For Miranda Wells, moving to New York to live in Dragonwyck Manor with her rich cousin, Nicholas, seems like a dream. However, the situation gradually becomes nightmarish. She observes Nicholas’ troubled relationship with his tenant farmers, as well as with his daughter, to whom Miranda serves as governess. Her relationship with Nicholas intensifies after his wife dies, but his mental imbalance threatens any hope of happiness.

Daisy Kenyon (Crawford) is a Manhattan commercial artist having an affair with an arrogant and overbearing but successful lawyer named Dan O’Mara (Andrews). O’Mara is married and has children. Daisy meets a single man, a war veteran named Peter Lapham (Fonda), and after a brief and hesitant courtship decides to marry him, although she is still in love with Dan.