I wish I'd read this book when I was still teaching. It would have made a great addition to my Victorian Lit. or Nineteenth-Century novel classes. Gissing's book explores the position of women in late nineteenth-century England, when social and legal strictures prevented them from attaining education and career opportunities enabling them to be self-sufficient. Custom and law restricted women to the domestic sphere whenever possible, leaving women unable to marry or trapped in bad marriages to suffer. The book follows the lives of several connected women through spinsterhood, oppressive marriage, or unmarried and working to win women the right to financial, intellectual, and emotional independence - as well as the men connected to them. Gissing also looks at how men become limited by the social system, financially and socially powerful, but often frustrated when married to women who are helpless or have become selfish and sneaky to beat the system. With well developed characters, Gissing explores the thoughts and feelings of men and women trapped by this system and creates emotional and suspenseful situations naturally derived from their conditions that will keep you in suspense as well as give you something to think about.