to keep you all to myself. I don\u2019t like these people \u2013 they think so differently \u2013 they put such hateful ideas in your mind\u2026 I had rather you were dead than that you should cease to love me.\u2019 Elsewhere a desperately sick man is abandoned by his flighty wife as she finds the health-giving sea air he needs stultifying compared to the smoggily invigorating atmosphere of London.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

One of the most remarkable aspects of the book is seeming inconsistency \u2013 at least to modern eyes. Gissing promotes independence and worthwhile work, but only for middle-class women. Their working-class sisters are apparently irredeemable. And although he creates the splendid character of Rhoda Nunn \u2013 intelligent, principled and energetic \u2013 he nevertheless subscribes to the popular notion that too much mental effort damages women\u2019s health.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It\u2019s hard to remember that Monica\u2019s older sisters are only in their thirties, such are the wrecks that Gissing describes: \u2018Her cheeks were loose and puffy\u2026 her lax lips grew laxer\u2026\u2018 and so on. Poverty does for your looks, and one of the most moving episodes in the book (and the only happy marriage) occurs when Micklethwaite, an impoverished maths teacher, comes into enough money to wed his fianc\u00e9e of 17 years. Here Gissing abandons the wry, detached narrative tone of much of the book to describe how Micklethwaite\u2019s love blinds him to the fact that his bride is now \u2018wrinkled, hollow-cheeked, sallow, [with] indelible weariness stamped upon her brow\u2026 and all this for want of a little money.\u2019<\/p>\n\n\n\n

One of the joys of this book is the amount of detail about income and expenditure. For the reader, being privy to the characters\u2019 finances in this way is a rare treat, since it\u2019s a subject on which we are all very guarded in real life.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In fact, Gissing excels at detail. If you are Londoner, the accounts of our protagonists criss-crossing the city by various means will be fascinating. And anyone who regularly asks the question \u2018And what did she say to that?\u2019 when listening to an anecdote will be happy: every conversation is pursued to its conclusion, so you can follow the shifts in power, the concessions, the unguarded self-incrimination. Rhoda\u2019s sparring matches with her equivocal suitor Barfoot are intensely satisfying.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I think what I\u2019m trying to say is, I loved it.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

He subscribed to the popular notion that too much mental effort damages women’s health. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":8234,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[68,343,309,58,65,307,59],"tags":[384],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/damesnet.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8232"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/damesnet.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/damesnet.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/damesnet.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/damesnet.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=8232"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"https:\/\/damesnet.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8232\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8257,"href":"https:\/\/damesnet.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8232\/revisions\/8257"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/damesnet.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/8234"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/damesnet.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=8232"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/damesnet.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=8232"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/damesnet.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=8232"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}