Victorian England’s ‘surplus’ women: the Madden sisters after the money goes, Rhoda Nunn and Mary Barfoot teaching independence, Everard Barfoot making trouble. Gissing’s Odd Women is work, lodgings, and the marriage market as a trap. Feminism before the word was easy. Some will type, some will marry badly, some will teach other women not to wait. Gissing is bleak and fair: independence is work, and work is not a romance. Independence as work, and work not a romance.
