I have mixed feelings about The Odd Women. Written in 1893, the novel explores the plight of "surplus women" in late nineteenth-century Britain, at which time there were nearly one million more women than men. The title refers to these "odd women" - those left out of marriage pairings. Victorian works that touch on the "Woman Question" are always very interesting to me. New technologies and changing industries saw a rise of these surplus women in the workforce. Many women were driven by necessity to seek means of supporting themselves. Some found reputable employment in new spheres, though some met unsavory fates. How did single Victorian women deal with poverty and loneliness? What was the place of the intellectual woman? What dangers and temptations did single women face in these times? All of these questions are dealt with in The Odd Women, as author George Gissing took a strong interest in the social issues of his day. His interest in working-class women may have been a little too strong.
Though I have no wish to commit the biographical fallacy, I do feel that it is Gissing's authorship which makes this book problematic for me. His grim personality hangs over the book like a cloud. A cynical atheist who abandoned one working-class wife and had a second institutionalized, who loved to write about social ills but scorned social reform efforts, Gissing seems tailor-made to embrace the naturalistic literary movement which reared its ugly head in his times. A deliberate and deterministic bleakness awaits the character in a Gissing novel.
Do I believe all stories must have happy endings? Not at all; I enjoy a good tragedy. And yet, Gissing does not write tragedy. If a comedy is shaped like a letter U, and a tragedy is shaped like an upside-down U, Gissing's naturalism is really just a flat line with a slight downturn at the end of every character's story.
The characters themselves are viewed with a certain detachment, which was a staple of the naturalistic style. We are told the story of the intellectual and independent Rhoda Nunn, who teaches secretarial skills to young women. Her dealings with the rakish Everard Barfoot briefly complicate her life. Other female characters face bad marriage choices, contemplated infidelities, alcoholism, and poverty. None will have a happy ending. No one's story really feels like a resolved story.
The Odd Women was a book with an intriguing premise that did hold my interest up to a point, but which was ultimately spoiled by the author's literary pretenses. Gissing's determined posture of bleak "realism" hampers his storytelling.
