Rosaleen Monahan is a young woman born into poverty and adopted into a loveless middle-class family. The book follows her early adulthood, her career as an artist, and her on-and-off romance with Nick Landry.
Rosaleen among the Artists contains examples of:
- Awful Wedded Life: For a few years Rosaleen lives in the same building as the famous artist Lawrence Iverson, who keeps harassing her to marry him even though she's made it clear she isn't interested. But when she learns he's going blind, she agrees to marry him out of pity. Rosaleen feels so sorry for him that she acts as his servant rather than his friend and instantly forgives anything he does wrong. Her refusal to simply talk to him like an equal only infuriates Lawrence, which only causes Rosaleen to act even more unnaturally, until before long they can't stand each other.
- Horrible Housing: Rosaleen lives for about five years with her sister Katie and her family in a tiny, filthy, run-down, airless apartment where the Elevated train is always making the walls shake.
- The Klutz: Katie's husband Pete is a shipping clerk who's always hurting himself in various minor accidents, like dropping crates on his feet. He's laid up so often that it's hard for the family to make ends meet.
- Meet Cute: Rosaleen and Nick meet on a bus after Rosaleen accidentally drops her fare out the window and Nick offers to pay it for her.
- Old Maid:
- Rosaleen's adoptive family consists of three middle-aged siblings: Morton, Amy, and Julie Humbert. None of them ever married.
- As Nick's cousin Caroline enters her late twenties, she becomes increasingly afraid that this fate will befall her. Her one goal in life is marriage, but while she can easily charm men, no one has ever been seriously in love with her.
- Sense Loss Sadness: Lawrence thinks that blindness is the most horrible thing that could happen to an artist like him, and watching his sight slowly fade is even worse than losing it all at once.
- Starving Artist: During Rosaleen's marriage to Lawrence, she works as an illustrator, but she can't bring in enough money to satisfy his expensive tastes. She feels too sorry for Lawrence to deprive him, so she's resorted to borrowing money she knows she'll never be able to pay back, even though it makes her feel humiliated.
- Struggling Single Mother: Rosaleen was one of six children, and their widowed mother struggled to feed them all before Rosaleen's adoption by the Humberts.
- Surprise Party: A few months after Rosaleen moves in with her art teacher, Miss Waters, she comes home to find that Miss Waters has thrown a surprise party for her twenty-first birthday. Two of the guests are Dodo Mell and Enid Bainbridge, who become Rosaleen's roommates for the next few years.
