The film begins with the romance of Tom and Viv. We learn that they are madly in love and within a short period of time they elope without telling Viv's parents. On their honeymoon Tom learns that Viv has serious physical and mental issues that she has kept secret from Tom. She trashes their hotel room and Tom comes back to her.
Upon their arrival home to Viv's parents, Tom speaks with her father and mother who want to know how he will support her, and also want to know if he knew of her illnesses prior to marrying. Tom begins to be liked by Viv's parents, and she feels even more like an outsider in her own home. They move in with Tom's mentor, Bertrand who takes a strange liking to Viv that is never talked about. Viv's brother, Maurice is shipped off to the war (WWI).
Upon Maurice's return Tom has taken a job as a banker that was set up by Viv's father. Viv believes that Tom is giving up his dream of becoming a poet by taking this job. He sees it quite sensibly, that he will work by day and write by night. Maurice returns from the war and soon after his father passes away leaving Maurice and Tom as trustees of his estate. Viv is left out of making any decisions and this infuriates her to the point that she has an episode. Viv becomes increasingly volatile and begins acting out more and more. She dumps melted chocolate in the letter box to Tom's office and threatens two women with a knife in order to take their cab.
Tom and Viv separate from each other, but remained legally married. Tom hires a medical officer to look after Viv in order to discover if she is a danger to society. Once she is deemed to be, Tom allows them to commit her to an asylum. Her mother, condemns Tom for betraying her to the asylum as she always hoped her daughter would have someone who would take care of her.
Years later, Viv is visited by an American military doctor who tells her that her condition could be helped by hormone therapy. We learn that she has been in good health for several years, but no one has come to release her, which the military doctor finds odd. Tom has become the most famous poet in the English language, and she tells the man that she will not sit there and let him speak of her husband this way. She says she will stay faithful to her husband to her dying breath.
We learn that Tom has not visited her in 10 years when her brother, Maurice visits her. We can see from his heartache that he has condemned his sister to an exiled life, and she is now well. In a voice-over we hear Maurice say that she never left Tom, and the implication is that she always stood by him, his genius and with the final image we see that she has never left Tom either as she lives inside of him every day. Vivien died on January 22, 1947 at the asylum.
