ABSTRACT
This chapter argue that the 1880s East End novels that often depicting the shocking behaviour of the working classes in public spaces such as pubs and the streets as in serious need of middle-class intervention. Whilst 1880s narratives often seek to reinforce the working woman's place in the home, this is destabilised in George Gissing's work by an insistence on women's presence on the streets and in public places in a culture seen as hostile to the idea of working-class women's leisure. His sympathetic portrayal of both the working mother, and of the pleasure-loving work-girl, indicates his recognition alternative models of working-class femininity. By drawing attention to 'the urgency of the need to find ways of guaranteeing some economic independence to women within marriage', Gissing anticipated developments in investigative research around working-class motherhood in the early twentieth century.
