A Doll's House
Many believe that A Doll's House is a feminist play, but that is not true. Ibsen said it was a "humanist"play, and I entirely agree. Humanism can be defined as thus.
Humanism (n): an outlook or system of thought attaching prime importance to human rather than divine or supernatural matters. Humanist beliefs stress the potential value and goodness of human beings, emphasize common human needs, and seek solely rational ways of solving human problems.
Summary
The play stars Nora, a 19th century housewife. She is married to Torvald, who does not give her respect. Before the play takes place, she took a loan against his knowledge in order to provide for a life-saving vacation to Italy while her husband was sick. In addition, this loan was taken out with a false signature, which is technically a felony. This secret loan gives her a feeling of autonomy that she does not have otherwise. Her widowed friend Christine, who has spent her whole life working to support her family, still views her as a child though.
The lawyer who gave her the loan threatens to reveal the truth to Torvald as blackmail, because Torvald wishes to fire him. Nora tries to convince Torvald, but is unable to. In response, the lawyer Krogstad leaves a letter in their mailbox explaining the situation. Seeing that it is inevitable that he will find out, she becomes excited, imagining that he will rescue her.
Their good friend Dr. Rank visits often. It is clear that he is interested in Nora, but she is too ignorant to notice. He has a terminal illness, and he decides to reveal his love for her. She scorns him, upset that he soured their friendship, unable to deal with the emotional complexities of the situation.
It is revealed that Christine and Krogstad were romantically involved in the past. Now that their spouses are both dead, they decide to reunite. Krogstad is so happy he tries to remove his blackmail. However, Christine convinces him to keep it, so that Nora and Torvald can stop living in a fake marriage and have serious communication. The letter stays in the mailbox.
Torvald reads the letter and he lashes out at Nora. He proclaims that they will now live in a loveless marriage and she will have little association with the children. When he receives a second letter stating that the conditions of the loan will not be revealed, he forgives her very easily. But Nora sees the truth. Torvald never truly loved her. He only viewed her as an object, and in their 8 years of marriage, they never communicated like normal human beings. She leaves him and his children in order to find her identity as an independent person.
Analysis
One of Ibsen's great talents is his ability to create complex and captivating characters. His characters have such clear personalities, and you can understand their behaviors.
Nora was raised in an upperclass home with her father. Her mother died at a very young age. For fun, she enjoyed company with the maids downstairs. Throughout her life, she didn't have deep emotional connections to anyone, and she ended up marrying a man that protected her like her father did.
When Dr. Rank admits to Nora that he loves her, she tells him this.
Nora: When I was at home, of course I loved papa best. But I always thought it tremendous fun if I could steal down into the maids' room, because they never moralised at all, and talked to each other about such entertaining things.
Rank: I see - it is their place I have taken
Nora: Oh, dear, nice Doctor Rank, I never meant that at all. But surely you can understand that being with Torvald is a little like being with papa.
I cringed when I read that. It made clear that Nora's marriage was a strange sort of Oedipus complex. Torvald was her father taking care of her, and Nora was his child. Except they had sex.
No one took Nora seriously, except for Christine. She understood the conditions of Nora's marriage, and in order for Nora to grow, she knew that she needed to see the truth about Torvald. In addition, Torvald needed to grow by not having Nora give into his needs. When Nora sees that Torvald treats their marriage like a social contract instead of an emotional relationship, she realizes that she never truly knew him as a person, and that she never knew herself. In order to grow, she had to leave.
The quest to realizing our true potential is an individual one, and it begins when we decide to stop living for others and start living for ourselves.
Ghosts
This play is a criticism of uptight Protestant society which contains more evil than it purges. The story begins simple, and suddenly grows more complex and insane.
Summary
The play begins with the basic premise. Mrs. Alving is setting up an orphanage with her pastor, Manders, in honor of her deceased husband.
But soon, we learn more dirty truths. Mrs. Alving's husband was incredibly unfaithful. In her first year of marriage, she tried to run away from her loveless marriage, but Manders convinced her to stay, making her feel guilty for abandoning her duties as a wife. She bore him a child, but after a while, she deemed the situation too unstable for him to live with them. She sent him away. When her husband died, she started the project to create the orphanage as a way of insuring that her son would never inherit any of his money.
At this time, her son Oswald has returned to see her for the first time in years. Her housemaid Regina is very happy, and she plans to get hitched to him. When her father Engstrand wants her to leave and join him as he establishes a home for sailors, she sends him away. When Oswald comes home, they have sex in the kitchen.
Another detail is revealed. Oswald and Regina are actually half siblings. Regina's mother had an affair with Oswald's father, and Engstrand adopted Regina as his own as to rescue her mother from social persecution. Mrs. Alving is perfectly fine with their affair, because she enjoys seeing the conservative structure attacked.
It is also revealed that Oswald is dying of Syphillis, which he received from his father before he was born. His hope was to have Regina take care of him for his last years of life.
When it is revealed to Oswald and Regina that they are half-siblings, Regina leaves. Oswald sits in despair and pain, and asks his mother to give him morphine to put him out of his pain. The play ends with Mrs. Alving deliberating the decision and Oswald loses consciousness.
Analysis
I think this play is more relevant to the 19th century than now, but there are a number of messages that it communicates that can be understood by a modern audience.
Mrs. Alving tried to find an explanation for why her life was so miserable. She started to see that her problems came from the society they lived in, and not her. Much like Nora, she started to search for her potential as a human being.
At one point she talks about the books that she has read.
"Well, they [my books] give me an explanation or a confirmation of lots of different ideas that have come into my own mind. But what surprises me, Mr. Manders, is that, properly speaking, there is nothing at all new in these books. There is nothing more in them than what most people think and believe. The only thing is, the most people either take no account of it or won't admit it to themselves."
That perfectly states a concept that I have been thinking for a very long time. All of these philosophy books speak about the same things. All art talks about the same human feelings. Luke once said, "People pee the same way they did centuries ago." Once you discovered the truths of life, you see that the truths have always existed, but each person must find them in their own way. Sometimes, I wonder how some people respond to some of my more recent blog posts. I imagine some people think "I know exactly what you're talking about," while others think "this sounds interesting but I don't quite understand it." That's alright. The goal of my talks, and such books, is to try to find that right word or sentence that triggers an insight into the reader. The material is much the same.
I admit, there are still some things I do not understand. There is another quote said by Mrs. Alving that I have been thinking about, but I don't know quite how to decipher it. Perhaps some of you do.
"Ghosts. When I heard Regina and Oswald in there, it was just like seeing ghosts before my eyes. I am half inclined to think we are all ghosts, Mr. Manders. It is not only what we have inherited from our fathers and mothers that exists in us, but all sorts of old dead ideas and all kinds of old dead beliefs and things of that kind. They are not actually alive in us; but there they are dormant, all the same, and we can never be rid of them. Whenever I take up a newspaper and read it, I fancy I see ghosts creeping between the lines. There must be ghosts all over the world. They must be as countless as the grains of the sands, it seems to be. And we are so miserably afraid of the light, all of us."
Throughout the play, many truths are hidden. These hidden truths cause more damage than they would if they were unhidden. If Mrs. Alving were allowed to leave her unfaithful husband, she could have amounted to something in her life. If Regina knew about her real father, she wouldn't have engaged in incest. Though the truths are painful, the lies have created worse side effects.
An Enemy of the People
This play is an attack on government. I think it might be my favorite play of the bunch.
Summary
Dr. Stockmann is the medical officer of the municipal baths in his town. His brother, Peter Stockmann, is the mayor of the town, and he appointed Dr. Stockmann to the position. These public baths bring people from different areas, and sustain the small town's economy.
However, Dr. Stockmann discovered a serious issue with the baths. They are all infected with disease, and those who use them become sick and die. He had a sample of water sent to a scientific facility that confirmed his suspicious. Now, his plan was to let the public know so that people could be saved.
However, Peter Stockmann did not want that to happen. Repairing the baths would take a good 2 years, during which tourists would find other baths to visit. The business lost would destroy the economy of the town, and Peter thought it was more important to preserve the town and its economy rather than public safety.
Dr. Stockmann thought about it for a while and decided that even with the economic issues, it was important that he do the world justice and tell the truth about the baths. He went to the liberal newspaper who promised to print the article.
However, after a talk with Peter Stockmann about the economic repercussions, they changed their mind.
Dr. Stockmann was very upset by this. He viewed it as his duty to send out his message. He arranged a town press meeting where he would share his message.
During the conference. Peter Stockmann tried to discredit him, telling him he had no proof for his claims and that he was an enemy to the people. Those who wished to maintain their jobs agreed.
Dr. Stockmann launched into a speech about how the compact majority believes in obsolete truths, and it is revolutionaries like him that move society forward. He ridicules his brother, the liberal press, and the majority. He proclaims that he will stop at nothing to reveal the truths about the baths, even if that meant destroying the town.
For this he was deemed An Enemy of the People, and citizens chased him down and vandalized his home. He and his family members lost their jobs, and his children were shunned from school.
He considered moving to the New World, but he decides to stay instead and move society forward. His family stands bravely behind him.
Analysis
This play is filled with so many brilliant lines about revolution. I will list some of them.
"A normally constructed truth lives, let us say, as a rule seventeen or eighteen years, or at most twenty years; seldom longer. But truths as aged as that are always worn frightfully thin, and nevertheless it is only then that the majority recognizes them and recommends them to the community as wholesome moral nourishment. There is no nutritive value in that sort of fare, I can assure you; and, as a doctor, I ought to know. These "majority truths" are like last year's cured meat-like rancid, tainted ham; and they are the origin of the moral scurvy that is rampant in our communities."
"He thinks what his superiors think and holds the same opinions as they. People who do that are, intellectually speaking, common people."
"I only want to drum into the heads of these curs the fact that the liberals are the most insidious enemies of freedom--that party programmes strangle every young and vigorous truth--that considerations of expediency turn morality and justice upside down--and that they will end by making life here unbearable."
"Broad-mindedness is almost precisely the same thing as morality."
"The strongest man in the world is he who stands most alone."
Throughout history, revolutions have always started with a small minority, and are then adopted by the majority. Nowadays we know that slavery is wrong, but I'm sure most people did not have the guts to say that two centuries ago.
Dr. Stockmann has a very strong character. Preaching for a cleansing of the baths was a very brave thing to do. Not only was he risking the safety of the economy and social structure, but he was also risking ruining his personal life. He had a wife and three children in need of support. Despite this, he continued to preach his message. At first his wife was wary, but then she boldly joined him. Though Dr. Stockmann lost his job, got his home vandalized, got his kids essentially kicked out of school, and became labeled an "Enemy of the People," he continued to fight for his people.
Still, it is clear that Dr. Stockmann has an overconfidence, that he did not consider the complexities of the situation completely. He assumed that because he was right, things would have to change, and when they didn't, he spited all of the people in his city. Dr. Stockmann is not just a hero fighting against corrupt leaders. It is so much more complicated than that.
Everyone had the town's best interests at heart, and this led them to take different actions. Peter chose to help the town over saving people's lives. Dr. Stockmann chose to save people's lives over preserving the town. Is Peter necessarily evil for wanting to keep people's jobs? Is Dr. Stockmann necessarily good for destroying the economy by fixing the baths?
Still, I think the essential point of the play was to support revolution, to remind people that sometimes when you stand for what is right, you stand alone.
Interestingly enough, An Enemy of the People was Ibsen's response to the criticisms he received for his play Ghosts. Many people were outraged by it, but he knew it started a revolution.
Bibliography
Ibsen, Henrik. Four Great Plays. Trans. R. Farquaharson Sharp. Classic Reissue ed. New York: Bantam Dell, 2005. Print.
No comments:
Post a Comment