This collection of short stories presents a gallery of women who are all outsiders, born into a society in which women are constrained by class, money and social expectations. Dulce is the pawn of feckless guardians; Miss Olimpia is trapped by poverty and her own pretensions; Rosa refuses to conform to the stereotype of sacharine femininity. Some cope, some go under, some, in unexpected ways, triumph. Their lives are described by Jose Regio, who manages to combine psychological subtelty with social satire. Like that other Portuguese ironist, Eca de Queiroz, Regio describes an imprisoning society, for men and women alike.