The story takes place in Victorian England, when the idyllic feudal patriarchal society was hit hard by capitalism and on the verge of collapse. The beautiful girl Basheba (Carey Mulligan) inherited her aunt's farm and became a farmer. The promising young man Gabriel (Matthias Schoenaerts) fell in love with Basheba and came to her farm to work for her. However, Basheba did not take the honest Gabriel seriously. She was madly in love with a playboy named Troy (Tom Sturridge). Although Troy had cruelly abandoned the pure girl Fanny (Juno Temple), Basheba still blindly believed that this man could bring her the perfect love she had always dreamed of.