The Odd Women

“More!” replied Rhoda. “We flourish like the green bay-tree. We shall have to take larger premises. By-the-bye, you must read the paper we are going to publish; the first number will be out in a month, though the name isn’t quite decided upon yet. Miss Barfoot was never in such health and spirit—nor I myself. The world is moving!”

Orphaning, Monica's marriage trap, Rhoda's refusal of Everard, and renewed vocational work form a dual plot of marriage versus autonomy sealed by the baby and the paper, so plot scores 88.

As Miss Barfoot’s eye fell on the letters brought to her at breakfast-time, she uttered an exclamation, doubtful in its significance. Rhoda Nunn, who rarely had a letter from any one, looked up inquiringly. “I am greatly mistaken if that isn’t my cousin Everard’s writing. I thought so. He is in London.”

Rhoda, Monica, Mary Barfoot, Everard, and Widdowson are individuated by ideology and hunger — militant educator against jealous husband — without flattening into tracts only, so cast scores 90.

From Herne Hill to St. Peter Port was a change which made of Monica a new creature. The weather could not have been more propitious; day after day of still air and magnificent sky, with temperature which made a brisk walk at any hour thoroughly enjoyable, yet allowed one to sit at ease in the midday sunshine.

Thirty-one chapters of lodging and principle-debate; Guernsey and the tracking chapters accelerate, but the middle dilates on vocational argument rather than thriller tempo, so pace scores 83.

“So to-morrow, Alice,” said Dr. Madden, as he walked with his eldest daughter on the coast-downs by Clevedon, “I shall take steps for insuring my life for a thousand pounds.” It was the outcome of a long and intimate conversation.

Exact social dialogue and cool interior report — insurance talk, Everard's careful letter, Rhoda with the baby — without romantic haze, so prose scores 89.

When Widdowson went up to the bedroom that night, Monica was already asleep. He discovered this on turning up the gas. The light fell upon her face, and he was drawn to the bedside to look at her. … Then he turned away, muttering savagely under his breath, “Hypocrite! Liar!”

Clevedon, Barfoot's training rooms, Herne Hill, Guernsey — women's work and marriage mapped as institutional and domestic space under male surveillance, so world scores 86.

Alice Madden, aged nineteen, a plain, shy, gentle-mannered girl, short of stature, and in movement something less than graceful, wore a pleased look as she glanced at her father’s face and then turned her eyes across the blue channel to the Welsh hills.

The Clevedon insurance walk foreshadows orphaning without melodrama — inviting in Madden vulnerability before Rhoda's politics arrive, so hook scores 85.

…support to what we call the odd women; yet _that_ is the most human way of urging what you desire. By taking up the proud position that a woman must be altogether independent of sexual things, you damage your cause.

'Odd women' as surplus population and vocational design — female independence treated as economic problem, not merely romance subplot — so innov scores 93.

She gazed intently at those diminutive features, which were quite placid and relaxing in soft drowsiness. The dark, bright eye was Monica’s. And as the baby sank into sleep, Rhoda’s vision grew dim; a sigh made her lips quiver, and once more she murmured, “Poor little child!”

Monica dead; Rhoda holds the child and affirms the school — vocation renewed beside maternal grief rather than marriage reward, so ending scores 86.