Just as the themes in A Mother and Two Daughters are more subtle and less "literary" than those of Godwin's previous novels, so are its techniques. In fact, this novel is notable for its absence of self-conscious techniques. It contrasts especially with The Odd Woman (the author's largest novel before this) which is filled with allusions, quotations, stories-within-stories, summaries of novels real and imagined, all of which make for fascinating intellectual exercise, but probably limited its popularity. The scholarly reader may miss the rich pattern of parallel fictions presented in The Odd Woman, but the newer novel may also strike one as the author's least pretentious work.