The Odd Women

Written by George Gissing

Narrated by Juliet Stevenson

‘What is more vulgar than the ideal of novelists? In real life, how many men and women fall in love?’ So says Rhoda Nunn, George Gissing’s formidable heroine. Through a gripping and thought-provoking story, Gissing presents the reality for Victorian women: a society in which marriage is judged to be the only acceptable way forward. His perspective is strikingly sympathetic for its time, and as such the novel has an exhilarating freshness far removed from the contemporary sentimental romantics. The young Monica Madden cries for two days before her marriage to Edmund Widdowson; the ensuing claustrophobia, which opens the door for the more desirable Bevis, contrasts with Rhoda’s independence – yet Rhoda’s own principles are tested when she falls in love rather by accident… The Odd Women is a remarkable book, ultimately optimistic in its hope for a societal shift that will benefit both men and women alike.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Naxos Audiobooks
• Release date: Dec 1, 2016
• ISBN: 9781781983508

George Gissing

George Gissing (1857-1903) was an English novelist. Born in Yorkshire, he excelled as a student from a young age, earning a scholarship to Owens College where he won prizes for his poetry and academic writing. Expelled and arrested for a series of thefts in 1876, Gissing was forced to leave England for the United States, teaching classics and working as a short story writer in Massachusetts and Chicago. The following year, he returned to England and embarked on a career as a professional novelist, publishing works of naturalism inspired by his experience of poverty and the works of Charles Dickens. After going through an acrimonious divorce, Gissing remarried in 1891 and entered a turbulent relationship with Edith Alice Underwood, with whom he raised two children before separating in 1897. During this time, after writing several unpublished novels, Gissing found success with New Grub Street (1891), Born in Exile (1892), and The Odd Women (1893). In the last years of his life, Gissing befriended H.G. Wells and travelled throughout Italy, Germany, and France, where he died after falling ill during a winter walk.

Reviews for The Odd Women

[Brooklyn Pierce · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

The reader, Juliet Stevenson, voices the novel in an understandable and entertaining way. It is coherent enough to listen without the text in front of you, but it also makes a wonderful addition to reading the novel.

[susan rodd · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Juliette Stevenson reads the characters very well. The book argues the case against New Women although Gissing develops all the different aspects of the Women Question he falls on the pessimism that such a movement brings. So he sees only misery in women remaining single.

[Liz Burdick · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

The female relationships and the clarity of the romantic relationships…the early feminist thinking.