Sheltered and submissive Nora Helmar, wife of young lawyer Thorvald Helmar, secretly forges her deceased father's name to a security note and borrows enough money from a shady moneylender named Krogstadt to send her ailing husband abroad. The trip restores Helmar's health, and several years later, he is appointed the manager of the bank in which Krogstadt is employed. When Helmar discharges Krogstadt for dishonest dealings, the latter angrily sends a letter to the Helmar home revealing Nora's secret. Helmar renounces his wife, and although Krogstadt later promises to keep silent about the forgery, Nora, now painfully aware of her husband's selfishness, leaves him.