A Pair of Blue Eyes describes the love triangle of a young woman, Elfride Swancourt, and her two suitors from very different backgrounds.


Stephen Smith is a socially inferior but ambitious young man who adores her and with whom she shares a country background.


Henry Knight is the respectable, established, older man who represents London society.


Although the two are friends, Knight is not aware of Smith's previous liaison with Elfride.


Elfride finds herself caught in a battle between her heart, her mind and the expectations of those around her - her parents and society.

Thomas Hardy, was an English author of the naturalist movement, although in several poems he displays elements of the previous romantic and enlightenment periods of literature, such as his fascination with the supernatural. He regarded himself primarily as a poet and composed novels mainly for financial gain.


The bulk of his work, set mainly in the semi-fictional land of Wessex, delineates characters struggling against their passions and circumstances. Hardy's poetry, first published in his 50s, has come to be as well regarded as his novels, especially after The Movement of the 1950s and 1960s.