Edith Hope, the protagonist, writes romance novels under the pseudonym Vanessa Wilde. According to Edith, society categorizes women as hares or tortoises– Propaganda designed to offer consolation to all of the tortoises of the world. As Edith has gotten older, and is now an official “spinster”, she realizes that there needs to be a wakeup call to all of the tortoises, because the hares are winning and have always won. However, in her romance novels it is the tortoise, or the average looking heroine, who gets the hero. Ultimately, she writes her books to offer comfort to all of those women, the hares of the world, who thought they were going to find their hero, but never did.

Edith is in her late 30’s and spends much of her time in her one room apartment, writing her novels. Having accepted her life of a “spinster”, Edith is an observer of human behavior and their relationships with those around them. One day her publisher, Harold, informs her that the romantic market is beginning to change and novels should follow societal shifts. Maybe the heroine of her new novel should be different and more cosmopolitan. According to the editor, Edith’s new novel should be about a woman and her physical desires, not romance. Her reply to Harold is that the so called heroine of her novel would, if so liberated, would go to a bar and pick up a man and that the only reason she doesn’t is because women will always prefer romance to sex.

Soon after this conversation, Edith’s friends banish her to Hotel du Lac, on a sabbatical, for deciding not to marry Geoffrey Lang; the man Edith’s close friends think would make her a wonderful husband and her last chance at fulfilling the expectations of society for women. While staying at the hotel, Edith arrives at several conclusion most profoundly that the “company of their own sex, is what drives women into marriage”. At the end, in a world where the new is definitely at odds with the old, this novel is about a woman’s quest to understand and realize that love is not what she defines in her novels, slow and steady DOES NOT win the race, and never has.

Having completely rejected two marriage proposals, Edith emerges from her entire experience realizing a few things about herself. She is comfortable with the familiarity of her somewhat isolated life. She will take what is given to her and reconcile to being a tortoise. A romantic view, albeit a dim one.

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