The Tortoise and the Hare

I am reading this wonderful, touching novel by Elizabeth Jenkins.  It's not mentioned in her Times obituary (she died in 2010).  It's the story of the unraveling marriage of Evelyn and Imogen Gresham.  Evelyn is a successful lawyer, Imogen is a housewife and mother, about to pack her only child off to school.  They are temperamentally diametrically opposed.  Evelyn become distracted by and besotted with their neighbor, the heiress Blanche Silcox. 

There is a harsh introduction by Helen McNeil, which denigrates Imogen's character as a passive doormat.  But I don't see her that way.  She knows that her marriage is falling apart, and there really isn't much she can do about it, other than watch it happen; Evelyn is not the type of man to respond well to a "Modern Woman," whatever than meant in 1954.  Imogen is a sad case, not a victim.