4 ideas
Edith Hope, a romantic novelist, is sent to a quiet Swiss lakeside hotel after abandoning her dull fiancé Geoffrey Long at the registry office. There the urbane Mr Neville proposes a frank, loveless marriage of mutual convenience, and she writes to her married lover David to say she will accept.
Edith's working rule for her romances is that the modest, self-effacing 'tortoise' heroine always wins the man, while the confident, glamorous 'hare' loses. She knows real life runs the other way: the hares win, and the tortoises keep buying stories where they don't. On this account romantic fiction sells because it consoles, telling the unchosen that virtue will be rewarded when the world does not reward it.
Mr Neville argues that marriage works best when both parties give up on passion and trade assets openly. She gains social standing, a proper household and freedom to write, and he gains a discreet, loyal wife who will not humiliate him, while each keeps a private life. The pitch is persuasive because it spares both from being hurt by love, and it fails because the same detachment that makes it safe makes his fidelity worthless.
The hotel's women show different ways of dealing with dependence on men. Mrs Pusey and her daughter spend lavishly on clothes and on each other and present their contentment as a display. Monica has been sent away by her husband to become fit to produce an heir. The deaf Madame de Bonneuil has been parked there by her son. Seen this way, apparent confidence or luxury is often a strategy for surviving a lack of love, not proof of having it.