The Odd Woman: Analysis of Major Characters
"The Odd Woman" explores the complexities of its major characters, primarily focusing on Jane Clifford, a 32-year-old unmarried woman who struggles with feelings of being an outsider. Jane's journey is marked by her relentless quest for meaning in her life through both literature and personal experiences. Her engagement to James Bruton offers her temporary security but ultimately feels unfulfilling, leading her to enter a tumultuous affair with Gabriel Weeks, a married professor. Gabriel serves as a contrasting figure—emotionally reserved and committed to his existing life, which complicates Jane's search for connection.
The novel also delves into Jane's relationships with her family, particularly her mother, Kitty, who sacrifices her career for domestic life, and her grandmother, Edith, whose death prompts Jane to reassess her own choices. Supporting characters like Gerda Mulvaney, a college friend turned feminist activist, and the seemingly perfect Sonia Marks add layers to the narrative, illustrating varying responses to societal expectations and personal aspirations. Through these intricate character dynamics, "The Odd Woman" invites reflection on themes of identity, love, and the pursuit of fulfillment in a world that often marginalizes those who do not fit traditional molds.
The Odd Woman: Analysis of Major Characters
Author: Gail Godwin
First published: 1974
Genre: Novel
Locale: A Midwestern university town, a Southern town, New York City, and Chicago
Plot: Realism
Time: The early 1970's
Jane Clifford, a college instructor of nineteenth century British literature, an unmarried woman of thirty-two, rather tall and slim, rather pretty, but unadorned and unstylish. Since childhood, she has searched deeply and earnestly for the “meaning” of her life. She feels “odd” in the sense of both “strange” and “fifth wheel,” not essentially akin to any group or lifestyle. She searches literature as avidly as she searches experience for the key to self-knowledge. Following graduation from college, she vacations in England and meets and becomes engaged to James Bruton, but although she enjoys the security of the relationship and the environment of England, she soon finds it and her fiancé tiresome and flat. Years later, she begins a painful love affair with a married man, which causes her to feel even more odd and lonely. By the end of the novel, she has, prompted by the death of her grandmother, reassessed all of her relationships with family and friends and left her lover, perhaps for good.
Gabriel Weeks, Jane's lover, a professor of art history at a university four hours away from Jane's. He is married, childless, and middle-aged, and he has never achieved great distinction as a scholar. He is at work on a treatise dealing with all the varieties of love found in Western art, an expansion of his only published work, an early monograph on three types of such love. He is attentive and reliable but neither intensely emotional nor forthcoming about his feelings. He tells her nothing about his wife or the rest of his life and is content with the short and infrequent visits with his lover. He is at dinner with a colleague, having left Jane in the hotel room of their fourteenth tryst, on the night she decides to leave him.
Kitty Barnstorff Clifford Sparks, Jane's mother. A teacher and former writer of romances, she marries Ray Sparks, a former soldier, after Jane's father is killed in World War II. Beautiful and mysterious and adored by her husband, she has given up her career to be a housewife and mother. Over the years, she has become deeply religious and spends much time in church and prayer—both areas where the demands of her family and the control of her husband cannot reach. Her attachment to her new family and to religion make her more remote from Jane.
Edith Barnstorff, Jane's beloved grandmother, a Southern lady, decorous, stylish, and full of sound advice about getting through life with grace and dignity. After her husband's death, she remained single for many years, and Jane spent much of her childhood in her company. Her death is the catalyst for Jane's reexamination of her own situation.
Gerda Mulvaney, née Miller, a close college friend of Jane. As assertive and outspoken as Jane is timid and reticent, she is determined to leave behind her working-class background and successfully sets her marital sights on Bobby Mulvaney, the crippled son of well-known Judge Mulvaney. She soon ruins the marriage, however, by engaging in a trivial affair with an unimportant lover. Divorced, she founds and edits a feminist single women's newspaper, Femme Sole.
Sonia Marks, the “perfect woman,” a new friend of Jane who has it all—a secure, respected position in the English department, based on many publications and crammed classrooms; a new husband, Max Covington, also an eminent scholar, who had recently been somebody else's husband; and two darling children of her own. She supports Jane's application for another year's contract.
Cleva Dewar, Jane's great-aunt, Edith's sister, a wildly romantic young woman who died long before the novel begins but whose tragic story has deeply influenced Jane's life. At the age of nineteen, Cleva ran off with an itinerant actor, and a year later, abandoned by him, she died, leaving an infant daughter.