Over my next couple of posts I want to talk a little about the position women as regarded their opportunities in the world of work in the last twenty years of the nineteenth century. I was prompted to reflect on this after reading an extraordinary novel – ‘The Odd Women’ by George Gissing published in 1893. I’d like to blog about the book itself next time but this time I’d like to capture some of the realities and tensions of this window of time as young women began to confront the reality, the possibility of earning their own livings, courtesy of the Girl’s Own Paper of 1880.
Women caught between the twin barriers of class and money – educated within a limited middle class way but without sufficient funds to live unsupported faced particular problems. Education, governess or teacher, was seen as the only respectable profession women in this position could pursue.
But things were beginning to change. We can tell from the advice columns that girls were beginning to expand their horizons. We can only feel for Violet Brandon above….
It was in this world that Gissing set his novel. Of which more next time…
The Solitary Reader 