A true master at exploring the human heart, hope and fear, joy and sorrow. I might go as far as to say Henrik Ibsen is my second favourite playwright at this point, only after Shakespeare. I read, watched and listened to Hedda Gabler a while back and completely fell in love with the character, even though she’s not a likeable or commendable woman. If you’re going to give Ibsen one chance, I’d wholeheartedly recommend Hedda Gabler, especially if you like Anna Karenina. Since then, I’ve been getting to know other works by Ibsen, the 19th-century Norwegian playwright. I’m going to tell you about five plays by him, Brand, A Doll’s House, Ghosts, An Enemy of the People, and The Wild Duck.
1. Brand (1866)
Brand is the name of the protagonist, a fiery, uncompromising priest who believes in absolute ideals and total sacrifice. He meets a happy young couple on the way to his home village. His shocking speech about God and his fearless attempt to help a dying man attract the young wife Agnes. The villagers are also much impressed and ask him to stay. He agrees, marrying Agnes who leaves her first husband, and they settle in a sunless valley.
Brand is zealous and wholehearted towards his mission but he’s an unyielding, unfeeling hard man. When his mother is dying, he refuses to visit her unless she renounces ALL her wealth and pride. The messenger says she begs for you to come, she would give away part of her money. Brand says no and sends the messenger away. The messenger comes again and says she would give away nine-tenths. Brand insists it has to be 100%. And she dies.
There are other extreme examples of his hard heart. The doctor advises him to move to a warmer climate for the sake of his baby boy, he refuses to leave, and the baby dies. His grieving wife asks to light candles on the window sills so the spirit of the baby can look into their room and see the Christmas tree, he orders her to close the shutters and forbids her to cry. When a gypsy woman pushes into the house and demands clothes for her child, Brand pressures Agnes to give all their son’s clothes away. She tries very hard to obey him and follow his way, and it kills her. Brand is left alone, rejected by the community. In the end, facing an avalanche, he hears a mysterious voice questioning whether salvation lies in love rather than law.
I find my usual way of close study quite difficult to apply to Ibsen because I can only see it through translations. There are a lot of symbols and motifs I notice but don’t fully understand. For example there is a witch who is haunted by a hawk and kills it in the last scene; what do the small village church and the ice church in the mountains stand for.
The play discusses Brand’s sometimes admirable, sometimes destructive “all or nothing” philosophy; it discusses the cost of spiritual and personal sacrifice versus one’s religious convictions; it discusses the character of God, what is God truly like. I cannot tell if Ibsen is approving or critical of Brand. That’s one reason I think it feels a bit like Shakespeare—we are not given the answer, just a flawed character struggling against himself and the world.
Brand is for me the most difficult and the most fascinating story on this list. The theme of the story is religion. I think those of you who enjoyed my Jane Eyre series would find this thought-provoking.
2. A Doll’s House (1879)
The Radio Drama I listened to adapted this play to an Indian setting, which I think works the theme out brilliantly. Nora Helmer, whose name is changed to Niru, is a cheerful, somewhat frivolous wife, doting on her children and husband, Tom, who has just been promoted to the chief of the tax office in Calcutta. Tom adores Niru as an exotic plaything, calling her skylark and palm squirrel. He has a strict view on morality; he sacks an Indian employee Das as a punishment for his shady money lending business and forged signatures. But there’s something that Tom doesn’t know. Niru secretly took out a loan from Das years ago to save Tom’s life, forging her father’s signature. Das threatens to reveal the truth unless Niru persuades Tom to give his job back. Niru fails and a letter arrives from Das threatening to reveal everything.
Knowing how relentless Tom is on this moral flaw, the emotional pressure inside Niru is suffocating. She thinks of death to protect Tom’s reputation. When the letter is opened, Tom’s reaction is revealing: he cares only about his own reputation and the happy and perfect facade of his marriage. The climax is quite unexpected. I thought the main conflict would be how Niru and Tom deal with the truth and the aftermath of the scandal, but instead, the threat is retracted and all is well. Surprisingly, that’s where the climax comes in. Niru realises that she has been treated like a “doll” her whole life—first by her father, then by her husband. She is never taken seriously as an intelligent responsible human being. She is literally a pet, a skylark and a palm squirrel. Will Niru choose discovering her true worth and identity or keeping a happy marriage and living an easy luxurious life?
Ibsen often has a woman as the protagonist of his plays. Even when they’re not the main character, they play a key part, like Agnes in Brand. I don’t know much about Ibsen, but his portrayal of women’s internal struggles is excellent. You’ll enjoy this if you appreciate a fine feminist story featuring a young heroine on a journey of self-discovery.
3. Ghosts (1881)
Like in A Doll’s House, a woman, Mrs Alving carries the weight of the next story; she appears in almost every scene. One of the discussions that happens in A Doll’s House is the impact of parents’ sins on their children. That discussion carries on as a major theme in our next play, Ghosts, published in 1881. This story is for those who love a family tragedy.
Mrs Alving has spent her life preserving the illusion of her late husband’s respectability, despite his debauchery and infidelity. She builds an orphanage in his name to symbolically rid herself of his legacy. Her son, Oswald, returns from Paris, suffering from a mysterious illness—later revealed to be congenital syphilis, inherited from his father (which is scientifically incorrect—congenital syphilis is a condition passed on from the mother, which deserves discussion of its own in the context of the play). Oswald has romantic feelings for the maid Regina, who turns out to be his half-sister, a child of his father Mr Alving and a maid. Oswald slowly realises his father was not who he had thought he was. Regina leaves the house bitterly disappointed and angry, hinting that she doesn’t care about throwing away her prospects and ruining herself. The play ends with Oswald begging his mother to euthanise him if his illness renders him helpless.
All the characters are haunted by the ghosts of the past. The chief ghost is the recently deceased Mr Alving, who never appears in the story, but is at the centre of every conversation and every scene. According to Mrs Alving, who has suffered terribly and worked to the bone to preserve the illusion of the marriage and reputation for years and years, according to this poor woman, Mr Alving appeared as a respectable gentleman, but was in fact a beastly alcoholic, idle and lazy, unfaithful to his wife. However later on, also from Mrs Alving, who cares about ideals rather than truth, we discover that Mr Alving wasn’t always an alcoholic and idler. Mr Alving was deeply unhappy and Mrs Alving might have been a jailer who, for appearance sake, locked his unhappiness and himself up altogether. This is my personal reading and interpretation, you need to find out yourself what you think about the couple.
4. An Enemy of the People (1882)
Oswald briefly mentions society’s attitude towards work in Ghosts: Is work a punishment, or is work a way to have a fulfilled life? This theme appears in our next play, An Enemy of the People, published a year later than Ghosts, in 1882. This is the most masculine play on this list. Another theme that An Enemy of the People shares with Ghosts is the importance of truth. Ghosts discusses family and personal truth, An Enemy of the People discusses truth in politics, on a community and society scale. It seems to be a matter of fact and goes without saying that the public always wants the truth from the authority, but this play tells a different story, especially when truth is in the way of money. Will truth always prevail? What does it cost for a man to speak the truth?
Dr. Thomas Stockmann, the town’s medical officer, discovers that the town’s public baths—central to its economy—are contaminated. He shares the news with his wife, and friends from the local newspaper, who are eager to publish the story. Stockmann’s brother, Peter, the mayor, arrives and warns him to keep quiet, fearing the ruin of the economy and reputation of the town. Thomas refuses, insisting that public health must come first. Peter threatens Thomas with dismissal and social disgrace. Thomas is stunned that the town’s leaders would suppress the findings to protect their financial interests. The press, initially supportive, also turns against him. Thomas becomes more defiant, determined to speak the truth no matter the cost. And at a very sweet moment, his practical-minded wife, who has been persuading him to back down and think about their future and young children, decides to stand by him to speak the truth.
Thomas is branded an “enemy of the people”. The mayor and those in authority manipulate public opinion and impress upon people that Thomas tries to destroy the town’s economy while in fact he cares deeply about the well-being of the town. Thomas is ostracised: No press will print his findings, no place will let him speak.
He decides to hold a public meeting in a friend’s house to present his findings directly to the townspeople. but the meeting is hijacked by Peter and others who label him a traitor. The crowd turns hostile. Thomas delivers a passionate speech—not just about the baths, but about the moral corruption of society and the tyranny of the “majority.”
Thomas and his family get home and discover their house is vandalised. He has lost his job, his home is under attack, and his children are being expelled from school. Yet he remains defiant, partly because of his conviction, partly because his family and a few close supporters remain loyal, which makes such a difference to the overall spirit of the story. Compared to Brand, who is zealous and committed to his ideal in a similar way, Brand’s wife and child die for it, which is so much more bleak, and makes us question his decision. But with the full support of his family, Thomas Stockmann is an absolute hero in the face of a sea of enemies. He declares that truth and integrity matter more than public approval, and the individual who stands alone in the right is the strongest.
The play is a political drama and I enjoyed it more than I expected. It discusses topics like the conflict between truth and economic interest, the courage of individual conviction and the cost of speaking out, family loyalty and civic duty, the dangers of majority rule and the manipulation of public opinion.
5. The Wild Duck (1884)
The Wild Duck is a tragedy about the Ekdal family, and the themes are truth and illusion, and the destructive power of idealism. Ekdal lives in a humble house with his father, his wife Gina and 14-year-old daughter Hedvig. The grandfather lives in a fantasy world, pretending to hunt in their attic, where they keep a wounded wild duck that Hedvig is deeply attached to.
Gregers Werle, a childhood friend of Ekdal, returns home and tries to “liberate” the Ekdal family by exposing long-buried secrets: Gina had a romantic relationship with another man before she was married to Ekdal and that her daughter Hedvig may not be his biological child. Gregers does it because he believes that truth will do them good, so that the family doesn’t live a lie. In reality, the revelation breaks the family into pieces. Ekdal does not have the backbone to face the truth and solve the problem, instead he storms off without the maturity to have a decent conversation with Gina, who has loved and served him wholeheartedly for 15 years. Hedvig, desperate to prove her love to the father she adores but now shuns her, sacrifices her wild duck and takes her own life.
The husband Ekdal is the character I dislike most on this list. He’s similar to the husband in A Doll’s House, who does not see the value and worth of his wife. However, though Tom in A Doll’s House proves to be a self-serving man, he is at least good at his job, has moral integrity and professional principles. Niru’s fear for Tom is a fear of justice.
Ekdal is a failure whose pompous self-importance is unconditionally accepted by the love of his family. Instead of being grateful and working hard in return, he thinks of himself as a genius and a king. His photography business was set up with another’s money and he doesn’t earn enough to support his family, but he thinks so highly of himself that he is dismissive about taking on small jobs and making portraits for ordinary people. His wife runs the business for him as well as the household. He feels entitled to bring home guests demanding nice meals on the spot, without any concern for Gina’s anxiety about money or workload. He’s a big baby who can’t live independently. When he threatens to leave Gina, he can’t even pack his own bags. He says I’m leaving straightaway but can’t find his hat, and then has the cheek to sit down and eat at her table.
At the end, Gregers believes he sees Hedvig’s death has brought out the greatness in Ekdal—it has made him a man. It’s shocking to hear the doctor, a family friend, refutes that in nine months’ time little Hedvig will be nothing more to Ekdal than a good subject for pretty speeches. Gregers’ idealism hasn’t brought new birth in Ekdal, it only brings death to a child. Ekdal will not change and Hedvig dies for nothing. I would have always said that it’s better to have the truth. I still think so. But I’m not quite sure what to do with people like Ekdal who cannot face the truth.
Apparently Chekhov was critical of The Wild Duck, but The Wild Duck is the one that reminds me of Chekhov most. Maybe give this a try if you like The Seagull.
Have you watched or read any of these? Which is your favourite Ibsen plays?
A Day of Small Things 