The Odd Women
George Gissing1893

"Questions of marriage don't interest me much... my work and thoughts are for the women who do not marry... the "odd women" I call them".

Set in London in the 1890s, this powerful novel tells the story of five "odd women". Alice and Virginia Madden are reduced to genteel poverty by the death of their improvident father ; their pretty sister Monica chooses a loveless marriage to escape their fate ; Rhoda Nunn and her friend Mary Barfoot devote their lives to helping young women find emotional as well as economic independence.

Rhoda is the embodiment of all that was meant by the New Woman - seeking not to reject men, but to create for both sexes new ways of living, new freedoms from old constraints, including, if necessary, marriage. Into her life comes Mary's engaging, forceful cousin Everard. Mutually attracted, they are drawn into a passionate struggle for supremacy from which Rhoda emerges with a new understanding of what love can mean, and what its implications are for a woman determined to be true to herself.

Titre original : The Odd Women (1893)