Ann Veronica is a twenty-two-year-old woman studying biology at Tredgold Women's College. She is the youngest of five children, and the child her father is the hardest on. He is dictatorial and strict and prevents Ann from making any decisions for herself. He forbids her to attend an upcoming costume ball in London, but Ann Veronica has already made plans to attend with friends, a down-at-heel family of artists she knows from her neighborhood and of whom her father would never approve. Ann Veronica is tired of all of the restrictions her father feels able to put on her life. The night of the ball, her father oversteps the mark by using violence to prevent her from attending; she moves out of the family home in the Morningside Park area of London and takes an apartment in Hampstead. She struggles to make the rent because she is struggling to find a job, so she borrows rent from an older man called Mr. Ramage; she does not realize that she is now beholden to him for the small price of forty pounds.
The forty pounds allow Ann Veronica to devote herself to her studies full-time. She studies at Imperial College, London, and meets a man with whom she falls quickly in love. Capes is a demonstrator in the laboratory which ruffles Mr Ramage's feathers; he tries to rape her, which causes her to drop out of school for a while, and devote her time and energies to the cause of woman's suffrage. She joins the suffragettes, and storms Parliament, where she is arrested and imprisoned for a month.
Ann Veronica is released from prison and realizes that she is struggling out in the world on her own. She moves back to her father's house, but in a bid for autonomy from him gets engaged to a man she doesn't love; the man she does love, though, is Capes, and very soon she breaks off her engagement so that she can be with him. He claims that he loves her too, but he is more realistic about their situation. They cannot get married, because he is already married, although he is separated from his wife. He also has a poor reputation because when he was married he cheated on his wife and had an affair. He tells Ann Veronica the best he can offer her is friendship, but she has none. She admires him for confessing all to her and eventually wears him down. He gives his notice in at the laboratory and the couple takes a trip to the Swiss Alps, which they privately call their honeymoon.
Four years later, they are still together, and happy. Capes has become a successful playwright. Ann Veronica is pregnant. They also reconcile with her family as they await the birth of their child.
