Mujeres singulares

"In this happy country of ours there are half a million more women than men. [...] So many single women for whom there is no possibility of a relationship. Pessimists call them useless, lost and vain lives. Needless to say, I, like an integral part of that group, I don't think so. " These words of Rhoda Nunn, the heroine of Mujeres singular (1893), who works to "harden the hearts of women" and is a model of independence for them, rightly introduce the problematic environment of this novel, in which the project of Feminist emancipation, economically and intellectually, is intertwined with a deep and steely illustration of the vicissitudes of the "heart" engaged in these causes. Two love stories punctuate the conflict: on the one hand, Rhoda herself, flattered by the courtship of a liberal and unorthodox man who has set out to conquer her; and on the other, the young Monica Madden, who marries a bachelor she does not love and who will come to consider the possibility of eloping with a lover as "a dishonor comparable to staying with the man who legally claimed her company."