Her background is markedly different from her husband's.

The wife, who is well-connected, responded to her foreign husband’s infidelity by hiring a group of thugs to put him in the hospital (a “beat him up, but don’t kill him” type of thing).

This depression-era tale of life with a third-rate traveling circus centers on orphaned animal caretaker Jacob, the woman he loves and her cruel and abusive husband, who happens to be the boss.