From the cover:
High on the moor above the Yorkshire village of Garth stands the vicarage, grey and desolate. Within, three sisters, Mary, Gwendolen and Alice, wait for something-anything-that will take them away from the paternal home, from their grim, repressive father; something that will bring romance and beauty into their dreary lives. Each has a different dream: Mary to ensnare a husband and bind him within a web of domesticity; Gwendolen to seek freedom and strong, intellectual companionship; Alice to find fullfillment through love and through maternity. To their isolated village come Steven Rowcliffe, an eligible doctor, and the three sisters turn upon him their obsessive gaze. . .