ABSTRACT
According to Everard Barfoot’s self-interested account of her, Amy Drake, in Gissing’s The Odd Women (1893), is a minx, a jade, perhaps even a slut. She is also and not accidentally a shopgirl. Amy sells newspapers, and because she probably looks redeemable, she enjoys the philanthropy of the sarcastically named Mrs Goodall.2 She has a shopgirl’s way of knowing. As Robert Browning’s Lippo Lippi learned to evaluate character by begging on city streets, so Amy sizes up the men her job offers her. Probably in trouble, she uses this shop-knowledge to entrap Everard, gaining temporary support, though not the big prize. Amy Drake casts her shadow on Monica Madden.
