George Gissing's intensely modern The Odd Women is one of the truly great novels of nineteenth-century fiction. The impoverished Madden sisters are ill-equiped to support themselves when their father dies, and Monica sees her only chance of escape from a life of grinding misery in marriage. When she is befriended by two independent women, who strive to educate single women to take control of their destinies, the choices that lie ahead of them are starkly defined. The Odd Women is a dramatic exploration of the dilemmas facing the single woman at the turn of the century. Set in grimy, fog-ridden London, the novel paints a vivid portrait of the hardships and inequalities in and outside of marriage, and of a society whose values are in flux. A novel of social realism, The Odd Women reflects the major sexual and cultural issues of the late nineteenth century. Gissing portrays contemporary society's blatant ambivalence towards its own period of transition. Judged by contemporary critics to be as provocative as Zola and Ibsen, Gissing produced an intensely modern work, and the issues it raises remain the subject of contemporary debate.
