It is 1929 and 18-year-old Kathleen, from a prosperous middle-class London home, travels with her friend Alice to Devon for a holiday. While there she meets Jim Wilcox, a tenant farmer, and Robert Neville, heir to Alston Manor, the landlord. While Jim views a wife as subject to a husband-s will, as his property, Robert sees a husband-s role as protector.
Declaring she wants to -do- something and not marry the first young man who comes along, Kathleen represents the modern woman. A most significant issue post war concerned the place of women in society. The press ran headlines such as -Our Surplus Women- and the 1921 census confirmed that women outnumbered men by almost two million. The independent woman was for many men an alarming prospect. Marriage was considered the norm and to be left on the shelf a humiliation.
Seduced by Jim, Kathleen finds she is pregnant. She therefore finds that the choices she hoped
