The story is about a young woman, Mary Erle. It begins with the funeral of her father, the famous British scientist. Her mother died a long time ago and Mary doesn’t remember her, but the death of her father was the greatest loss for her.
After that, Mary and her younger brother move to London, because the girl realizes that now she should make her way in this world on her own. She wants to be an artist and she enters to the central London School of Art, but this attempt was a failure and she starts working as a journalist in newspaper Illustrations, writing a short stories for massive public. She needs money so she has to work hard, and her brother Jimmie always asks her for some money and she just can’t refuse him.
Soon she falls in love with Mr. Hemming, her friend, but he has to leave the country for a while. Mary is waiting for him with the hope that finally she will be happy with the man she loves, but Vincent arrives to London with his fiancée, the daughter of a rich man from America. Vincent needed money to have an influence in politics. He doesn’t love his wife, but the power is all that he wants now and he is ready to pay any price for it. And he pays, her wife hates him as much as he hates her, she knows that he needs only her money, besides Vincent didn’t get what he wanted so he was a failure. All that he has is the love of a poor Mary and he goes to get it and be with her. But Mary doesn’t want to be with the man who betrayed her, although she doesn’t blame him. She refuses to harm another woman, his wife and their little daughter. She just can’t imagine that this little girl is bound to grow up and hate her.
It was the hardest decision in her life, but she couldn’t do it in another way. Society puts a great pressure on her, that is why she need to be strong and not to fall for temptation. She can’t just do what she wants, because people won’t understand her. It is so hard to be a modern woman, to earn money working hard and not just because you are beautiful, to live without love and support because her lover belongs to another woman. She shouldn’t express her feelings; her thoughts should be kept in secret, because otherwise her social image will be damaged.
Mary has a friend, a young and beautiful girl named Alison, who helps other women who get into trouble. Alison is the only person who knows her secrets, but as a modern woman, Alison is also fated to suffer because her lover turned up to be a terrible person and she just can’t accept this fact. Alison falls ill and dies and her death makes Mary be stronger and now she lives without friend who was a part of her life. Years passed, and Mary remembers her father, a happy smiling man whose life was full of joy because he did what he liked. And Mary says to herself “To strive, to seek, to find and not to yield”, it was a line she had engraved on her father’s tomb. She realizes that it doesn’t matter how hard her life is, she must never give up because life is a compromise and you may never know when it is supposed to end. All she has to do is to strive for her rights, to seek for justice, to find strengths for struggle with society and not to yield if she has her own thoughts. This is the new testament of a modern woman.
