Ann Veronica: A Modern Love Story

About the book

Ann Veronica Stanley resists the restrictions imposed by her father and leaves home determined to direct her own life. London offers possibilities for scientific study, political activity, friendship, and desire, but also exposes the financial and social difficulties hidden inside the language of freedom. Wells brings her into contact with different versions of modern thought, including the women's suffrage movement, without making participation supply an easy answer to every personal question. Her interest in biology and her attraction to Capes complicate any simple opposition between intellect and feeling. The novel follows the work of testing inherited rules against experience, asking how a person can make independent choices when education, money, and emotional vulnerability remain unevenly distributed between those who claim equal rights to decide.

• Independence
• Education
• Gender and desire

Why read it

For a novel that gives the argument over women's freedom practical form through money, study, politics, and attachment.

English text