The book describes the love triangle of a young, blue eyed 19-year-old woman, Elfride Swancourt, and her two suitors from very different backgrounds.

Henry Knight is the respectable, established, though sexually immature and inexperienced older man who represents London society.

When Elfride's father finds that his guest and candidate for his daughter's hand, architect's assistant Stephen Smith, is the son of a mason, he immediately orders him to leave.

Henry Knight, the second suitor, is more socially superior and dominantly masculine but sexually inexperienced and immature, with the expectation of Elfride's spiritual and physical virginity.

[3] A review in the Examiner of Far from the Madding Crowd retrospectively referred to it as "not so exclusively pictoral [as Under the Greenwood Tree]; it was study of a more tragic kind, with more complex characters and a more stirring plot...

Both Under the Greenwood Tree and A Pair of Blue Eyes are very remarkable novels, which no one could read without admiring the close and penetrating observation, and pictoral and narrative power of the writer.

[3] A focus of critical interest of the novel is the scene in which Henry Knight reviews the entire history of the world as he hangs over the edge of a cliff (reputedly the origin of the term "cliffhanger"), and eventually is rescued by a rope of Elfride's underwear.