The Odd Women (Annotated)

George Gissing's The Odd Women (1893) is a searching late-Victorian novel of gender imbalance, economic precarity, and the contested meaning of female independence. Set against a society in which surplus unmarried women are treated as social anomalies, the narrative contrasts conventional marriage plots with the ambitions of Mary Barfoot and Rhoda Nunn, who train women for self-supporting work. Gi...