STORY DESCRIPTION

Twenty year old Caroline from Galtree Hall is stunningly beautiful but wild and dangerous, defying the conventions of Victorian England. She rides out at night, is disrespectful to her parents, and is having a relationship with the local farrier Jack Sefton of which her parents strongly disapprove.

Her father decides to enlist the help of an unorthodox physician called Cunningham to treat her loose behaviour believing her to be temporarily unhinged.

Cunningham brings his own nurse Mrs Benson to the Hall and together they introduce Caroline to an unusual form of treatment and a restrictive regime. Caroline resists at first but the doctor subjects her to discipline and his iron will. A battle ensues which he is determined to win by effecting a cure to make her submissive. He invites his medical colleagues to witness his pioneering work.

Caroline’s father falls ill and gradually Dr Cunningham exerts his sinister influence over his wife, Mildred Hyde-Oliver. Caroline’s younger sibling Lily believes herself to be in love with the doctor and is willing to please him in any way possible.

In course of time Dr Cunningham comes to dominate everyone in the household and he turns Galtree Hall into his personal fiefdom where he can indulge his perverted sexual preferences in the name of science.