"[Gissing] achieved one of the very few novels in English that can be compared with those of the French naturalists who were his contemporaries." --Walter Allen, The English Novel
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"[Gissing] achieved one of the very few novels in English that can be compared with those of the French naturalists who were his contemporaries." --Walter Allen, The English Novel
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The Odd Woman is an unusually nuanced novel about the plight of middle class unmarried women without financial resources in late 19th-century England. The main characters, as well as the secondary ones, are very well drawn. Even the villains have sympathetic sides. Such a feminist perspective, with empathetic aspects, is very unusual for the publication date of 1893, a year before the term "New Woman" was drawn.
