女大不中留

故事发生在十九世纪的英国，霍布森（查尔斯·劳顿 Charles Laughton 饰）经营着一家鞋铺，辛辛苦苦拉扯着三个女儿玛姬（布伦达·德·班泽 Brenda De Banzie 饰）、爱丽丝（达芙妮·安德森 Daphne Anderson 饰）和维奇（普鲁内拉·斯凯尔斯 Prunella Scales 饰）长大，一转眼，三个姑娘都已经到了谈婚论嫁的年纪，但吝啬的霍布森并不准备支付女儿们的嫁妆。 　　玛姬爱上了鞋匠威利（约翰·米尔斯 John Mills 饰），尽管霍布森极力的反对这段不合时宜的感情，但独立好强的玛姬还是同威利结了婚。在玛姬的帮助下，威利的事业蒸蒸日上，很快便成为了霍布森最强劲的商业对手，与此同时，玛姬还帮助两个妹妹解决了嫁妆的难题。1880s Salford, England. Widowed Henry Hobson, owner/operator of Hobson's Boots, lives with his three adult daughters, Maggie, Alice and Vicky, in a flat attached to the shop. Henry is miserly, dipsomaniacal and tyrannical, not allowing his daughters to date as their sole purpose in life is in service to him and to the shop, they who receive no wages in that professional service. He changes his mind about Alice and Vicky, for who he will choose husbands, despite they, the romantic ones, already having chosen the men they would marry if given the opportunity. He will, however, not provide them with a dowry, which may prove to be a challenge in finding them who he would consider suitable husbands. Concerning Maggie, he believes she is far too useful to him as the overly efficient and organized one to let go, and too old at age thirty for any man to want her anyway. Incensed by her father's attitude about her, Maggie decides that she has to show him how wrong he is about her being an unmarriable spinster. As such, she makes a proposal to timid Willy Mossop, the shop's poor, uneducated and illiterate boot hand but best boot maker - apparently better than any boot maker in nearby Manchester - he who has known no other professional life than the shop: they enter into a marriage of convenience. Despite the differences in their social classes, Maggie believes she can show her father that she can find a husband, while forcing him to treat Willy better, and by association her, by paying him decent wages or else she will use her wifely influence to convince Willy to take his and her valuable services elsewhere. If their hands are forced, Maggie believes their best weapon is wealthy and particular Mrs. Hepworth, who said she will have no one else but Willy make her boots. Maggie has even taken into consideration what effect her actions will have on her sisters' nuptials, she who vows to them that all will be all right in that regard. Although she truly has no idea how her father will react, she also may not have considered Willy, who may already have a life of his own outside the shop, and if he does agree what effect her plan will have on him and his entire being.