 William, the unwilling and somewhat bumbling heir to a perfume business, is a businessman of moderate success and little self-awareness.He married the exquisitely doll-like Agnes, who embodies the Victorian "female ideal" of naive femininity, for her beauty though he barely knew her.Since she has been kept completely in the dark on sexual matters, Agnes' diaries express utter confusion over events like menstruation (she believes a demon returns periodically to "bleed" her), pregnancy, sex, or childbirth