The Odd Women was published by Lawrence and Bullen in three volumes in 1893, two years after New Grub Street. The title refers to the demographic fact that in late Victorian England, women significantly outnumbered men — there were roughly half a million more women than men in the 1891 census — which meant that a substantial number of women could never marry, even if they wished to. These “odd” (surplus) women were the novel’s subject, and Gissing explored their predicament with a sympathy and intelligence that were unusual for a male novelist of his era.
The novel follows two intertwining plots. The Madden sisters — Alice, Virginia, and Monica — are the daughters of a deceased doctor who left them with no money and no marketable skills. Alice and Virginia teach; Monica works as a shop assistant. Their genteel poverty — too well-bred to work in factories, too poor to live without working — is depicted with excruciating precision. Monica, the youngest and prettiest, escapes through marriage to Edmund Widdowson, a jealous, controlling older man who has enough money to support her but not enough imagination to make her happy.
The counterplot involves Rhoda Nunn, a friend of the Maddens who works with Mary Barfoot to train unmarried women for office work — typewriting, bookkeeping, shorthand — giving them the economic independence that marriage cannot reliably provide. Rhoda is the novel’s most compelling character: intelligent, principled, and fiercely committed to women’s independence, she resists the conventional plot that would pair her with Everard Barfoot, a charming but unreliable man who wants to test her feminist principles against her sexual desires.
Gissing’s treatment of the “woman question” is remarkable for its refusal to idealize any position. Marriage, as depicted in the Widdowson subplot, is a trap: Monica is financially secure but emotionally imprisoned. Independence, as Rhoda practices it, is admirable but lonely: the novel suggests that feminist principle and personal happiness may be genuinely incompatible, at least in the society Gissing depicts. The ending resolves nothing — the characters survive but are not triumphant — and this refusal of easy resolution is the novel’s greatest strength.
Collecting The Odd Women
First edition (Lawrence and Bullen, London, 1893): Three volumes, brown cloth.
Market values:
- Three-volume first edition: $1,500–$5,000
- One-volume reprint: $60–$200
- Later editions: $5–$15
A feminist classic that has gained significantly in reputation (and value) since its rediscovery in the 1970s. Three-volume firsts are genuinely rare.