Benevolent despot: George Gissing's ambivalence toward his women characters in three novels

Critical estimates of George Gissing's position on "the woman question" range from "pro-feminist" to "misogynist." Three novels reveal an ambivalence that is best characterized as the attitude of a benevolent despot. In Thyrza he glorifies two female characters as respective embodiments of loveliness and wisdom. A third woman is a paragon of housewifeliness. In later novels Gissing vents the frustrations of his own unhappy marriage. The Odd Women presents two feminists advocating better education for women who do not marry, and also discusses radical ideas about marriage. In The Whirlpool Gissing reveals a patriarchal stance in his story of two married women led astray in a metropolitan "whirlpool" because of too much liberty granted by their husbands. The happiest home in the novel is a rural one with a home-loving wife and mother at its center.