The novel follows three parallel stories of courtship and marriage and the decisions of three women: Alice Vavasor, her cousin Glencora Palliser, and her aunt Arabella Greenow.

[2] Alice Vavasor, a 24 year old woman, is engaged to the wealthy, respectable, dependable if unambitious and bland, John Grey.

She respects his honesty in acknowledging in his letter proposing their marriage that her money would support his parliamentary ambitions, and she tells him that he can draw on her funds even before they marry.

George wins the byelection, but finds the financial demands and prospect of the forthcoming general election to be crushingly disappointing.

He has fantasies about murdering his grandfather, and breaks Kate's arm when the old man dies of natural causes having denied George his inheritance.

A second story involves the comic rivalry between the wealthy farmer Cheesacre and the pauper soldier Captain Bellfield for the affections (and substantial inheritance) of the widow Mrs Greenow.

Mrs Greenow, the aunt of Alice, George, and Kate, had married young to a very rich older man who had recently died.

The third story deals with the marriage of the extremely rich Plantagenet Palliser to the even wealthier heiress Lady Glencora M'Cluskie.

Plantagenet sacrifices his political ambitions to save his marriage by taking Glencora on a European tour, with Alice accompanying them.

Alice's happiness is temporarily alloyed by a sense of defeat at having her wedding turned into a formal social event where she endures the reproachful lectures of high-ranking relations she had sought to avoid.

"[2] In his memoir about writing, Stephen King pokes fun at the book's length, joking that for modern audiences a more appropriate title might be Can You Possibly Finish It?