Ruth Hilton is a 15 year-old orphan girl working in a respectable sweatshop for the overworked Mrs Mason.

They meet again by chance and form a secret friendship; on an outing together they are spotted by Mrs Mason who, fearing for her shop's reputation, dismisses Ruth.

Bellingham falls sick with fever and the hotel calls for his mother who arrives and is disgusted by her son's having lived in sin with Ruth.

When he learns of her past and that she is alone he brings her back to his home town, where he is a Dissenting minister, to stay with him and his formidable but kind sister Faith.

When they learn that Ruth is pregnant they decide to lie to the town and claim that she is a widow called Mrs Denbigh, to protect her from a society which would otherwise shun her.

The truth is Mr Farquhar is put off by Jemima's erratic behaviour, caused by her father's good intentioned interference.

Jemima and Mr Farquhar marry and have their own child and form a good friendship with Ruth and Leonard but they are still on the outskirts of society.

Ruth goes among the poor to work as a nurse to the sick and gains a good reputation there, making Leonard proud of his mother once more and restoring their relationship.

The Christian religion plays a major role in the novel, and Ruth is required to earn her redemption through penitence and penance.

As a work that dealt frankly with seduction and illegitimacy, it inevitably attracted controversy: Gaskell reported that it was a "prohibited book" in her own household, that friends expressed "deep regret" at its publication, and that two acquaintances burnt their copies.

"[2] Ruth is one of several 19th-century British and American novels that cast a "fallen woman" with an illegitimate child in the role of heroine.