Summary
In the suffocating domesticity of post-war America, Leila Porter's existence resembles a gilded cage tarnished by onion breath. Her husband James, a glue manufacturing magnate whose industrial successes manifest as personal neglect, embodies bourgeois coarseness – slurping consomme, scattering cigar ash like industrial fallout, and wearing haberdashery that appears perpetually dusted with adhesive powder. Enter Schuyler Van Sutphen, a reptilian charmer whose silk handkerchiefs conceal multiple assignations. When Leila trades stable discomfort for glamorous disillusionment, she discovers Schuyler's duplicity through intercepted love notes scented with other women's perfume. Meanwhile, the discarded James undergoes a chrysalis-like metamorphosis: shedding onion rings for tailored waistcoats, replacing grubby spectacles with piercing gazes, and emerging as the very paragon Leila once craved. The cruelest epiphany dawns at a charity ball where reformed James captivates society while Schuyler's veneer cracks, leaving Leila to ponder whether salvation lies in reclaiming discarded treasures or embracing desolate freedom.
Synopsis
Leila Porter comes to dislike her husband James, a glue king who is always eating onions and looking sloppy. But after she divorces him and marries two-timing playboy Schuyler Van Sutphen the now-reformed James looks pretty good.
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