What George Gissing’s fiction reveals about vegetarianism in Victorian London

George Gissing (1857–1903) is best known for his unflinching representations of Victorian society, portraying the struggles of the burgeoning middle classes and the perils of social mobility. But amid the novelist’s keen observations of late 19th-century London, Gissing explored a topic that was gaining cultural momentum at the time – vegetarianism.

During the 1880s and 1890s vegetarianism wasn’t just a dietary choice, it was a growing movement. Restaurants, clubs and societies sprang up across London, promoting the cause through lectures, pamphlets and dinners.

Prominent Victorian activists like Annie Besant, Edward Carpenter and Anna Kingsford championed the cause. In his 1929 autobiography, Gandhi described vegetarianism as a “new cult” of London. A popular vegetarian restaurant’s slogan – “Economical, Healthful and Humane” – also summed up its appeal.

For many urban lower-middle-class clerks and retail workers, a vegetable diet promised affordability and health. It was championed by proponents as a natural lifestyle. It contributed to a wider health reform movement and was an antidote to concerns about the global meat market.

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Vegetarianism sits alongside other Victorian counterculture movements, such as enfranchisement, rational dress, socialism, anti-vivisection, animal rights and pacifism. So it’s perhaps no surprise that the movement makes its way into Gissing’s fiction.

His vegetarian characters don’t merely reflect the modern, urban realism of the period; they carry deeper symbolic weight. In Gissing’s hands, meat avoidance acts as a metaphor for self-denial, capitalist duplicity, anti-imperialism, and how women’s bodies were defined.

In The Odd Women (1893), the vegetarianism adopted by the protagonists, the Madden sisters, is a euphemism for respectable poverty. Near the beginning of the novel, Virginia Madden negotiates cheaper rent on the basis that her vegetarian meals are “so very simple” that she may “just as well prepare them” herself.

By contrast, Piers Otway, the protagonist of The Crown of Life (1899), adopts vegetarianism as a moral choice rather than economic necessity. Along with Bohemianism, cosmopolitanism, pacifism and anti-violence, it’s a marker of being an outsider and eccentric.

In Will Warburton (1905), Godfrey Sherwood is a gambler and a charlatan. He adopts vegetarianism for health reasons. Soon, he becomes swept up in the movement. He proposes a vegetarian settlement built on plain living and high thinking. But his sincerity is questionable. The colony is just another in a string of unrealistic business schemes. For Sherwood, vegetarianism is a cause he can embrace and abandon as soon as it stops being profitable.

Gissing’s short story Simple Simon (1896) tells of two vegetarian clerks. They are described as “thin-faced and colourless” and seem like stereotypes of the “anaemic crank”. But the story critiques hypocrisy rather than poverty. By the end, neither clerk remains a vegetarian, and the movement is dismissed as a passing fad.

In A Poor Gentleman (1899), vegetarianism is less a choice than a necessity. Poverty dictates character Tymperley’s lifestyle – what he wears, where he lives and what he eats. Like Virginia Madden in The Odd Women, he gives up meat to keep up appearances. He then convinces himself of the health benefits and becomes moralistic as a result. This inversion of cause and effect satirises the ethics of ideological vegetarianism.

More than meets the eye

Overall, Gissing’s work questions whether a meat-free diet can truly offer a healthy and affordable lifestyle for the working class. His fiction suggests that choices born of economic need are not choices at all.

Gissing also critiques idealistic vegetarianism. The back-to-the-land colonies he portrays seem naive and impractical.

These debates over affordability and sustainability feel as relevant today as they did in his time. As modern vegetarianism and veganism movements grow, they face similar challenges.

Gissing’s nuanced depictions remind us that food choices often reflect deeper social values – and contradictions. Whether driven by necessity, idealism, or social pressure, vegetarianism remains a lens to examine society’s struggles and ideals through.

Rebecca Hutcheon does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.