Borkman is a Napoleon of finance, inclined towards economics and with an inherent passion for money. He meets the Misses Redheim; two sisters, the elder being richer than the younger.

He falls in love with the younger one, who reciprocates his love; however, his love for gold is his dominant passion, and so he marries the elder. Just as he is about to make a significant financial leap, he is imprisoned for embezzlement. This is his end.

He emerges from prison, ruined and essentially dead; and he would not even have a grave to rest in if it weren't for the younger Redheim, whose philanthropy intervenes. His wife, a proud woman, must live in the same house with the convicted embezzler who has brought her shame.

She sits in the parlor, eating the bitter bread from her sister's hospitality, and listens with hatred to the footsteps of her husband, who paces back and forth, "like a sick wolf." She hears the footsteps not for days, but for years. Her only hope is that her son, Erhart, will restore the honor of the family name.

The son is also the father's only hope of rising socially and economically once again. Ibsen does not present his hero frivolously but progresses to the poetic phase of the type: the love of gold – the true metal of gold – and the idealization of gold through love.