George Gissing (1857-1903) wrote his most important novels in the 1890s, when the institution of marriage was under attack. Female emancipation and new ideals in a changing society called for a reassessment of the old gender roles. Not only women, rebelling against their predestined roles as wives and mothers, but also men, torn between the old authoritarian role and the new ideas based on equality of the sexes, found that the old institution stifled them and limited their lives. Gissing's "marriage novels" exhibit a remarkable insight into the psychology of marriage where contemporary marital issues are reflected and set up experimentally to disclose the difficulties in reconciling the practical reality with the new theories. In his charting of the boundaries between the old and the new ideals, Gissing has been criticized for ambiguity and misogyny. By placing his novels in a literary and social context and presenting close readings of five major novels of the 1890s, this study challenges these widely held views and hopes to do justice to Gissing's discerning marriage portrayals, comparable to those of Balzac, Ibsen and Strindberg.