As a "Bildungsroman" "Tono-Bungay" also explores the development of the narrator's emotional life. Three sexual relationships are analysed: his unsuccessful marriage to Marion; his affair with the liberated Effie; and his doomed relationship with Beatrice Normandy, a "belle dame sans merci" whom he has known since childhood and who loves but refuses to marry him. George also tells of his frustrated love for his stern, austere mother, who was a domestic servant, and his powerful attachment to his aunt Susan, a character whose depiction may be, in part, a portrait of Wells's second wife, Amy Catherine Robbins (better known as Jane).