`there are half a million more women than men in this unhappy country of ours . . . So many odd women - no making a pair with them.'' The idea of the superfluity of unmarried women was one the `New Woman'' novels of the 1890s sought to challenge. But in The Odd Women (1893) Gissing satirizes the prevailing literary image of the `New Woman'' and makes the point that unmarried women were generally viewed less as noble and romantic figures than as `odd'' and marginal in relation to the ideal of womanhood itself. Set in grimy, fog-ridden London, these `odd'' women range from the idealistic, financially self-sufficient MaryBarfoot and Rhoda Nunn, who run a school to train young women in office skills for work, to the Madden sisters struggling to subsist in low-paid jobs and experiencing little comfort or pleasure in their lives. Yet it is for the youngest Madden sister''s marriage that the novel reserves its most sinistercritique. With superb detachment Gissing captures contemporary society
