After a passionate love affair with Walter Morel, a simple, drunken coal miner, Gertrude Coppard, a cultured and well-bred woman, becomes Walter's wife and faces the hardships of life in a rented house, with her husband's low salary and without any particular satisfaction. As the couple becomes increasingly estranged, Mrs. Morel turns all her affection and care to her sons. Dedicating her life first to William, the eldest, and then to Paul, the second son, she does everything in her power to prevent her sons from following their father's fate.