Frank Swinnerton (1884-1982) was a prolific writer. The author of many novels, he was also an essayist, literary critic and biographer, and, for many years, associated with major publishers — first with Dent, and then for much longer with Chatto and Windus. His book on George Gissing is a very much a critical biography. He is quite harshly critical of Gissing's The Odd Women, finding the choice of title heavy-handed, the women characters "mostly repulsive" (106), the men no better, and the ending depressing. He would certainly have understood why some find Gissing misogynistic (see Chase 231 and 243, notes 1 and 2). But he does admire the novel's central character, the spirited Rhoda Nunn, who has decided to dedicate herself to preparing single women to lead an independent and meaningful life. Through her, as Swinnerton shows, Gissing analyses the causes of women's inadequacies, and lends his support to the growing call to remedy them by education and training. In this respect, Swinnerton sees Gissing as another school of critics have seen him — as a "proto-feminist" (Chase 231).
Having dealt with the weaknesses in the novel, Swinnerton first quotes from Everard Barfoot in Chapter 9 of the novel. Everard, whose own reputation is questionable, is attracted to Rhoda and sets himself to divert her from her chosen path, talking harshly both of vapid women who make for unequal and unhappy marriages, and the men who enter unsatisfactory relationships with them. Earlier in the novel (Chapter 6), Rhoda herself had laid much of the blame for such miserable outcomes not so much on the individual concerned, but on novelists who corrupt their readers with the sentimental notion of love. Gissing's obdurate realism is very much to the fore here. — Jacqueline Banerjee
The Odd Women is a powerfully expressed plea for intelligence and truth in marriage relations and in the education of women. Gissing declares that "the female sex" cannot be raised from its then low level without asceticism, a revolt against sexual instinct. He also says that "one of the supreme social needs [107/08] of our day is the education of women in self-respect and self-restraint," an opinion which remains as true now as it was when first written. On the subject of marriage, one of the characters [Everard Barfoot] truly observes: "Our Civilization in this point has always been absurdly defective. Men have kept women at a barbarous stage of development, and then complain that they are barbarous. In the same way society does its best to create a criminal class, and then rages against the criminals. But, you see, I am one of the men, and an impatient one too. The mass of women I see about me are so contemptible that, in my haste, I use unjust language. Put yourself in the man's place. Say that there are a million or so of us very intelligent and highly educated. Well, the women of corresponding mind number perhaps a few thousand. The vast majority of men must make a marriage that is doomed to be a dismal failure. We fall in love it is true; but do we really deceive ourselves about the future? A very young man may; why, we know of very young men who are so frantic as to marry girls of the working class mere lumps of human flesh. But most of us know that our marriage is a pis aller."
But quite the most notable protest against the corruption of instincts and ideals is contained in a passage which attacks conventional novelists. If it is old-fashioned now in respect of our most admirable writers (for the novel may be said to be approaching, via realism, a new and valuable position as an expert view of life), it yet shows Gissing in a characteristic [108/09] mood, not quite able to see life whole, but very intent upon expressing [through Rhoda Nunn] the things which stand clear in his mind:
If every novelist could be strangled and thrown into the sea we should have some chance of reforming women. The girl's nature was corrupted with sentimentality, like that of all but every woman who is intelligent enough to read what is called the best fiction, but not intelligent enough to understand its vice. Love — love — love; a sickening sameness of vulgarity. What is more vulgar than the ideal of novelists? They won't represent the actual world; 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 married pair in ten thousand have felt for each other as two or three couples do in every novel. There is the sexual instinct, of course, but that is quite a different thing; the novelist daren't talk about that. The paltry creatures daren't tell the one truth that would be profitable. The result is that women imagine themselves noble and glorious when they are most near the animals.
Even the last sentence, which some may regard as naïve, is, properly speaking, a penetrating thrust at the inveterate romanticism of women. Whatever Gissing may have been, he was sternly unromantic. [108-09]
Bibliography
Chase, Karen. “The Literal Heroine: A Study of Gissing’s The Odd Women.” Criticism 26, no. 3 (1984): 231–44.
Gissing, George. The Odd Women: A Critical Study . New York & London: Macmillan, 1893. Internet Archive. Contributed by Cornell University Library. Web. 22 January 2022.
Swinnerton, Frank. George Gissing: A Critical Study. London: Secker, 1912. Internet Archive. Contributed by Robarts Library, University of Toronto. Web. 22 January 2022.
Created 22 January 2022