The Odd Women by George Gissing

The Odd Women by George Gissing

George Gissing’s The Odd Women dramatizes key issues relating to class and gender in late-Victorian culture: the changing relationship between the sexes, the social impact of ‘odd’ or ‘redundant’ women, the cultural impact of ‘the new woman,’ and the opportunities for and conditions of employment in the expanding service sector of the economy. At the heart of these issues as many late Victorians saw them was a problem of the imbalance in the ratio of men to women in the population. There were more females than males, which meant that more and more women would be left unmarried; they would be ‘odd’ or ‘redundant,’ and would be forced to be independent and to find work to support themselves. In the Broadview edition, Gissing’s text is carefully annotated and accompanied by a range of documents from the period that help to lay out the context in which the book was written. In Gissing’s story, Virginia Madden and her two sisters are confronted upon the death of their father with sudden impoverishment. Without training for employment, and desperate to maintain middle-class respectability, they face a daunting struggle. In Rhoda Nunn, a strong feminist, Gissing also presents a strong character who draws attention overtly to the issues behind the novel. The Odd Women is one of the most important social novels of the late nineteenth century.

“When it comes to the complexities of everyday life in late-Victorian London, there is no better guide than Gissing and no better Gissing than The Odd WomenAnd now, in Arlene Young’s carefully edited and annotated edition, we have the definitive guide to Gissing’s novel. Students will also find the historical documents gathered in this volume an invaluable resource in the study of the “woman question” and the sociology of work in the 1890s.” — Stephen Arata, University of Virginia

“Broadview’s enterprise is especially welcome in the case of The Odd Women, Gissing’s second most commonly studied novel. [This edition] deserves to become the text of choice for teachers—especially given its modest price.” — The Gissing Journal

Arlene Young is Assistant Professor in the Department of English at the University of Manitoba. Since receiving her PhD from Cornell University she has published widely on British and American nineteenth-century fiction.

SKU	Unavailable
ISBN 13	9781551111117
ISBN 10	155111111X
Title	The Odd Women
Author	George Gissing
Series	Broadview Literary Texts
Condition	Unavailable
Binding Type	Paperback
Publisher	Broadview Press Ltd
Year published	1998-02-28
Number of pages	416
Cover note	Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary.
Note	Unavailable