Our protagonist is a beautiful but somewhat impoverished young woman, Lily Bart, who is struggling through dint of her own charm to marry well and live in security. Her mother was a beautiful flibbertigibbet and her father a ne’er do well, and now she lives on the begrudging charity of an aunt who she likes not at all, and her only escape is to parlay her looks and charm into catching a wealthy husband, the sooner the better. There are three main problems with this - first, she really doesn’t like most of the men in her set and thus is appalled at the idea of marrying them; second (and possibly relatedly), she is unwilling to commit to one option because she, with a gambler’s taste, worries that if she does, she’s cutting herself off from a potential better option; and finally, staying in the set of people she moves in requires money, more and more of it, and she is running out of it.