The Odd Women
by George Gissing
Virginia and Alice Madden are lonely aging awkward women in Victorian England with no prospect of finding love. Driven into poverty by the sudden death of their father, they live a quiet and hopeless life in a London hostel. Strange Women is a novel of socialist realism that reflects the fundamental sexual and cultural problems of the late nineteenth century. Unlike novels of the New Woman era, which challenge the idea that an unmarried woman is superfluous, Hisslama satirizes this image and portrays women as strange and marginal in relation to the ideal. Set in a bleaky, fog-soaked London, Gissing's awkward women range from the idealistic, financially self-sufficient Mary Barfoot to the Madden sisters, who are trying to live in low-paying jobs and have little chance of joy. Through narrative disconnection, Gissing portrays modern society's apparent ambivalence toward its own transitional period. According to provocative contemporary critics such as Zola and Ibsen, Gissing has created an intensely modern work because the issues he has raised remain the subject of contemporary debate.
