of independent means

She also pursued a stage career that included productions of “Same Time, Next Year,” “Father’s Day,” “Steel Magnolias” and her solo show, “A Woman of Independent Means.”

She was a Mensa member, a world traveler of independent means and a voracious reader.

“She’s a woman of independent means who completely rejoices in her independence, but really cares about other people at the same time. She’s very happy to love any man who she wants to love, as much as she wants to love, and as frequently as she would like,” Davis said, with the last few words punctuated by a chortle.

There’s Rosamond Vincy, the vain ribbon manufacturer’s daughter, mortified by her mother’s provincial accent and determined to leave the mediocrity that is Middlemarch by ensnaring handsome newcomer Dr Lydgate; Maggie Tulliver longing to escape parochial St Ogg’s for a life of intellectual and creative fulfilment; Dorothea Brooke, dreaming of an expanded existence, far greater than the tightly circumscribed sphere open to her as a country-dwelling gentlewoman of independent means.

As storytellers, Nilson and Schwartz are careful to cover their bases — an early reference to Eleanor being a woman of independent means helps the film’s finale go down easier, plausibility-wise — but the center of their film is completely without contrivance.