Oh nice, thanks for the suggestion UB, I'll have to check it out. It actually sounds a lot like a book I'm finishing up right now:
Five odd women—women without husbands—are the subject of this powerful novel, set in Victorian London, by a writer whose perceptions about people, particularly women, would be remarkable in any age and are extraordinary in the 1890s. The story concerns the choices that five different women have to make and what those choices imply about men's and women's status in society and relationship to each other.
It's as much a good read for the historical aspects of Victorian culture as it is for the relationship between men and women and the characters they embody.