John Gabriel Borkman, thirteen years previous to the opening of the play, had been a gigantic speculator. All Norway, all the world, would have been at his feet if he had not failed at the moment when success seemed assured. By his downfall hundreds were enmeshed in ruin, and the man went to prison for five years, leaving behind a heartbroken wife and a young son. This boy, Erhart, was taken away and raised by a rich aunt, but is now at home, where he has lived for eight years when the curtain rises. Mrs. Borkman is discovered in her old-fashioned drawing-room, in the house saved out of the wreckage by her twin sister, Ella Rentheim. She is longing for the return of her son Erhart, in whom she discerns the saviour of the family. Her sister enters, and in his own remarkable, sharp way Ibsen lets us witness the spiritual tragedy in the lives of the pair. They both love Erhart, as formerly Ella had loved his father, John Gabriel Borkman. The women hate each other, and their duel is fought out in half-uttered sentences, pregnant pauses, and deadly glances. It is the perfection of dialogue-writing and clear exposition. You catch dim perspectives of the past, the treachery of the husband of Mrs. Borkman, and of darker depths which are later explored. The mother--oh, such a pitiful, harsh, sorrowful, repellent mother, nursing her injuries until they become hissing vipers in her bosom--defies her sister to win away the love of her son, that son she has dedicated to the mission of rehabilitating the fortunes and good name of the Borkmans. With cutting humility she acknowledges that she eats the bread of her sister's charity, and then they hear footsteps. Is it Erhart returning? No; it is some one up in the long gallery overhead! It is the ex-convict, ex-banker, and swindler, John Gabriel Borkman, who has never left the house since his release eight years before. Mrs. Borkman cries:-- "It sometimes seems more than I can endure--always to hear him up there walking, walking. From the first thing in the morning to the last thing at night. And one hears every step so plainly! I have often felt as if I had a sick wolf up there, prowling up and down in a cage. Right over my head, too! Listen! there he goes. Up and down, up and down, the wolf is prowling."