The vivacious Kate Croy seems to face a stark choice; to marry Merton Densher, the impoverished journalist she loves, and thereby break with her family, or to marry lovelessly but well and take up her rightful place in the society she loves.
'She made discoveries every day. She saw, as she had never seen before, how material things spoke to her. She saw, and she blushed to see, that she had a dire accessibility to pleasure from such sources.'
'She couldn't dream it away, nor walk it away, nor read it away, nor think it away…She couldn't have lost it if she had tried – that was what it was to be really rich…'
Despite that fabulous wealth, Milly Theale is as alone in the world as a fairytale princess.
London's drawing-room society having brought the two women together, the attractive Densher finds himself between them, his highly charged love affair with Kate taking an unexpected direction as Milly installs herself in a palazzo and their passions are played out in Venetian opulence.
Now a major film starring Helena Bonham Carter, Linus Roache and Alison Elliott.