Ideologies of Patriarchy, Feminism, and Fiction in "The Odd Women"

Author(s): Deirdre David

Source: Feminist Studies, Vol. 10, No. 1 (Spring, 1984), pp. 117-139
Published by: Feminist Studies, Inc.
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IDEOLOGIES OF PATRIARCHY, FEMINISM,

AND FICTION IN THE ODD WOMEN

DEIRDRE DAVID

An ideology is not a harmoniousstructureof beliefs or assumptions; some of its beliefs militate againstothers, and some of its
standardsmilitate againstour nature.
KennethBurke,
"LexiconRhetoricae,"
Counter-Statement

George Gissing's The Odd Womenbegins with the death of a

father, an event that can be read as the emblematicdemise of the
Victorianpatriarch,and ends with the birthof his granddaughter,
perhaps the birth of a brave "New Woman." But this is no easy
fable in which oppressivepatriarchyis vanquishedby liberating
feminism, nor, for that matter,where feminism is chillingly discredited by the chosen celibacy of its most aggressivespokeswoman, Rhoda Nunn. The Odd Womenis a complex and ambiguous novel about the price of social change. Set in London in
the late eighteen eighties, it tells two stories: One, with sympathetic irony, describesthe strugglefor materialand psychological survivalof three sisters,Alice, Virginia,and MonicaMadden.
The other story problematicallyrepresentsthe life and work of
two feminists,MaryBarfootand RhodaNunn, who, throughthe
trainingof women for secretarialwork, seek to alleviatethe social
plight in which women such as the uneducatedand impoverished
Maddensisters find themselves. As the novel develops the relationship between these two groups of female characters,it traces
a disastrousmarriagebetween Monicaand a pitiablemisogynist,
Edmund Widdowson, and a politically charged love affair between Rhoda and Mary'scousin, EverardBarfoot. At the end of
the novel, which sees the end of the marriageand the end of the
FeministStudies10, no. 1 (Spring1984). @ by FeministStudies,Inc.

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Deirdre David

love affairas well, we returnwith Monicaand her sistersto the

place where their father died and Monica'schild is to be born.
Althoughthis returnmay well signala new beginning,we are left
uncertainas to how a world that is "moving" will receive this
female child who is to be broughtup in a house of women.
To be sure, uncertaintyand ambiguitycharacterizethe endings
of many, if not all, Victoriannovels. ElizabethGaskellhopefully
and implausiblytransformsclassanimosityinto class cooperation
in her industrialnovels. CharlotteBrontetries to resolve the conflicts experienced by her heroines in crypticallydescribedmarriages, as we see in Jane Eyre and Shirley,or in an embittered
refusalon the part of the narratorto provide the readerwith a
happy ending, as we see in Villette.CharlesDickens's notorious
retreatsfrom pervasivesocial miseryinto isolateddomestic felicity are most particularlyapparentin EstherSummerson'spastoral
communityat the close of BleakHouse and in the Harmon/Boffin
household at the end of Our Mutual Friend. Maggie Tulliver
drowns in the Floss; Dorothea Brooke's intellectual ambition
finds its final form in marriageto a charactermany critics find
unequalto her in moralintensity;and Gwendolen Harlethstands
chastenedat the end of DanielDeronda,bereftof its hero and provided by GeorgeEliotwith no satisfactoryexpressionfor Gwendolen's enlightened consciousness. Given such a heritage, the
uncertainresolution of The Odd Womencomes as no surprise.
It is also unsurprisingthat ambiguityof this sort, the refusalof
this particularnovel to rendera definitive endorsementor rejection of feminism, has led readersand critics to solicit for themselves an assessmentof where Gissingplaceshimselfin relationto
the "New Woman."1I Is he, and I reduce things here to their
simplestterms, for her or againsther?Are Rhoda Nunn's radical
politics invigoratedby her final rejectionof marriageand Everard
Barfoot,or are they underminedby the sexualjealousyshe struggles to control, a jealousy conventionally associated with
women? Is MaryBarfoot to be applaudedfor her dedication to
preparingmiddle-classwomen for office work, or is she to be
condemned for her disregardof working-classwomen?2Is The
Odd Womenless an attempt to describe a contemporaneous
political conflict, than it is a fictional rehearsalof Gissing'sown
painful and perennialproblemswith women, money, and social
class?3
Ratherthan trying to extrapolatea definitive endorsementor
rejection of feminism, or attemptingto see Gissing'sprivate ex-

Deirdre David

119

periences with women directly reflected in his fiction, I want to

suggestthat the uncertainresolutionof TheOdd Women,like the
uncertainresolution of many nineteenth-centurynovels, is born
of differentiatedand interlocking contradictionsthat make the
novel of particularinterest to feminist critics.
Most obviously, Gissing describes a contradiction between
patriarchaland feminist ideologies, while at the same time and
not so obviously, he representsfeminism itself as beset by contradiction. Gissing's problematicalrepresentationof feminism,
moreover, and the ambiguousending of his novel suggestthat in
articulatingthe feminist challenge to patriarchy,he himself was
subjectto contradiction;that is to say, the novel's subversionof
patriarchyis determinedby what it seeks to subvert. Thus The
Odd Womenis both resistant to, and immersed in, patriarchal
systems of belief and practice; and if such a perspective on the
novel helps unravel some of its tangled ideological threads, it
must inevitablyfrustrateour desire, in readinga text overtly concerned with sexual politics, to find fictive approbation or
repudiation of a particularstance. What we finally see, as we
reach the uncertainending of this novel, is that TheOdd Women
is less about the decline of patriarchy and the triumph of
feminism (or the other way around if one wants to read it that
way) than it is about the strugglesof a subversiveculturewithin
the elaborativestructuresof a dominant one.
In one way or another, all the charactersin the novel are
shown to be victims of the dominant ideology. Those who willingly assent to it, the Maddensisters and EdmundWiddowson,
are clearlythe most victimizedcharacters,but so, too, are Rhoda
Nunn and EverardBarfoot, both articulateopponents of male
supremacy,in their inabilityto free themselvesfrom a destructive
need to control each other. Rhodaand Everardseek to transform
each other into passive object, to become the transcendentalsubject in dualisticcontrol of the immanent"other" that Simone de
Beauvoirspeaks of in The SecondSex. Inescapablyenthralledby
this paradigm,Rhoda and Everardreplay a dominant pattern of
Victorian sexual relationships. And Mary Barfoot and Rhoda,
while authentically opposed to the Victorian confinement of
women to domestic bliss (if the woman happens to have a husband),or to a humiliating,marginalexistence (if she does not), are
made by Gissingto articulateand reinforce some powerful Victorianmyths of female sexuality, in their conversations,lectures,
and dealings with other women.

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Deirdre David

Becauseit is a novel, however, and not a politicalpamphlet, or

a late-nineteenth-centurytreatise calling for more open sexual
dealingsbetween women and men, TheOdd Womenresolves the
contradictionsthat it represents.It is, all at once, representation,
subversion, and affirmationof particularsocial, psychological,
and sexual realities.We cannot abstract.from it an affirmationof
feminism, nor, as we are often prone to do in readingGissing,a
pessimisticdenial of the possibility of social change. Rather, The
Odd Womenpermits us to see (1) that the struggleof feminism
within an establishedpatriarchalsystem must inevitably be influenced by the beliefs and practices of what it seeks to change
(which is not to say that change cannot take place), and (2) that
the novel, as a genre, can both express contradictions and
mythicallyresolve them.
At the time Gissing wrote his novel, unmarried or "odd"
women helped to define and to constitute the feminist movement. They were themselves,for example, one causeof a feminist
activismthat demandedfaireducationaland employmentopportunitiesfor women. A numberof factorshad contributedto their
emergenceas a group that made up a largesector of the feminist
constituency at the end of the nineteenth century. Most notably,
from the middle of the century marriageablewomen had begun
to outnumbermarriageablemen; as many middle-classwomen
found themselvesdenied the usual Victorianmeans of economic
support they began to agitatefor the requisiteeducation to support themselves in jobs accordant with their class position.
Moreover, middle-classwomen, whether married or not, had
long been homosocial by virtue of the division by gender into
private and public spheres of social experience, and, as Lillian
Fadermanobserves,the groupwhich madeinevitablethe strength
of feminismin the latterhalf of the nineteenthcenturywas composed of "educated,articulatewomen, who saw the possibilities
of organizingfor social bettermentand were not tied to old traditions, who were raisedbelieving that men and women were different species and could sharenothing but family,who could not
marry and had no work to occupy them."'4 These women de-

mandedwork, trainedother women for work as Maryand Rhoda

do in their school, and often the celibacywhich began as accommodation to an economic situationor a desire for intellectualindependence became, for women like Rhoda, a conscious choice.
Takenas a group and allowing for their differencesof opinion
as to the primary aim of feminist activity-differences which

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121

Gissing partially delineates in the fervent discussions between

Maryand Rhoda-these women were crucialfigures in the feminist movement in Englandat the end of the nineteenth century,5
but their situationwas one of tension and conflict. If on the one
hand they embracedtheir oddness and saw themselvesas "New"
in the sense that they were self-supporting,politically assertive
and highly articulate,and frequentlyliving with each other rather
than with their families,these women were also often pejoratively and conventionally defined as "old maids" and identified as
socially aberrantin a culture permeated by celebration of the
family. Towards the end of the nineteenth century, moreover,
feministstruggleled to both achievementand conflict for women
who had gained much in terms of social and economic independence, but who were, as MarthaVicinus recently noted,
"caughtbetween old ideologies and behavior patterns and new
ambitionsand public careers.'"6
The disagreementsabout feminism between Rhoda and Mary
are eventually dissolved, of course, into Gissing'sfinal image of
their work flourishinglike "a green bay-tree,"but they are suggestive of the differentintellectualoriginsof, and ideologicalconflicts within, the feministmovement at the time Gissingwrote his
novel. Contradictionwithin the movement was but one of the
many contradictionsexperienced by all feminists and all "odd"
women.7 By virtue of their very successes these women found
themselvesliving lives that demandedadept managementof conflicting demands. TheOdd Women,in its emphasison contradiction, evokes the actual struggle,the daily navigationin searchof
autonomous identity required of these "New" women. The
evocation and resolution of contradiction inherent in Gissing's
presentationof the "odd" women finally is made more complex
by his own ambivalence toward feminist struggle, and ambivalence expressed in his refusalto adopt either a traditionalor
subversiveending for his novel. That is to say, Gissingwavers between what one might call the novel of patriarchalgeneration
and the novel of feminist celibacy.
Dominant patriarchalideology in the novel is representedin
part by Dr. Madden,the fatherwho dies in chapter 1. Maddenis a
well-meaningadvocateof the Victorianbeliefin male directionand
protection of women, but in materialterms he is an embarrassingly ineffective father and his protective function finds its principal expression in the recitation of domestic homilies. He announces that "the home must be guardedagainstsordid cares to

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DeirdreDavid

the last possible moment ... women, old or young, should never
have to think about money,"8but as he lacks the wherewithalto
turn dogma into practice, his sudden death leaves his six
daughterswith a sad legacy. They must do more than "think"
aboutmoney-they have to earnit. Dr. Madden'sdesirenot to be
troubled by talk of education for women (he would rather sit
around the fireside readingTennyson to his family), and his inability to provide for his daughtersafter his death, leaves them
with neither the professional qualificationsnor the private income necessaryfor a minimallydecent female independence.
Overa period of sixteen yearsand brevityof narrative,suitable,
Gissingironicallyobserves,to "so unexcitinga story," two sisters
are drowned, one dies of consumption, and we are left with the
unfit survivors,Alice, Virginia,and Monica,the last representing
the best hope for the diminished female family. Because she is
young and pretty, Monicastandsa chance of catchinga husband
and being released from the shop girl drudgeryto which she is
condemned by lack of an education. However, fear of Rhoda's
aggressivefeminism hinders her from accepting the trainingfor
secretarialwork offered by the school, and ladylike gentility
alienates her from the vulgar working-class solidarity of the
draperyestablishment.So, with the pitiful example of her sisters
to remind her of what awaits aging, unmarriedwomen, Monica
marries Widdowson to escape a thirteen-and-a-half-hour
day
behind the counter. Marriageinto suffocatingrespectabilityis the
only way out.9
By dwelling relentlesslyon the miserabledetailsof a femalelife
lived on the shabbiestmarginsof Londonpoverty, and by delivering these details in a flat, unembroidered,and almost clinical
style, Gissing emphasizes the stark struggle for existence experienced by the sisters. Livingon the income from a miniscule
amount of capital, Alice and Virginiainhabit one tiny, airless
room in a seedy suburb.Their standardmiddaymeal is a dish of
rice and bread and butter and they spend their afternoons and
eveningsin sewing and recollectionof theirformer "bondage"as
nursery-governessesand companions. (Gissingemphasizestheir
lack of qualificationfor all but the lowest form of "genteel"
employmentthey insist upon.) The day ends at nine o'clock with
a cup of cocoa and a biscuit.As Gissingdryly observes, "Lampoil
was costly; and indeed they felt glad to say as early as possible
that anotherday had gone by" (chapter2). Theirphysical condition signifiesa dispiritingcontrastwith women more socially and

DeirdreDavid

123

intellectuallyprivileged.
The elder (now five and thirty) tended to corpulence, the result of sedentary
life; she had round shouldersand very short legs. Herface would not have been
disagreeablebut for its spoilt complexion. ... Her cheeks were loose, puffy,
and permanentlyof the hue which is producedby cold; her foreheadgenerally
had a few pimples;her shapelesschin lost itself in two or three fleshy fissures..
Virginia(aboutthirty-three)had also an unhealthylook, but the poverty, or
?.
of her blood manifesteditself in less unsightlyforms. One saw that
vitiation,
she had been comely, and from certainpoints of view her countenancestill had
a grace, a sweetness, all the more noticeablebecause of its threatenedextinction. For she was rapidly aging; her lax lips grew laxer, with emphasis of a
characteristicone would rathernot have perceived there; her eyes sank into
deeper hollows; wrinkles extended their network; the flesh of her neck wore
away. Her tall meagrebody did not seem strong enough to hold itself upright.
(Chapter2)

Bad food, lack of exercise, and an absence of involvement in

energizing and gratifying work turn these women into pitiful
physical specimens.Worn down by poverty, they are a grim and
unsightly embodiment of the consequences of patriarchal
ideology, of their father'sinsistenceon the protection of women
from the harsh realitiesof the world.
Alice and Virginiaare also slaves to the middle-classbelief that
capitalmust not be touched and cling to the shabbyrespectability
they imaginethey enjoy as "ladies."Theircarefullynurturedand
delicately assertedclass superiorityis, in part, also their capital,
but in a late-nineteenth-centuryLondon given over to aggressive
competition it bears them very little interest and marksthem as
"odd"-both surplus and strange. From one perspective, they
have no exchangevalue and cannot tradethemselvesfor economic securitythroughmarriage.And from anotherperspective,they
are strangeor queer. Exiledfrom the old patriarchalorderby virtue of theirfather'sfailureto provide for them afterhis death, and
unableto embracea new feministorderby virtueof theirtimidity
and years of indoctrinationin male, middle-classconservatism,
they are eccentric to both patriarchaland feminist ideological
circles.
By marriageto EdmundWiddowson, a middle-agedand prematurelyretired bachelor, Monica is subjected to a stifling and
concrete expression of the patriarchalvalues recited by her
father.Widdowson'sobsessiveadherenceto the Victoriandogma
of female frailty,however, not only destroys his marriage,but it
also makes him a tragic victim. Victimizedby the belief in male
superiority that relies upon the myth of female deviousness,

and

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DeirdreDavid

victimized by the English class structurethat holds him social

prisonerin his own house (he is ashamedof his lower-classbackground and awkwardmanners),Widdowson's misery is so fully
realizedby Gissingthat it is impossibleto slide him neatly into the
slot,of male villain in a feminist novel.10
Chained to an ideology of female inferiority, he finds it is
"beyond his power" to trustany woman and so subjectsMonica
and himself to an exhausting round of fretful disapprobation,
moral sermonizing, and lachrymose self-abnegation. "In no
woman on earth could he have put perfect confidence. He
regardedthem as born to perpetualpupilage. Not that their inclinations were necessarilywanton; they were simply incapable
of attainingmaturity, remained throughout their life imperfect
beings, at the mercy of craft, ever liable to be misled by childish
misconceptions"(chapter19). Eventhough he realizesthat he has
marrieda woman who proves to him "her claimsas a humanbeing," Widdowson can never be free of the suspicionthat his wife
will betray him, and his domestic tyranny reveals the mutually
destructive patterns of subject/objectrelationships. Monica is
wife, object,property,purchasedwith the guaranteeof economic
security, and he, the husband, is condemned to constant surveillance lest his goods turn out to be morallydefective, or even
worse, lest someone make off with them. As in Dombeyand Son,
TheOdd Womenthoroughlyinsistsupon the perniciouseffects of
Victorianpatriarchyupon its propagandistsas much as it does
upon its victims. But in Dickens's novel, patriarchalideology is
diffusedand implicit,whereasit is the explicit subjectof TheOdd
Womenand the explicit anchor of Widdowson's discourse, a
discoursethat signifieshis statusas a domestic tyrantdialectically
enslaved to his domestic captive.
The insidious aspects of Victorian myths of marriagekill all
possibilityof a half-waydecent marriedlife for Widdowson. And
they literallybringaboutthe deathof his wife. Monicathereforeis
the victim of male ideology twice over-once as theorizedby her
fatherand once as practicedby her husband.Herfather'sdelusive
insistence that women should never have to think about money
condemns her to the draper'scounter, while her husband'ssubjection to myths of "femalenature"condemns her to virtualimprisonment in their home. Monicais also the victim of popular
myths about romantic love and in her physical and emotional
fumblings with Bevis, her would-be seducer, she misreads the
feministprogramfor independenceas "freedomto love." At the

DeirdreDavid

125

end of the novel, defeated and disappointed on all sides, she

lapses into psychological and physical decline. Thus, her life and
the lives of Alice, Virginia,and Widdowson reveal the encompassing and damagingeffects of a social system that promotes
female inferiority and dependence on male protection." The
devastationof Widdowson, in particular,testifiesto the extensive
power of patriarchal attitudes, for in him the oppressor is
destroyed by his own ideology.
MaryBarfoot and Rhoda Nunn, while "odd" in the sense that
they are numberedwith the surplus,unmarriedwomen of England, and close in age to Alice and VirginiaMadden,have been
liberatedfrom the more obvious constraintsof Victorianpatriarchy by, in Mary'scase, the possession of a privateincome that not
only rejuvenatesher middle-agedcomplexion, but also enables
her to train women for financialindependence, and in Rhoda's
case, by the vigorous dedicationto a more radical,quasi-religious
feminismthan that initiallyespoused by Maryin the novel. They
are both privilegedrepresentativesof, and spokeswomen for, the
"New Woman" of the eighteen eighties.12Their devotion and
dedication to women's independence, their aggressivearticulation of the need for women to enter the male commercialworld,
theirpleasanthousehold and extensive homosociability,all testify
to a high degree of female autonomy in the materialand cultural
arenasdominated by men in late VictorianEngland.But despite
their implacableopposition to a male-dominatedculture,they are
shown by Gissingto be subjectto its hegemony. It is a subjection
that obviously takes a less painfully materialform than that experiencedby the Maddensisters,and it also points to the very real
conflicts that women such as Mary and Rhoda experienced,
sometimes consciously, sometimes not, in the feminist struggles
of the time. TheOdd Womenshows that the fight againstpatriarchy is necessarilyinformed by the usually unconscious and pervasive consent to beliefs and practicesthat, in Antonio Gramsci's
culturaltheory, defines a social and politicalsystem characterized
by consensualhegemony ratherthan coercive domination.13
Maryand Rhoda are united in their dedication to female independence, and they thoroughlyreject the conventional, maledefined notions of women's work. The "excellent governess,"
the "perfecthospital nurse," are not for them, although,as Mary
says, "Menpoint to them, and say, Imitate these, keep to your
proper world" (chapter 13). Mary and Rhoda, however, are
divided on the topics of class origin and female sexualityin their

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DeirdreDavid

feministprogramof trainingwomen for secretarialemployment.

While uneducated working-classwomen are of no interest, are
even distasteful,to Marywho is not unequivocallyopposed to
marriage,Rhodais concerned with all women, regardlessof class
origin, and is firmly committed to the establishmentof a revolutionarysocial orderin which women will rejectmarriageentirely.
Maryof course would like women to marryonly because they
have no control over their own sexuality,and one of the reasons
she restrictsher school to middle-classwomen is that they are, as
she sees it, more successfully in charge of their baser natures.
Working-classgirls let theirs run riot. "The odious fault of
working-classgirls, in town and country alike, is that they are absorbed in preoccupationwith their animalnature.We, thanksto
our educationand the tone of our society, manageto keep that in
the background"(chapter6). For Rhoda, in contrast,the proper
revolutionary course is to recognize the energizing power of
female sexuality, to "revolt against it" as she puts it, and to
sublimate it into an "ascetics" of feminism. Rhoda's rhetoric
becomes imbued by Gissingwith an isolationist fervor, marked
with an intense zeal for self-denial.Consciouslyor unconsciously
revealinghis own male fear of the power of such a movement,
Gissingseems compelledto makeRhodaNunnfanatical-a nun in
the service of her feministorder and wed to female emancipation
ratherthan to Christ.He also endows her with a powerful sexual
presence. In his first descriptionof her-like most of the descriptions of charactersin the novel, this one suggests the physical
manifestationof social andpsychologicaldeterminantsof beingGissing suggests the caged sexuality that will be released by
Everard.
At first view the countenanceseemed masculine,its expression somewhat aggressive-eyes shrewdly observantand lips consciously impregnable...when
the lips partedto show theirwarmth,theirfullness,when the eyelids droppeda
little in meditation,one becameawareof a suggestivenessdirectednot solely to
the intellect, of somethinglike an unfamiliarsexual type, remote indeed from
the voluptuous,but hinting a possibilityof subtlefeminineforces that mightbe
releasedby circumstance.(Chapter3)

It is at this point, of course, that Gissing'sown ambivalentattitudes toward feminist women and female sexuality need to be
examined. As I have suggested, TheOdd Womeninsists upon the
pervasive influence of establishedbeliefs and practices upon all
charactersin the novel: moreover, the novel is undeniablysympathetic to those characterswho are irreparablydamaged by

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127

patriarchalattitudes.But in contradictionto this sympatheticattitude, Gissing'sdescriptions of Rhoda seem to dwell upon her
repressed"femininity,"those "subtlefeminine forces that might
be released by circumstance", and upon her "masculine"aggressiveness.This emphasis, combined with his minimizationof
the warmth and generosity that characterized much of the
feminist movement at the time, suggests a male fear of female
power and community. This very ambivalence, moreover, affirms the dominance that I have attemptedto define and explore
so far. Gissingmust, by the very definition of the phrase "dominant ideology," be as much immersedin its range of beliefs and
practicesas any of his characters.He is, in other words, as much
subjectto contradictionas novelist, as they are as characters:as
much subjectto the residuumof patriarchalideas in his attitudes
toward feministwomen, as Maryand Rhodaare in their attitudes
toward female sexuality. In his representationof feminism Gissing affirmsthe encompassingpower of a system that he sees as
debilitatingto all who are subjectto it, and we must see him, as
novelist, included among that number.
However differentlythey express themselves,Maryand Rhoda
have two traditionalviews of sexuality in common: they rely
upon a governing paradigmof sexuality (a paradigmthat may
well be endorsed by Gissing) which MarthaVicinus recently
characterizedas "overwhelminglymale and heterosexual" and
they share an obvious distaste for female sexuality. As Vicinus
perceptivelydescribesit, the paradigmis one of "energy-control";
it is a patternin which "sexualityis seen as an independentforce
or energy disciplined by personal and social constraints. . .
something to be released or controlled; if controlled, it is
sublimated or deflected or distorted."14Mary feels that the
youthful passion, once awakenedby her cousin Everard,is now
properly deflected to her work, and Rhoda feels that what the
Pall Mall Gazette, in reviewing the novel, labeled "the old
womanly woman,"15is kept in check by severe dresses and a
powerful handshake. Mary and Rhoda accompany this desire
either to keep female sexuality in the backgroundor appropriate
it for revolutionarychange with a celebrationof female moral
superioritythat is also rooted in patriarchaldouble-dealingwith
women. Thus their feminism,so clearlyopposed to patriarchy,is
markedby one of the ideological mainstaysof the social system
they abhor.As they see it, few women are capableof controlling
their own dangerous sexuality and that sexuality needs to be

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DeirdreDavid

"revoltedagainst"for women to gain moral ascendance.In Victorianpatriarchy,middle-classwomen areperceived of as morally superiorby virtue of the fact that they are not sexualbeings:in
the male, middle-classimaginationof the period, femalesexuality
to the lower orderswhere it was convewas mythicallyconfmined
niently availablefor exploitation.
Maryand Rhodaalso repeatand reinforcethe insidiousmyth of
female moral superiority-a myth generated by male denial of
female sexuality-by tellingthemselvesand their followers that it
is actuallybetter,in almostall ways, to be a woman than a man.16
After being converted to Rhoda's "religion," Mary announces,
"Withus is all the joy of advance, the glory of conquering.Men
have only materialprogressto think about. But we-we are winning souls, propagating a new religion, purifying the earth!"
(chapter8). Whatwe have here is a feministreworkingof the Victorianmyth of femalespiritualityand moralrectitude.While men
are restricted to "materialprogress," women are on to higher
things.When Rhodawonders what men might do to advancethe
progressivecause, Maryresponds, "There'sthe emancipationof
the workingclasses.Thatis the greatspherefor men" (chapter8).
Men, in this feminist revision of the split between spiritualand
materialspheres,are allottedthe more mundanepoliticalactivity.
It is a revisionthat tends to sentimentalizeand isolatethe feminist
work of women, and it is a revision which calls into question,
once again, Gissing'sideological bent.
It is clearfrom the novel that Maryand Rhodaare, indeed, bettering the life of women. For example, Mildred Vesper, with
whom Monicashareslodgings for a while, has paid for her own
modest furniture from her secretarial earnings, and Monica
herselfexperiences "a growth of self-respect"before she gives up
the typewriter for Widdowson. Yet we strongly sense an
authorial subversion of feminism in Gissing's presentation of
Maryand Rhoda's impassionedrhetoric. As a further complication, the novel emphasizes the damagingpersistence of longestablishedbeliefs: Mary and Rhoda do unconsciously advance
tired Victoriannotions of the equationof spiritualityand private
feeling with women and public action with men. This set of contradictionstestifiesto the power of patriarchyonce again;Gissing
is caughtin his own authorialcontradictionsjust as his characters
are caught in their fictional ones.
The Rhoda Nunn/EverardBarfoot battle for domination also
suggests Victorian myths about female and male power. The

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129

Monica/Widdowsonconflict is fought here by equals in termsof

intelligence, will, and sexual energy. Where Widdowson is bent,
pale, and sexually inept (Monica, Gissing notes, learns some
"disagreeablethings" on her honeymoon), Everardis muscular,
rosy, and sexually experienced. Where Monica is small and
delicate, Rhoda is tall and energetic (her idea of a holiday is a
vigoroushike throughthe LakeDistrict).Eachbeginsthe relationship with strategiesdesigned to subdue the other and thereby
reinforce their own identity. Everarddeterminesto get Rhoda's
agreementto live with him, "so to play upon her emotions that
the proud, intellectual,earnestwoman was willing to defy society
for his sake-ah! that would be an end worth achieving"(chapter
17). Rhodadeterminesto have him propose marriagein order to
refusehim: rejectionof someone as desirableas Everardwill "fortify her self-esteem"and enableher "to go forwardin the chosen
path with a firmertread."17
But as the battle resolves itself into a sterile standoff, we see
that however much Rhoda and Everardconsider themselvesfree
of its strictures, they are inescapably subject to the governing pat-

tern of female and male relationships.The sophisticatedman is

requiredby the definitionsof properlymasculineconduct to subdue the intellectual,independentwoman to his will and thereby
deflate the threat to patriarchyrepresented by her feminism.
Everardis compelled to degradea woman united, politically and
emotionally, with other women and he merely articulatesand
follows, in his own robust and intelligentfashion, the prescriptions that poor Widdowson has so fatally absorbed from the
"books" about devious female nature. The feminist woman,
meanwhile, in order to have her traditionalidentity as woman affirmed, must have a proposal of marriage,if only to rejectit. Gissing demonstratesthat for Rhoda renunciationof marriageuttered from the platformis feeble comparedto the more resonant
renunciationpossible when she has ensuredthat a man is actually
offering himself for renunciation.
Rhoda is also subject to the prevailing notion of male sexual
villainy. When she learnsof a rumorthat Everardmay have been
involved with Monica,she refuseshis calm avowal that he knows
nothing of the origin of the story and demands that he clear
himself. Men must be assumedguilty until they prove themselves
innocent, and despite all her theoreticaltalkof liberationfrom the
norms, she acquiescesin the automaticassignmentof male sexual
aggressivenessand femalepassivity.Everardis convinced that she

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DeirdreDavid

will see her error and run to him for forgiveness,and despite his
professed dislikeof conventional, often humiliating,relationsbetween women and men, he relishes the prospect of her submission. "Hehad seen her in many moods, but not yet in the anguish
of brokenpride. Shemust shed tearsbefore him, declareher spirit
worn and subjugatedby torment of jealousy and fear. Then he
would raise her, and seat her in the place of honour, and fall
down at her feet, and fill her soul with rapture"(chapter 26).
Everardmay have refusedthe privilegeof an Oxfordeducationto
become a civil engineer and he may have agreed with many of
Rhoda'srevolutionaryideas, but here he is infatuatedby the conventional myth of male supremacywhich holds Widdowson enthralled-once the woman is subjugatedshe is placed on a
pedestal and consoled by seeing the man sit at her feet, revering
her for the spiritualsuperiorityshe manifestsin her acceptanceof
his domination.Everard'sfantasymay be seen in the context of a
common male strategy for dealing with impassioned women,
whether infuriatedby sexual jealousyor by the lack of a vote. In
the latterconnection, for example, WilliamGladstone,in a letter
on female suffrage written in 1892, revealed his fear that a
woman with a vote would "trespassupon the delicacy, the purity, the refinement,the elevation of her own nature."18
WhatI have been suggestinghere is in no way designedto deny
or reduce the way we are stirredby the dilemmasin which Rhoda
and Everardfind themselves. It is because they are vital, intelligent, and compelling characters, capable of recognizing and
coming to terms with their own entrapmentand ambivalence,
that their eventualdefeatby an impoverishedethic of sexual relations is that much more telling. TheOdd Womeninsists upon the
hegemony of patterns of domination and submission, whether
followed by old-fashionedhusbandsand fathers, or opposed by
feminist women and worldly men.

As well as affirmingthe hegemony of Victorianpatriarchy,The

Odd Womenis also self-consciously concerned with the social
function of popular fiction within that system. As I have suggested, Gissing'snovel is a space in which differentsets of contradictions interlock, where the power of dominant beliefs is confronted, subverted, and very often affirmed both in Gissing's
characters and in the implied author himself. It seems to me, too,

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131

that The Odd Womenis characterizedby a conflict between fictional forms; it wavers between an establishedstructureof Victorian fiction and what may be labeled a potentially subversive
one.
Earlyin the novel Rhoda delivers a tirade againstpopular fiction that Nina Auerbachcogently characterizesas a "clarioncall
for an honesty that means honor ratherthan wish and need...
motivating woman's emergence from the private fantasy of a
novel to the shareddailinessof journalistictruth."1'9It is this shift
from "private fantasy" to "journalistictruth" that The Odd
Womennegotiates as it moves to its ambiguousclosure. According to Rhoda, a certain Miss Royston, having strayed from the
properfeministpath by runningoff with a marriedman, has only
the lamentablehabit of reading sentimentalnovels to thank for
her misfortune.
If every novelist could be strangledand thrown into the sea we should have
some chance of reformingwomen. The girl's naturewas corruptedwith sentimentality,like that of all but every woman who is intelligentenough to read
what is called the best fiction, but is not intelligent enough to understandits
vice. Love-love-love;a sickening sameness of vulgarity.What is more vulgar
than the ideal of novelists?They won't representthe actualworld; it would be
too dull for their readers.In real life, how many men and women fall in love?
Not one in every ten thousand, I am convinced. Not one marriedpair in ten
thousand have felt for each other as two or three couples do in every novel.
(Chapter6)

Rhoda here becomes the feminist advocate of the theories of

literaryrealism that Gissing expounds through Harold Biffen in
New GrubStreet.Biffen'saim is "an absoluterealismin the sphere
of the ignobly decent. .

. I want to deal with the essentially

unheroic, with the day-to-daylife of that vast majorityof people

who are at the mercy of paltry circumstance."20
The indiscriminatingtaste for cloying fiction that Rhoda excoriatesis a taste licensed by a male-dominatedculture.This is fiction that provides consoling myths for women in which they are
freed, for the space of a novel, from the social actualityof their
confined lives into a world where "love" conquers all. Harold
Biffen, with his call to "copy life," would like consummationof
sexual passion to be delayed by head colds, and heroines to be
disfiguredby pimples on their noses. Gissing,in TheOdd Women,
underminesMonica'spathetic novel-fed expectations that Bevis
will dramaticallycarryher off to Franceby emphasizingthe social
realitiesof his situation:he has his mother and sistersto support

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Deirdre David

and a careeras wine merchantto advance. "Him she could love

with heart and soul, could make his will her absolutelaw, could
live on his smiles, could devote herself to his interests"(chapter
22) is Monica's absurd idealization of her love for her callow
would-be lover. However, Bevis finds himself "in an extremely
awkwardposition, with issues he had not contemplated,and all
he caredfor was to avertthe immediateperil of public discovery.
The easygoing,kindlyfellow had never consideredall the responsibilityinvolved in makingmild love-timorously selfishfrom the
first-to a marriedwoman who took his advanceswith desperate
seriousness"(chapter22).
And at the end of this miserablenonaffair,Gissingemphasizes
how it has been shaped by the stale myths of romantic love
perpetuatedby popularfiction. Monica,now coldly disillusioned,
cannot understand how she ever "drifted" into a connection
with Bevis:his one love letter, saturatedwith trite declarationsof
"unsullied"and undying love repels her. It is "artificial,lifeless,
as if extracted from some vapid novel" (chapter 28). The Odd
Women,with its insistence on social and sexual realism, is, in
part, the fictive response to all the vapid mush fed to poorly
educated, confused women like the Miss Royston who goes
astray, and, most tellingly, to Monica.
Much Victorianfiction works its structuralway toward marriage, whether this takesplace in what we now endorse as novels
worthy of our criticalattention, or in those "feeble"works read
by Virginiawhen she finds herself unable to concentrate on the
volumes of ecclesiastical history she used to read before becoming befuddled by brandy. The Odd Womendoes not end in
marriage,but in the birth of Monicaand Widdowson's daughter,
who by her conception earns the suspicious rejection of her
father,andby her birth,destroysher mother. Thisis an unsettling
ending-and a hard beginningfor a female child who is to be
brought up by two aunts struggling to overcome unhappy
histories of physical and psychological illness, despite the rich,
pastoralfinalsettingwhere the "wooded hills and greenlanes and
rich meadows" of Somersetseem to nurturethe frailbaby. It is in
this disturbingending that we see how TheOdd Womenoccupies
a middle ground between an establishedand a potentially subversive fictional form-or, to put it another way, between the
wretched sentimentality denounced by Rhoda and the hardnosed realismcalled for by HaroldBiffen.
If, as EdwardSaid suggests, the term "author"holds a "con-

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133

stellationof linked meanings.. .a person who originates,or gives

existence to something,a begetter,beginner,father,or ancestor,a
person also who sets forth written statements,"21 then the novel
form itself is connected with the meaningsof patriarchalgeneration. The male novelist is, in an imaginativesense, a patriarch
generatingthe authorityof his charactersand his text.22And very
frequentlywithin those patriarchallygeneratedtexts, marriageis
arrangedby the patriarch-authoras an end to social conflict,
much as we imagineDr. Maddenwould have liked to arrangethe
marriagesof his six daughtershad he lived long enough to do so.
The ending of TheOdd Womenis ambiguousterrain,somewhere
between the novel of patriarchalgeneration,where conflict finds
resolution in marriageand an accompanying reaffirmationof
social and moral order, and the novel of feministcelibacy,where
femaleindependenceand communityare the foundationof social
and moralimprovement.Gissing,as it were, refusesto be "authorfather"and yet cannot bringhimselfto hand his novel over to his
"daughters."Problematically,some order is established at the
end of a narrative that begins with disruptive death and
chroniclesits debilitatingconsequences--but it is an ordermuted
in its power by Gissing'ssubjectionto tracesof the social system
he repudiates.
The Odd Womenmoves from the delusions of security to be
found in Dr. Madden'shousehold to the final scene where Rhoda
holds the baby in her arms and listens to Alice talk of the school
that she and Virginiahave always hoped to open. The feminist
work of Rhoda and Maryis flourishing,they have never been in
"suchhealth and spirits,"and "the world is moving." Alice looks
healthy, Virginiahas apparentlyovercome her alcoholism, and
this is all quite hopeful, but as the baby falls asleep in her arms,
Rhoda's "vision" grows "dim and she murmurs 'Poor little
Child!"'(the last words of the novel). To be sure, Rhoda'svision
grows dim because her eyes fill with tears, and these last words
are, as KatherineBaileyLinehamperceptivelynotes, "a saddening
reminderof what Monicaand even Rhodaherself have suffered,
as well as the sufferingthat remainsto the women who will continue the strugglefor social change."'23Butit seems to me that this
closing imageof Rhodaconveys, once more, the contradictoryattitudes toward feminism that we have seen manifestedthroughout the novel. Rhoda is a nunlike woman, a "none" who is
neitherodd, nor pairedin marriage,a celibatenaught,and yet she
possesses the power to change the patriarchal attitudes to which

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DeirdreDavid

Gissing is opposed. Gissing's own authorial contradictions

crystallize in Rhoda's "dimmed" vision of a feminist future
founded on celibacy.
It is possible, however, to discover Gissing'sown clear vision
of how things might be better. It is differentfrom Rhoda'sand is
to be found in his assessmentof MaryBarfoot'swork and in a narrative alliance with Everard's liberal, if often jaded, consciousness.Mary,Gissingsays, does not "seek to become known
as the leaderof a "movement," yet her quiet work was probably
more effectual than the public careerof women who propagandize for female emancipation" (chapter 6). And as Gissing
describes Everard's appraisal of the marriage of his friend
Micklethwaite,we sense that the perceptionis as much that of the
novelist as that of the character."Well,that was one ideal of marriage. Not his ideal; but very beautifulamid the vulgaritiesand
vileness of ordinary experience. It was the old fashion in its
purestpresentment;the consecratedform of domestic happiness,
removedbeyond reachof satire,only to be touched, if touched at
all, with the very gentlest irony" (chapter17). Micklethwaiteand
his intended have waited seventeen years to marry, and when
they finally do, their home becomes hallowed to them: for
Micklethwaiteit is "one of the sacred spots on the earth." Here
the domestic trappingsof Victorianpatriarchy,which Gissinghas
shown to be malignantlyconfining elsewhere in the novel, are
present in their "purest"form-in one sense in their essentials,
but in another,untainted.Thisis not for Everard,and it is certainly not for Gissing,but neither could tear it to shreds with satire.
They might rathertouch it with the "verygentlestirony" as does
Everard,or allow it its place in a novel severelycriticalof the "old
fashion," as does Gissing.
Gissing'shope for positive social change, then, lies in Mary's
quiet work, in her dedicationto makingmiddle-classwomen "rational and responsiblehumanbeings," and, I think, in the serene
liberalismof the family into which Everardeventually marries.
Significantly,these people do not identify themselves with a
movement; here there is no zealous dedication to an ideal. The
women Everard meets gently subdue his "masculine selfassertiveness"and for the first time in his life he experiences a
"genuine humility": in a letter to Mary, Everarddescribes the
Brissendensistersas possessinga "greatdeal of quiet liberality...
Well instructed.Agnes,the younger,readshalfa dozen languages,
and shames me by her knowledge

of all sorts of things. And yet

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135

delightfully feminine" (chapter 27). Everard'sfuture wife combines knowledge and femininity,and in qualityof feeling she and
her sister are much like Mary, who seeks no leadership of a
"movement."The Brissendenfamily also belongs to a privileged
social classthat is significantly"content with the unopposed right
of liberal criticism." Here Gissing'spreferredideology of social
change, registeredin his uncriticaldescriptionof the Brissenden
family, may be said to correspondto the ideologicalmeaningsof
the uncertain closure of his novel. Gissing worked in a genre
which, certainly in the nineteenth century, was conventionally
associated with the liberal views of its predominantlymiddleclass readersand which frequentlyproduced novelistic form as a
solution to unresolvableideological contradictions.Althoughnot
crudely cateringto the views of a particularsocial class, Gissing
proposed that liberal criticism, rather than revolutionaryisolationism, will facilitatesocial progress. The ending of the novel,
which refutes patriarchy,but implies uncertaintyabout feminist
celibacy, expressesa liberalview in its occupation of a reforming
middle ground. The Odd Women,then, resolves at least two different sets of contradictionsthat it has explicitly and implicitly
expressed:the contradictionbetween patriarchyand feminismis
resolved into the serenity of liberal criticismand the contradiction between Gissing'sresistanceto, and immersionin, patriarchy
is resolved into Rhoda's (and his) "dim" vision of a feminist
future.
Positive social change will come from feminist reform rather
than feminist revolution, from drawing room instructionrather
than platform propaganda and for some critics, most notably
John Goode, The Odd Womenis weakened by its contradictions.
Goode believes that the novel is prevented "from having any
revolutionary potential because the contradictions are fragBut how could thingsbe otherwise?TheOdd Women
mented."''24
is novel and not political propaganda.Gissing,both by refusing
the sentimental"love" novel that is licensed and produced by a
male-dominated culture (in a sentimental revision of events
Rhoda and Everardwould find that "love-love-love" conquers
ideological discordance), and by ending The Odd Womenon a
provocative note, revealswhat it is that novels do and that works
of "revolutionarypotential" do not. In this ensemble of cultural
complexity and formalambiguitywhich, in part, evokes the complex and ambiguousstrugglesfor identity experienced by many
"New" women,

and which reveals Gissing's own subjection to

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136

dominant ideology, the novel of patriarchalgenerationis firmly

rejected. But the novel of female independence is not fully embraced: Gissing remainsthe ideological "father"of his feminist
text.

NOTES
1. Nan BauerMaglincontrasts TheOdd Womenwith TheBostoniansand where she sees
HenryJames as essentially antifeminist,she perceives Gissing'sattitude to be "one of
support and concern for women strikingout on their own." See "FictionalFeminists
in The Bostoniansand The Odd Women," in Images of Womenin Fiction: Feminist
Perspectives,ed. SusanKoppleman Cornillon (Bowling Green, Ohio: Bowling Green
University Popular Press, 1973), 219. LLoydFernando believes that Gis-ing "never
conceded, expresslyor tacitly, that women should be or are the full moraland intellectual equals of men." See "New Women"in the Late VictorianNovel (UniversityPark,
Pa.: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1977), 112. Katherine Bailey Linehan
presents a fine discussion of Gissing'sambivalentfeelings about women, rooted in his
conventional upbringing,bitter experiences in marriage,and his intellectualsympathy
for women's oppression. She concludes that TheOdd Women,"sympatheticallysponsors a radically feminist and forward-lookingpoint of view as a vital and absorbing
counterpointto the merely moderatelyliberaltendencies of the male protagonist, and
finally makes the feminist heroine, even in her renunciation of marriage,a figure of
greater stature and nobility than the man she rejects. Gissing overcomes both his
characteristicpessimism about social change and his characteristiccynicism about
women to endorse Rhoda Nunn's demand for a radicalrestructuringof sexual roles."
See "The Odd Women: Gissing's Imaginative Approach to Feminism," Modern
LanguageQuarterly40 (December 1979): 358-75. As will be apparentfrom my text, I
am unable to agreewith this readingof this novel. For a useful discussion of the "New
Woman" and the fiction of the period, see A.R. Cunningham,"The 'New Woman Fiction' of the 1890s," VictorianStudies 17 (1973): 177-86. In The GissingNewsletter15
(October 1979), David B. Eakinreviews feminist criticism of the novel.
2. John Goode believes that the novel's force is diminished by its narrow focus on
middle-classwomen. Gissing,he says, "is askingus to accept, as a novel clearly raising
the question of the position of women, a fiction about a handful of middle-class
women who have fallen foul of marriage."See GeorgeGissing:Ideology and Fiction
(London:Vision Press, 1978), 146. Goode seems to fail to understandwhat Gail Cunningham very clearly and correctly points out in The New Womanand the Victorian
Novel (New York: Barnes& Noble, 1978), "Intelligent,individualisticand principled,
the New Woman was also essentially middle-class. Working-classwomen while no
longer hauling coal in mines eleven hours a day, still led lives so totally remote from
the cosy domesticity and shining feminine ideal againstwhich the New Woman was
reactingthat this kind of revolt could do nothing for them" (p. 11). It should be noted,
however, that many reformingmiddle-classwomen (sometimes directly involved in
the nineteenth-century feminist movement, sometimes not) devoted themselves to
causes that directly concerned working-class women. For instance, Judith R.
Walkowitz'sProstitutionand VictorianSociety:Women,Class,and theState(New York:
CambridgeUniversityPress, 1980) offers perceptive analysis of such involvement.

Deirdre David

137

3. Gissingfirmlystated his belief that women must be educated, if only to bringsome

peace to men. "My demand for female 'equality' simply means that I am convinced
there will be no social peace until women are intellectuallytrainedvery much as men
are. More than half the misery of life is due to the ignorance and childishness of
women. The average woman pretty closely resembles, in all intellectual considerations, the averagemale idiot-I speakmedically." Gissingto Bertz, 2 June 1893, Arthur
C. Young, ed., The Letters of George Gissing to Eduard Bertz, 1887-1903(New
Brunswick,N.J.: RutgersUniversityPress, 1961). Jacob Korgfirmly believes that Gissing was "an enemy of the Victorianmyth of the inferiorityof women." See George
Gissing:A CriticalBiography(Seattle:Universityof WashingtonPress, 1963), 185. Fernando, however, disagrees with Korg, asserting that an "opposite view is more
tenable;and the novelist's artwas adverselyaffectedas a consequence." ForFernando,
Gissing is more concerned with "the growing vulgarity of the society around him,"
and the Maddensisters "symbolize" this degeneration. See Fernando, 107-18.
4. LillianFaderman,SurpassingtheLove of Men:RomanticFriendshipandLove between
Womenfrom the Renaissanceto the Present(New York:WilliamMorrow& Co., 1981),
181.
5. The feminist movement in England,partly rooted in the radical and humanitarian
ideologies nurturedby the FrenchRevolution, had grown in strengththroughoutthe
nineteenth century. A numberof political issues had served to crystallizeand focus the
pervasive dissatisfactionfelt by many women of differentsocial classes. For example,
the demand for women's suffragegained attention in 1867 when John StuartMill introduced an amendmentto the Second ReformBill substitutingthe word "person"for
"man." By the eighteen nineties, after several attempts to have a women's suffrage
amendmentattachedto bills to widen the franchise,the suffragistmovement was gaining force and reputation,to emergein 1903 as the Women's Socialand PoliticalUnion.
Reformingmiddle-classwomen had been actively involved in the protests againstthe
ContagiousDiseases Acts of 1864, 1866, and 1869, not only drawing attention to the
injusticeof laws that penalized prostitutesand excused their customers,but also working actively on the part of working-classwomen. (See Walkowitz.) Throughoutthe
century, middle-classreformersof both sexes had investigatedthe economic situation
and working conditions of lower-class girls and in the eighteen eighties and nineties
were particularlyconcerned with the exploitation of women in dangeroustradessuch
as lead making and in establishmentssimilarto the one in which Monica Maddenis
employed as a shop girl. Sheila Rowbotham discusses the relationship between
feminism and social work in the latter half of the nineteenth century in Hiddenfrom
History: RediscoveringWomenin Historyfrom the SeventeenthCenturyto the Present
(New York: VintageBooks, 1976), chap. 10.
6. MarthaVicinus, "'One Life to Stand Beside Me': Emotional Conflicts in FirstGenerationCollege Women in England,"FeministStudies8 (Fall 1982): 603.
7. This movement itself, of course, was also not without its contradictions,contradictions partiallystemmingfrom the differentforms that feminismhad taken throughout
the century. In her comprehensive analysis of the history of feminism, Olive Banks
points to three intellectual traditionsthat influenced the development of the feminist
movement in England and America: the teachings of evangelical Christianity,the
writings of Enlightenmentphilosophers, and the utopian programsof communitarian
socialists, most notably the Saint-Simoniangroup. As Banksgoes on to suggest, these
three traditions constituted "different and indeed sometimes contradictory approaches to feminism:this makesit difficult to conceive of it as a single movement, let
alone a single ideology." See Facesof Feminism:A Studyof Feminismas a SocialMove-

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Deirdre David

ment (Oxford, England:MartinRoberts& Co., 1981), 7-8.

8. George Gissing, TheOdd Women(1893; reprint,New York:W.W. Norton and Co.,
1971), chap. 1. All furtherreferences in the text will be to this edition.
9. As Lee Holcombenotes in her study of Victorianworking women, even the most unpromisingmarriagewas better than shop girl servitude. One investigatorfor the Select
Commissionon the Shop HoursRegulationBill reported in 1886 that "whereas large
numbersof factory girls cannot be prevailedupon to give up their factory work after
marriage,the majority of shop assistants look upon marriageas their one hope of
release, and would, as one girl expressed it, 'marryanybody to get out of the drapery
business."' VictorianLadies at Work:Middle-ClassWorkingWomenin Englandand
Wales,1850-1914(Hamden,Conn.: Archon Books, 1973), 117.
10. GillianTindallsuggeststhat the reasonWiddowson is "so thoroughlyconvincing is
that he is a caricatureof certain aspects of Gissinghimself." The Born Exile: George
Gissing(London:Temple Smith, 1974), 203.
11. I cannot agree with Alison Cotes's ratherstern assessmentof the Maddensisters.
The "inherentweak-mindedness"that she ascribesto Alice and Virginia,keeping them
from opening their school, must surely be seen as part of an ensemble of social and
psychological processes over which they have no control. And Monica,for me, is not
"symbolicallypunishedfor her misplacedjudgment"by death, as Cotes would have it.
"New Women and Odd Women," The GissingNewsletter14 (2 April 1978): 8-12.
12. Fora thoroughand informativediscussionof the origin and uses of the term, "New
Woman" (reputedlycoined by the arch antifeministElizabethLynnLinton)see Cotes,
passim.
13. Antonio Gramsci, "The Intellectuals,"Selectionsfrom the Prison Notebooks, ed.
and trans. by Quintin Hoare and Geoffrey Nowell Smith (New York: International
Publishers,1971).
14. MarthaVicinus,"Sexualityand Power:A Review of CurrentWorkin the Historyof
Sexuality,"FeministStudies8 (Spring1982): 136.
15. PierreCoustillasand Colin Partridge,eds., Gissing:The CriticalHeritage(London:
Routledge & KeganPaul, 1972), 220.
16. Banks (p. 91) points out that by "the second half of the nineteenth century this
ideal of female superiorityappearsto have gained wide acceptance not only amongst
moral reformers,both male and female, but amongst women writers cateringfor trhe
emotional need of middle-class women not necessarily either feminists or moral
reformers."Mypoint is to locate this ideal in the context of male denial of female sexuality, whether articulatedby female or male writers.
17. In comparing the Everard/Rhodarelationship with that of Widdowson and
Monica, Nina Auerbachnotes that "the assumptionsof patriarchalmarriageare made
to seem at this moment of history both insane and estranged,but Everard'smagniloquent proposal of a "free union" has scarcely more integrity." See Communitiesof
Women:An Idea of Fiction (Cambridge:HarvardUniversityPress, 1978), 149. I think
Auerbachgives insufficientemphasisto Rhoda'sfailureshere: Everardis too much the
male villain in Auerbach'sreading, and Rhoda too positively aligned with women.
18. Gladstone, quoted by Constance Rover, Women'sSuffrageand Party Politics in
Britain,1866-1914(London:Routledge& KeganPaul, 1967), 120.
19. Auerbach,148.
20. George Gissing, New GrubStreet (1891; reprint, Boston: Houghton MifflinCo.,
1962), chap. 10.
21. EdwardW. Said,Beginnings:IntentionandMethod(New York:BasicBooks, 1975),
83.

Deirdre David

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22. Women novelists certainly "create"with this patriarchalauthority.See SandraM.

Gilbert and Susan Gubar, The Madwomanin the Attic: A Study of Womenand the
LiteraryImaginationin the NineteenthCentury(New Haven: Yale University Press,
1979), for analysisof how nineteenth-centurywomen writers struggleto define their
"authority."
23. Lineham,370.
24. John Goode, "Woman and the LiteraryText," in The Rights and Wrongsof
Women, ed. Juliet Mitchell and Ann Oakley (Harmondsworth,Middlesex: Penguin
Books, 1976), 251.