New Grub Street is a richly-detailed novel which touches upon both public and domestic spheres of the late Victorian society. The story follows the respective progress of two young writers and friends; one of whom is a traditionalist whose talents’ rigidity refuses to give in to the market’s needs, while the other is a modern journalist who writes with his own prosperity in mind. The text highlights the pair’s financial struggles, and professional ambitions; yet, at the same time includes their personal lives and relationships in an attempt to demonstrate how poverty is linked to all other spheres in life.
Love and marriage form one of these spheres which are highly affected by the economical status of people. Edwin Reardon, the representative of traditional writing, for instance, suffers his own marriage to undergo many stages of ruin when his compositions decline, and income dwindles to nothing. At this point of the story, love is analyzed as seen and felt in late Victorian England with the notoriety of its being a public matter. Amy Reardon loses a great portion of her former love towards her husband when the latter ceases to be the main attraction in society, and the source of respect in higher literary circles. In short, he had lost his value in her eyes when he lost his social value and public image.
In parallel with this, Jasper Milvain, the modern journalist, chooses to leave the woman with whom he has fallen in love just because the latter is a poor young woman, and therefore an impediment to his progress and efforts of ascending the social ladder. In both cases, loves suffers a deadly blow at the hands of poverty, which is one of Gissing’s hidden messages through the text. People’s lives, families, and emotional attachments were all at the mercy of their financial circumstances. In other words, money was the ruling power, not only in literary circles but in love and marriage too.
The book enfolds more issues related to penury. One of these is education. Mrs. Yule -wife to Alfred and mother to Marian- is one painful example of people whose lives are nothing more than a series of sorrows and indignities because of their deficient education. This woman, who is portrayed as an obedient wife and loving mother, suffers humiliation at the hands of her own husband just because hers are roots originating in a lower class with little to no education. Poverty, which had dominated her early years, came in the way of any kind of proper education. The result, of course, was a woman whose grammatical mistakes had condemned her to everlasting shame in her own house.
