Photo: Wilse, © Museum of Cultural History, University of Oslo. University of Oslo. History, © Museum of Cultural Wilse, Photo: 1905. Christiania 8, (Oslo) on July 1, Arbins gate home in in Henrik Ibsen’s Taken nora’s sisters nora’s

nora’s sisters E-808 © Marianne Heske/BONO, Oslo 2006 © Marianne Heske/BONO, Installation 2002 Marianne Heske: Marianne Heske: Original manuscript for ” A Dolls’ House” in Ibsen’s own handwriting own in Ibsen’s House” A Dolls’ Original manuscript for ” 1907 Women are given a limited 1936 The Worker Protection Act 1959 An Act is passed allowing 1974 The Act relating to Allodial take the spouse’s name as family 1984 The Storting approves of most senior official in a university, 1999 Berit Ovesen is the first right, depending on income, to vote gives the mother a right of work separate income tax assessment Tenure is amended. Sons and name, or retain his and her own making gender equality a principle at the University of Oslo. woman Colonel in the Armed in the general elections for the leave 6 weeks prior to delivery and of husband and wife on certain daughters are equally placed with name. In the same way, parents for the Armed Forces, valid at all Forces. national assembly (the Norwegian 6 weeks after birth, and stipulates conditions. regard to the order of inheritance of may choose the children’s family levels. 1993 “Fathers quota” – four Storting). that she could demand to return to allodial property. name. If the National Register is weeks of parental leave – is 2001 Afshan Rafiq is the first her job after taking this leave. Girls and boys of compulsory not informed within six months 1985 New rules are added in exclusively earmarked the father, ethnic minority woman to be 1910 Women obtain the right to school age are to receive the same 1975 The Kindergarten Act. The of birth, the child automatically the Seamen’s Act, e.g. the same and is forfeited if the father does elected into the Parliament. vote in municipal elections. 1937 An act is adopted introducing teaching and curriculum. municipalities are required to takes the mother’s name. minimum age of service for girls not utilise this right. a mandatory maintenance allowed prepare a programme for the and boys. 2002 An updated and revised 1911 Anna Rogstad takes her seat to the spouse in cases of divorce. Norway ratifies the ILO Convention establishment and development of 1981 Gro Harlem Brundtland A new “Time account scheme” version of the Gender Equality Act as first woman member of the no. 100 on equal pay, leading to the kindergartens. becomes the first woman Prime 1986 The Storting adopts a new enables parents to take portions is accepted by the Parliament. The Storting. (She was originally deputy 1938 Women are given general establishment of Equal Pay Council. Minister. Action Plan to Promote Equal of their paid parental leave in act now also includes protection member.) access to public offices, but 1977 The Working Environment Status. The Government is combination with part time against sexual harassment, as well appointment to the clergy has to be 1961 Trade Unions and Norwegians Act gives extended rights to A new provision (§21) is added appointed, women making out 44 resumption of work. as requiring public organisations 1912 All new laws gives women approved by the Church Council. Federation of Employers conclude maternity leave. The National to the Equal Status Act requiring per cent of the Minister Posts. This and private companies to develop right of access to the most a framework agreement for the Insurance Act is amended to give representation of both sexes on stakes out a new trend for female 51 percent of graduate students policy plans on gender equality. public offices, but not to Cabinet 1939 The High Court decides that implementation of the principle of 18 weeks paid leave (previously all public committees, boards, etc. representation in Governments to with higher degrees from Ministerial appointments. marriage does not constitute equal wages. The first woman vicar, 12 weeks). A Family and Equal The Government adopts the Action come. university are women. The Government imposes grounds for dismissal. (Married Ingrid Bjerkås, is ordained. Status Department is established Plan to Promote Equal Status measures to hinder domestic 1913 All women obtain the right to women’s right to paid employment at the Ministry of Consumer Affairs between the sexes (Proposition 1987 From now on and until 1993 The first women bishop, Rosemarie violence, for instance by vote in the general elections. was criticised strongly during 1964 A new Personal Names’ Act. and Government Administration. no. 122 to the Storting. 1980-81). the maternity leave is modified Køhn is ordained. introducing alarm protection for the interwar period of mass Women are allowed to retain their The Research Council of Norway annually, starting at 18 weeks, women exposed to violence. 1915 The Castberg Act is launched. unemployment.) maiden names upon marriage. establishes the Secretariat for 1982 ILO-recommendation no. reaching 42 weeks in 1993. All Kirsti Kolle Grøndahl is chosen as The act protects children’s rights, The child takes the father’s family Research on Women. Women are 165 and convention no. 156: ministries prepare their own the first woman to be President The Storting ratifies an extended irrespective of whether its parents 1945 Kirsten Hansteen becomes the name. allowed to attend officers’ training Equal opportunities for women Action Plan to Promote Equal of the Storting (the second restriction order as a measure are married or not. first woman member of the cabinet. school. and equal treatment of women Status. highest position in the Norwegian towards the prevention and She was consultative member for 1965 Aase Lionæs becomes the first in working life: “Employees with Constitution, next to the King). elimination of violence against 1920 The phrase stating that “a care of prisoners and refugees, in woman President in the Storting as 1978 The Act concerning family obligations”, is ratified by 1988 The Equal Status Act § 21 is women. woman must obey her husband” the coalition government. vice-president in the Lagting. Termination of Pregnancy allows the Storting. Equal status agree- strengthened. There must be at A new provision is added to is removed from the Marriage women to make the final decision ments are included in the Main least 40 per cent representation of the Municipal Act indicating 2003 A new paragraph in the Service. 1948 Aslaug Aasland is made 1966 The National Insurance concerning the termination of Agreement (Trade Union Federa- each sex in all public committees. procedures to ensure 40 per cent Gender Equality Act comes into Minister of Health and Social Act. Better rights for unmarried pregnancy. tion/Employer’s Federation), and representation of each sex in force and obliges all employers, 1921 Karen Platou becomes the first Affairs, and is the first woman to mothers. in the agreements between the 1990 The constitutional Law municipal committees, boards both public and private, to account woman elected into the Storting. become head of a ministry. Eva Kolstad becomes the first State on the one hand and the is changed so that women can etc. for the current state of gender 1968 Lilly Helena Bølviken becomes gender equality ombudsman in the main confederation of trade un- become heirs to the Norwegian equality in their enterprise. This 1922 Women are allowed to serve 1950 A new Citizenship Act. the first woman Supreme Court world. ions and the Norwegian Unions Throne on the same terms as 1994 Sexual- and other forms of information is compulsory in the as Cabinet ministers. Women retain their Norwegian judge. of Teachers on the other. New men (in force for those born after harassment are forbidden under annual report. citizenship on marrying foreigners. 1979 The Equal Status Act Parents and Children Act. A com- 1990). the Working Environment Act. 1924 The first Health Centre for But children of a Norwegian mother 1971 Temporary Act concerning enters into force, including a mon act for all children. The Act 2006 A quota of at least 40% mothers is established in Oslo by and a foreign father are given the divorced/separated couples. Gender Equality Ombudsman and establishes parents equal respon- 1991 New marriage Act. One 1995 The right to unpaid parental representation of either gender Katti Anker Møller. father’s nationality. (These provisions lasted for 10 Appeals’ Board. New provisions sibility, and strengthens children’s spouse can demand separation leave is extended from one to in governing boards of private years until they were integrated in the marketing Act concerning right to self- determination and without consent from the other three years. shareholding companies regulated 1925 Åsa Helgesen becomes the 1952 The clergy becomes fully open into the National Insurance Act.) sex discrimination advertising. participation in decisions. spouse and without referring to by law. first woman Mayor, in Utsira. The to women. The national curriculum for schools The Citizenship Act is amended. the reason for the separation. 1996 The Government approves Municipal Board consist of 11 establishes that active efforts Children with Norwegian mother 1983 The Storting approves of of ethical guidelines for State The “fathers’ quota” – the women (elected from a special list 1956 The Ministry of Family and shall be made to promote equality (and foreign father) are from now giving women general access to 1992 Changes in National employees against buying and parental leave period exclusively of women) and 1 man. Consumer Affairs is established. between the sexes. on granted Norwegian citizenship. military service together with insurance gives up to three accepting paid sexual services. earmarked for fathers gets The special Act concerning men, serving the same amount of pension points a year for unpaid extended from five weeks to six 1927 A new marriage Act, in women’s access to public office is 1972 The Equal Status Council is 1980 Amendment to the Personal months. care of children under seven 1997 The Centre for Gender weeks. principle, gives equal economic and repealed. established. Names Act enters into force. When years. Lucy Smith becomes the Equality is established, replacing legal rights to husband and wife. marrying, a person can choose to first woman rector, that is the the Equal Status Council. Source: The Norwegian Centre for Gender Equality - ISBN 82-7937-029-3 Nora’s sisters Nora’s sisters

Published by: Norwegian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, August 2006 P.O. Box 8114 Dep. 0032 Oslo

E-mail: [email protected]

Editor: Norwegian Ministry of Foreign Affairs Consultant: Janne Lexow Design/prepress: Arild Eugen Johansen Photo editor: Verena Winkelmann Printing: Oslo Forlagstrykkeri

More copies of this publication may be ordered from: Departementenes Services P.O.Box 8129 Dep. NO-0032 Oslo www.publikasjoner.dep.no

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ISBN 82-7177-011-X E-808 Nora’s sisters

www.ibsenworldwide.info Photo: © Ryan Pyle, 2006

Zhou Ya Jun plays the part of Hedda in the play Hedda Gabler performed in Hangzhou, China. Table of contents

Foreword...... 6

Who’s afraid of Nora Helmer? - Hanna Andrea Kraugerud...... 9

Another Ending - Kåre Willoch...... 15

Doll’s House, Power House, Human House - Noeleen Heyzer...... 19

Wonderful Nora - Suzanne Brøgger...... 25

Wild Duck Fathers - Jørgen Lorentzen...... 39

What Helmer Said - Brit Bildøen...... 49

Ibsen as Analyst of Power: A Scene from The Lady from the Sea - Toril Moi...... 57

Norwegian Gender Equality Milestones...... 64 Foreword

Henrik Ibsen (1828-1906) was the right to vote, to own property in constantly experimenting and their own name, to open a bank pushing boundaries in his account or to retain custody of their writing. children in the event of divorce. They were, in fact, minors. Ibsen believed Ibsen provoked his contemporary in women’s freedom to make their audience. His plays were controversial own choices – whether good or bad as they unveiled many of the truths – and in their right to define their and conflicts that society preferred to values and the way they want to live. keep hidden. He raised issues such as sexually transmitted diseases, the As this publication shows, there are unequal status of women in both the many contrasting views on Ibsen, on public and the private sphere, social the effect of his plays and on the stigma, fraud, betrayal and financial issue of gender and equality itself. insecurity. Ibsen highlighted how Ibsen continues to provoke, and his individuals are often guided by hidden plays still generate heated debates, motives in their relationships with especially on women’s rights and others and how social norms can be gender equality. at odds with the real needs of people. Ibsen demonstrated the way women Ibsen raised fundamental questions in particular were suppressed by the about human relationships, social rigid gender roles defined by the conditions and the dilemmas facing conventions of marriage and society women. But he did not provide the at large. The opportunities open to answers; he did not show women Norwegian women at the time were (or men) how they should lead their extremely limited. They did not have lives. He proposed neither changes

 to government policy nor specific In 2006, we are marking the measures. As a result, each new centennial of Ibsen’s death. This is generation of women in every an opportunity to pay homage to our country, whether developed or great playwright and the role he has developing, can consider the played as society’s conscience. questions Ibsen raises in their own context. Ibsen touches our lives individually and collectively in various ways. The Since Ibsen’s plays were published, idea behind these seminars is to women in many countries have present Ibsen as a dramatist who gained a great deal of freedom to can inspire and challenge us today. determine their own role both in the His plays bring new perspectives to family and in society. However, the issue of gender equality, and women all over the world still meet present contrasting views. We hope barriers that prevent them from that these seminars will provide an participating fully in all arenas. opportunity to discuss gender issues, share experiences and raise public Norway’s foreign policy and develop- awareness. Our aim is to promote ment cooperation focus on promot- better understanding of the past and ing gender equality. We believe that to identify new directions for the Ibsen’s plays can play an important future. part in these efforts through the ­issues they raise.

Jonas Gahr Støre Erik Solheim Minister of Foreign Affairs Minister of International Development

 Photo: Arnt E. Folvik/All Over Press

The Norwegian ski jumper Anette Sagen has been a pioneer in female professional ski jumping. HANNE ANDREA KRAUGERUD

Who’s afraid of Nora Helmer?

We have to keep wrestling with everyday fare. But they will be nothing Ibsen and his women if they are more than paper tigers as long as we to stay alive and kicking. use the easiest strategy for relating his works to the present day, relying on “Ibsen’s themes are still quite the appeal of values we already agree threatening today. His plays are on. Each time a superficial, canonised censored in several parts of the interpretation of Ibsen is churned out world. For it is the big questions he by well-meaning actors and producers, writes about: personal freedom, another nail is hammered into his gender equality, abuse of political literary coffin. power, corruption, abuse of children, idealism.” For what can an audience gain from a theatre production that sets out to This was Bentein Baardson’s response confirm established values only a to the timely question posed at the dictator, a racist or a sexist bigot beginning of Ibsen Year 2006, “Is would be offended by? It is true that Ibsen still relevant today?” It is a equality, democracy and freedom of question that asks us readers to take a the press are contentious issues in fresh look at the originality of these many countries outside Scandinavia, texts and the way they can broaden as Baardson indicates. Using Ibsen our horizons, to rewrite, reinterpret and as a trade name for democracy criticise Ibsen’s eternal dramas. Radical towards countries that need stirring interpretations of Ibsen have become up in this way can only be seen as

 Nick Waplington: from Living room, 1991 © Nick Waplington positive. But the fact that Ibsen is The dilemmas that arise in relating politically explosive in other countries Ibsen to the present day are well does not justify the continual illustrated in the area of women’s reiteration of the same politically rights. Are we, for example, to correct interpretations here in interpret his female leading parts as Norway. Not only do these important mouthpieces for feminist performances overshadow other slogans, or are Ibsen and his audience interesting elements in the plays, in better served by readings that look at the worst cases they express a kind people’s rights not just women’s of complacent imperialism, where rights, as Ibsen himself put it? Ibsen’s critical voice is channelled towards those who are not part of “I am interested in the Nora of our our own cultural circle. time – the ski jumper Anette Sagen. Daring to fly off a ski jump, to soar If we regard Ibsen first and foremost through the air and feel completely as a tool for making real improvements free…” says film director Aslaug to society, the following uncom­ Holm, referring to Ibsen’s best known fortable question begs to be asked: female character. “I am Nora,” says Is Ibsen really the best tool we have Nobel Literature Laureate Elfride for promoting democracy, justice and Jelinek, with reference to being the women’s rights throughout the “woman who leaves”. We know what world? Or would it be better to leave they mean; they are strong, this job to the human rights courageous, gifted women who organisations, the UN and Médicins refuse to accept limitations, and are Sans Frontières? It may seem a silly striving to reach targets on the other question, but it illustrates how side of traditional gender barriers. problematic it is to legitimatise Ibsen in terms of political correctness. As But is Nora really a relevant role Harold Bloom pointed out, it is a sign model for women in 2006, as is of literary decline when you are suggested here? Elfride Jelinek and considered eccentric if you claim that Aslaug Holm are identifying with an literature does not depend on established interpretation of Nora as philosophy and that aesthetics cannot a heroine living out her own life, be reduced to ideology or untouched by all the other startling metaphysics. and ambiguous elements that can be

11 found in the play. But this interpretation Rather than consolidating the safe, es- has a stronger basis in the accepted tablished interpretation, which ulti- feminist truths of our time than in an mately could make the character of unbiased reading of the original text. Nora superfluous, Arnhild Skre, armed Today’s established Nora, with her with her own experience as a modern sound common sense, is the woman woman, tackles Nora from an original Nora would have to be to represent angle. But she stays within the con- the modern values we want to export fines of the text. Some would say that through Henrik Ibsen. Nora’s one-sided experience as a housewife makes her a poor model for It is this that threatens Ibsen’s survival. most modern Norwegian women. It is The story of the liberated woman is (for- of course possible to transpose Nora’s tunately) fairly well established in our simple wish for an education and a full- day, and we don’t need Ibsen to help us time job to a modern Norwegian wom- understand her. Indeed there may well an with higher education, a full-time be ways of putting the message of lib- job and several young children, who is eration across far more effectively. feeling the pressure of time and is get- ting divorced because she wants to If A Doll’s House is to remain relevant find a new direction in life. But the con- in countries such as ours, where di- nection is not as obvious as the heroic vorce is readily available and women version of Nora would suggest. She participate freely in the labour mar- could just as well be portrayed as a ket, we need readings that show us white trash mum who gets the idea of something new. A good example is taking a correspondence course in the interpretation of Nora by Arnhild book-keeping. But sadly I have yet to Skre in the literary periodical Vinduet see an overweight, chain-smoking last year as a pathetic, melodramatic Nora in a dirty track suit drinking Diet figure, “The woman who was so ca- Coke in front of the Oprah Winfrey pable when her husband needed Show. help, walks out of the door with no idea of how to help herself... Nora When represented one-sidedly as an would have to take better care of her- early champion of women’s liberation, self if she was going to impress, in- Henrik Ibsen fills no greater role than spire or have a liberating effect on our valuable, but replaceable, me.” ambassadors overseas. But if we go

12 for the jugular, both Ibsen’s and his This article was first published in the women’s, we are giving them the magazine ”Ny Tid”, March 3 2006. chance of immortality. Being innovative is always easier said than Hanne Andrea Kraugerud (b. 1980). Norwegian done, but we should at least refrain writer and philosopher. Graduate student in from consolidating an Ibsenian philosophy, University of Oslo. Author of the books: feminism which left the original play “Give me your heart” (Kagge, 2005) and “Three long ago, and is now living its own essays on Ibsen” (Gyldendal, 2006) politically correct life in a stereotyped information brochure.

13 Lene Ask: Helmer’s House, 2006 © Lene Ask KÅRE WILLOCH

Another Ending

Thoughts on how the conflict in The original lines (translated by William Archer) are in italics. Willoch’s version Ibsen’s Doll’s House could have is in the right hand column shown with ended. The new ending was gray background. presented at the TVIVL Conference “Ibsen’s doubts and our own”, Copenhagen May 5-7 2006.

HELMER. [Sadly.] I see it, I see it; an abyss HELMER. [Sadly]. I see it, I see it; an abyss has opened between us.– But, Nora, can it has opened between us. – But, Nora, can it never be filled up? never be filled up? NORA. As I now am, I am no wife for you. NORA. As I now am, I am no wife for you. HELMER. I have strength to become another HELMER. I have strength to become another man. man. NORA. Perhaps- when your doll is taken NORA. Perhaps – when your doll is taken away from you. away from you.

HELMER. To part- to part from you! No, HELMER. To part – to part from you! No, Nora, no; I can’t grasp the thought. Nora, no; I can’t grasp the thought. NORA. [Going into room on the right.] The NORA. You’re thinking along the more reason for the thing to happen. [She wrong track. I am not talking comes back with out-door things and a about divorce in the legal sense, of

15 small travelling-bag, which she places on a abandoning the outward aspects chair. of our life together. You ought to HELMER. Nora, Nora, not now! Wait till understand, as any mother knows to-morrow. from the instant she holds her first born in her arms, that she will NORA. [Putting on cloak.] I can’t spend the never, never abandon her children. night in a strange man’s house. If necessary, she will eat at the same table and live under the same roof as a man she no longer respects in order to give her children what they need most of all, the security of a mother and father. But the miracle of miracles in our relationship, Helmer, the devotion between a woman and a man who love each other, that disappeared the moment I realised that to you I was never more than a toy, an adornment, a doll.

HELMER. But can we not live here, as HELMER. But can we not live here, as brother and sister-? brother and sister-? NORA. [Fastening her hat.] You know very NORA. But Helmer, that’s precisely well that wouldn’t last long. [Puts on the what I’m saying! Because in your shawl.] Good-bye, Torvald. No. I won’t soul you let me down at the most go to the children. I know they are in better critical moment, because you hands than mine. As I now am, I can be were unwilling to sacrifice nothing to them. anything of importance to your self-respect for the sake of your HELMER. But some time, Nora- some time? wife, I can never again be NORA. How can I tell? I have no idea what anything to you but a fellow will become of me. human being living in your house, to whom you must keep a distance HELMER. But you are my wife, now and as if she were your sister. always! Everything else has come to an end! But for the sake of our NORA. Listen, Torvald- when a wife leaves children, for the sake of their her husband’s house, as I am doing, I have

16 heard that in the eyes of the law he is free security, we must both sacrifice from all duties towards her. At any rate, I any other form of self-realisation. release you from all duties. You must not So let’s join forces in this venture, feel yourself bound, any more than I shall. which is, after all, a responsible There must be perfect freedom on both person’s prime obligation, my sides. There, I give you back your ring. dear brother! Give me mine. HELMER. That too? NORA. That too. HELMER. Here it is. NORA. Very well. Now it is all over. I lay the keys here. The servants know about everything in the house- better than I do. To-morrow, when I have started, Christina will come to pack up the things I brought with me from home. I will have them sent after me. HELMER. All over! all over! Nora, will you never think of me again? NORA. Oh, I shall often think of you, and the children, and this house. HELMER. May I write to you, Nora? NORA. No- never. You must not. HELMER. But I must send you-

NORA. Nothing, nothing. HELMER. I must help you if you need it.

NORA. No, I say. I take nothing from strangers. HELMER. Nora – can I never be more than HELMER. Nora – can I never be more than a stranger to you? a stranger to you?

17 NORA. [Taking her travelling-bag.] Oh, NORA. [Taking her travelling-bag.] Oh, Torvald, then the miracle of miracles Torvald, then the miracle of miracles would have to happen- would have to happen-

HELMER. What is the miracle of miracles? HELMER. What is the miracle of miracles? NORA. Both of us would have to change so NORA. You would have to change in that- Oh, Torvald, I no longer believe in such a way that I could see that miracles. you and your honour were no longer your main concern. I HELMER. But I will believe. Tell me! We would have to see that you were must so change that-? willing to renounce what men so NORA. That communion between us shall be strongly desire in order to keep a marriage. Good-bye. [She goes out by the your children and give them hall door.] everything they need, together with a woman who would no HELMER. [Sinks into a chair by the door longer be yours but in the legal with his face in his hands.] Nora! Nora! sense. [He looks round and rises.] Empty. She is gone. [A hope springs up in him.] Ah! The HELMER. Yes, Nora, that is my miracle of miracles-?! [From below is wish, for the renunciation you heard the reverberation of a heavy door mention is well deserved, and the closing.] task you set before me is, after all, the greatest task of all! THE END NORA. Then duty will take the place of joy in our lives. But perhaps we will wake up to see that it is precisely duty that gives us deeper joy.

Kåre Willoch (b. 1928) has a long political carreer in the conservative party in Norway. He was Norwegian Prime Minister (1981-86). He retired from the Parliamant in 1989. Willoch has since been active in political and social debates in Norway.

18 NOELEEN HEYZER

Doll’s House, Power House, Human House

During this special year, we eventually the need for women to celebrate the life of the Norwegian be agents of change – to redefine poet, playwright and genius, themselves and the values they Henrik Ibsen. want to live by. Ibsen did not offer a final solution to women’s dilemmas. Ibsen was blessed with the rare However, his plays promoted insight into the human soul and was reflection and he offered thoughts a master at depicting the individual and ideas regarding social justice in turmoil. He pushed the boundaries and equality. in his writing, focusing on issues that stirred the 19th and 20th His themes resonated powerfully centuries and continue to touch the across time and across the world raw nerves of the 21st century. He beyond Scandinavia, Australia and explored life behind the facade, New York. In the early 20th century dramatizing the hidden conflicts, the Ibsen had a profound influence on stigmas of society, the moral Asian societies in search of a dilemmas. He showed what was “modern self”. His work was behind the closed doors of families, introduced to China in 1907 by Lu of institutions and of society and Xun, the father of modern Chinese where strategies were also literature. During the social formulated. He challenged the social fermentation in post-imperial China norms of gender relations in which culminated in the May 4th marriage and in society and Movement seeking to overthrow the

19

feudalism and patriarchy, Lu Xun and House”, was an ordinary woman other writers looked to Ibsen for who dared to break away and shape inspiration to build a modern society. a different life. Today we, “Nora’s sisters”, are still getting up and His play, “A Doll’s House” and the shaping new possibilities. We do not character Nora stimulated discussion always leave a husband but often a on feminism in China in the 1920s social norm, an expectation of how and 1930s. In 1923, Lu Xun delivered we must behave and the injustices a lecture to a woman college entitled and social inequalities we are asked “What happens after Nora Leaves to accept: work that lacks security, home?” He felt that Nora’s liberation violence against women, the spread would be short-lived. Without a of HIV/AIDS, wars that waste lives society fit for women and without and turn children into soldiers. economic security and rights, Nora would be forced either to sell herself Nora’s sisters want houses – not or return to her unhappy marriage. doll’s houses but houses where He said, “The crucial thing for Nora they belong – the power houses of is money”…. “money cannot buy governments and house of freedom, but freedom can be sold for representatives where they can help money.” shape a better human future. Today, as we celebrate 100 years after In Ibsen’s plays, the unfolding of the Ibsen’s death, we also celebrate the human drama was no longer driven appointment of the first woman by kings and patriarchs, by Head of State in Africa, in Liberia bureaucracies and influential people. and the first woman Head of State His characters were ordinary people. in Chile. From Rwanda to India, All were given credible voices in the women are becoming significant plot, with their own vision, hopes players in parliament and village and personal goals. Nora, in “Doll’s councils.

Today, compared to even five years ago, we have 20 women ministers of Finance who can ask “where is Lu Xun holding a speech outside the High the money for women’s

© Stroemfeld Verlag School in Peking 1932. development?” From their positions

21 © Christophe Calais/In Visu/Corbis

Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf became the new president of Liberia in November 2005. She is the first democratically elected female Head of State in Africa. of power, their powerhouses, these This year, we indeed bear witness to women leaders take action to the mastery with which Ibsen create the spaces where justice, accomplished his poetic tasks. His peace and hope can thrive and spirit lives on. where our world can be shaped to be a house fit for both women and Noeleen Heyzer (PhD) is the first executive men and for all our children – a director from the South to lead UNIFEM, the leading human house fit for all! operational agency within the United Nations to promote women’s empowerment and gender equality. She has been the policy adviser to Asian governments and in 1994-95 she played a key role in the preparatory process for the Fourth World Conference on Women in Beijing.

23 Faith Ringgold: For the Women’s House, 1971 © Faith Ringgold SUZANNE BRØGGER

Wonderful Nora

When Henrik Ibsen introduced Feminist women’s liberation to the Nordic In the 1970s, the heyday of feminism, countries in 1879, sparking there was no doubt: Nora had become discussions of gender roles in a feminist. She stopped wearing a bourgeois Norwegian living bra and went to the Femø women’s rooms, he set a whole new agenda camp; she was to be found in every that had revolutionary conse­ grass-roots group campaigning quences. against patriarchy, phallocracy and male chauvinism. A Danish critic A Doll’s House was anticipated ten reviewing my first book, Deliver Us years earlier by John Stuart Mill’s from Love, suggested that this was essay The Subjection of Women, where Nora went. It may not be as which was translated by Georg ridiculous as it sounds; once she has Brandes in Denmark. But philosophy gained new insight into her situation, is one thing, and real-life drama quite Nora knows that she has to educate another. Before Ibsen showed us herself in a new way. Nora’s solution to her dilemma, no one could have imagined a woman The contraceptive pill was the corner­ going anywhere, and certainly not stone of the emancipation of the leaving her family. And for many 1970s and the whole revolution in years, the unanswered question intimate relationships. Today, 30 years remained: Where did Nora go? later, at a time when sex is being constructed and deconstructed,

25 fertility – both women’s and men’s – I have had elderly aunts whose visiting is impaired by stress and pollution, cards gave their husband’s name only, and the people in the new doll’s and who had his name alone inscribed houses have to plan for new family on the name plate outside their flats, members at fertility clinics, the gender they themselves remaining nameless. question is once again becoming a Where is Nora’s home? Where does radical one. Thirty years after the she belong? legendary women’s liberation movement, mature (i.e. aging) women, The scenography does, however, hint who used to cultivate the “soft man”, at where Nora’s place might be. Two now want the hard version. doors lead off from the room that forms the backdrop to the play. One Hard or soft – times change, and leads to Helmer’s study, and the fashions and men change accordingly. other to the hall, and on to the outside Ibsen’s purpose lies somewhere world. Between the two doors beyond the fluctuations of this cycle. stands a piano. And it is here, perhaps, So it is inevitable that we keep that we would place Nora – in a returning to this old play with fresh sphere of music, dreams and fantasy. curiosity. And if he really is the great Somewhere between outer and inner writer we acclaim him as, he must demands, beyond the reality principle bear continual reinterpretation and – Ibsen anticipates Freud – where the keep giving us new answers. burdens of culture can be put down for the time it takes to play a minuet What is A Doll’s House – or, for that matter, a tarantella. Ibsen about today? has been considerate enough to The first surprise is in the dramatis equip this room with various china personae, where we find Torvald ornaments and other bric-à-brac. Is Helmer, a lawyer, listed as the main this the lady of the household’s character. Further down we learn contribution to a home that has no that he has three small children, but real place for her? not who has borne them (his wife?), and neither do we really know where Nora is portrayed at the beginning of his wife lives, as “The action takes the play as a content, cheerful and place in Helmer’s flat”. This is not generous young lady, a lover of food necessarily the home of both spouses. and pleasure, with macaroons in her

26 pocket, a young wife who gives twice new designer kitchen that promotes as much as is asked of her. But we happy family life, of a security that sense the underlying tension right at does not exist. the start of the play: here is someone who is giving the double of what is Nora’s husband, Torvald Helmer, asked, who perhaps has a dual Manager of the Savings Bank, is personality. A magnanimous woman conscious of the responsibility entailed who is seen by her partner as a sweet by his secure, permanent position, and little creature. Already, in the dramatis his good income. His position rests on personae, the scenography and the the family foundation, and he knows full opening lines, a brilliant dramatist is well that it will only hold for as long as it anticipating the whole drama seething is solid and solvent. It is therefore only beneath the surface. logical that Nora’s apparent dreaminess must give way for Torvald’s sense of Nora seems to believe that the four responsibility and reality: walls of the home are the ultimate protection against the dangers of the “Very well, Torvald, if you say so.” outer world, including creditors – who are “just strangers” – while Ibsen’s There is a sense of relentlessness in purpose is to demonstrate that she the drama Ibsen intones in the play. is under an illusion – and so are we. Will this irresponsible young woman The privacy of the home, one of the grow up? Will the weaker party in spoils of the bourgeois social the relationship develop? And what revolution, is not at all the bastion of will be the consequences? Or to put security middle class families the question in more modern terms: faithfully put their trust in. Just as Will the dark, weak sides of the today, when the holy nuclear family, individual grow and threaten the the child treated as a fetish, shows a whole (false) harmony that the façade similar disregard for our present-day both hides and hints at. creditors, for the global accounts that are being drawn up outside the We are all asymmetrical, with split garden gate: homelessness, personalities and raw surfaces. This terrorism, and the war for resources. is why we have the eternal problem We protect ourselves with brand of two people in a relationship names and style, dreaming of the developing in different directions, the

27 balance between them being upset, aspects. She wants to redress it, and all the inevitable conflicts that while Helmer prefers the status quo ensue. As long as the trophy of and would like to retain the imbalance modernity – individualism – remains just as it is. a value, there will still be personal development and deviation. So the However, the characters in Ibsen’s question is, even today: How can plays are driven on by their two people develop together without subconscious, whether they want to a risk of developing in different be or not. And we find ourselves directions? caught up in the drama, as part of the audience, rather than distant The questions raised in the play are readers or know-alls who have all the unsolvable, and can only be resolved answers. We are powerless to by living them out. intervene, but we identify with the characters as they move towards the Helmer may sense right from the abyss. Who owes what to whom? beginning that behind the song-bird’s Ibsen’s collected works constitute an “featherbrained” approach to money endless thriller. A real “who dunnit”. there may lie a more masculine And the author sees that he is the aspect. The skylark, the song bird, main suspect, the person most likely may not be so childishly feminine. to be the murderer. After all she’s just like her father – it’s in her blood, these things are “The miracle” hereditary, as Helmer points out. But It is here in the doll’s house that Nora just wishes she had inherited the difference between the little more of her papa’s good qualities. Christmas secrets and the great revelation, the miracle, will be Ibsen had a unique talent for letting disclosed. the subconscious speak, and allowing his characters to be drawn, albeit And the most important thing you reluctantly, from the stream of words can ever owe anyone is life. that flows from their lips. Nora has indicated that there is an imbalance Nora has saved Torvald’s life. She is in her personality, in her upbringing, not at all the tinsel-Christmas- between the masculine and feminine decoration woman she pretends to

28 be; her disguises conceal a true that actresses constantly complain magnanimity and an unwillingness to that there are not enough parts for compromise. How can this deception women who are no longer skylarks be maintained? reflects the conditions of society today – despite a century of Inside this extravagant, irresponsible campaigning for equality. skylark there is a breadwinner with her feet on the ground and a heavy Ibsen’s method responsibility on her shoulders, an Mrs. Linde is not the only role that ascetic, who is willing to renounce sheds light on who Nora is. Ibsen pleasures and do without. This is an also reveals aspects of Nora’s aspect of Nora that is clearly character through two other minor personified in her friend, Mrs. Linde. parts, Krogstad and Dr. Rank. Using Nora has been sitting up transcribing characters as mirrors to reflect each until after midnight to pay down the other’s subconscious has come loan that enabled them to travel to to be regarded as part of Ibsen’s Italy, the trip that saved Torvald’s life. method, and has inspired a number of other writers here in Denmark, “It was almost like being a man,” she particularly Karen Blixen. The says. drama’s core question is thus not so much whether the Helmer family The most explosive imbalance in a can stay together, whether Nora relationship is when one of the leaves or not, but whether they as partners has to hide their talents to individuals will be able to become avoid envy, breakdown or just an whole people and heal the various unpleasant mood. Nora says it splits in their personalities by gaining straight. If Torvald knew her secret it insight into their own hidden motives. would spoil everything between None of Ibsen’s characters are who them, and their lovely home would they pretend to be. Those who are never be the same again. And, one portrayed in the most positive light could add, society as a whole might are often the worst; those who seem be quite different if there was greater most naïve are the most calculating and more equal representation of – as in the case of Nora. women in management positions, on boards and in politics. The fact Krogstad is, as his name suggests, a

29 Tejal Shah: What are you?, 2006 © Tejal Shah/Courtesy of Thomas Erben Gallery, New York. man who can catch people on his hook, moving into their splendid new home, and whom poverty has taught to fish oblivious to their future decline. in troubled waters. Krogstad knows where Nora’s weak spot is – the The family idyll in the doll’s house is disparity between the power she has based on a lie. The song bird must had over her husband’s life and her have a clear voice to sing with – no complete lack influence over him. false notes. How long can the song bird stay in the air? Sooner or later Krogstad, the hook on which Nora is she will have to land – when Krogstad hanging, represents society’s formal gets her on his hook. The hook they laws, which take no account of the both will hang on. Both have deeper human law relating to life and committed the worst crime of all. death – the law that Krogstad himself Both are guilty of forgery. Nora is in is subject to. Will Nora save his life debt to Krogstad and in that as she saved her father’s and her connection has falsified a signature. husband’s? This moral obligation has But in a way – in an Ibsenian way – not been formalised. The law is not Nora’s false signature is true. It concerned with motives and thus – in reveals her secret identity, the Nora’s and our own eyes – it is a very performance the doll’s house stupid law. requires of her.

Nora and Krogstad are conspirators, For young people today, who switch both at the edge of an abyss, both at identities on the Internet and live in a risk of suicide. Who has power over world where identity is not a them? Who controls whose commitment but something that can reputation? be constructed and deconstructed through designer labels and the At the edge of the fictitious names of pop stars, it may abyss be difficult to understand why forgery The candles are being put on the is the worst, the absolute worst Christmas tree. Nora is decorating the imaginable crime. Living in a society doll’s house and they will celebrate where role play is a popular leisure Christmas at the edge of an abyss. activity, we ask ourselves, “Does We are reminded of the Buddenbrook anyone have a true self? And would family in Thomas Mann’s novel, this be desirable? If my true self is a

31 loser and my false self is more It is the vapours of this ancient successful, why not choose the swamp that Nora can sense at the winning role?” beginning of the second act – she feels she is approaching a place Today a true signature will only be where people may be a danger to found in the finger prints given at the themselves and to others, where ballot box in Iraq or at the “immigration” they no longer know who they are. desk at Kennedy Airport, and these too may well be falsified. Meanwhile, Helmer used to get jealous when Ibsen is staking the truth of a name, Nora mentioned people she had liked the authenticity of a character as a back at home. Nora has had to cut counterweight to a fancy-dress herself off from her background in costume. order to fit into this bourgeois room, the ideal of the doll’s house. The only It is the graphologist versus the Wall link to her own world is her old nurse, Street businessman, or a modern Anne-Marie, but her nurse is also a Gucci terrorist disguised as one. reminder that she is still essentially a child. And it is as a child that Nora “Domestic terrorist” best fits into the feminine sphere of Helmer gives a name to Nora’s crime the doll’s house, deprived of all and declares her to be a kind of responsibility and decision-making “domestic terrorist”. A person who power. She doesn’t even choose her forges a signature infects the whole life own fancy-dress costume. Torvald of the home and poisons the children. has had it made in Italy, and Torvald Such poisoning is generally the fault has decided that she shall wear it to of the mother, he maintains. Fathers the forthcoming fancy-dress party, represent the formal laws, but we, just as he has decided that she will with our feminine sense of justice, are perform the tarantella as a Neapolitan drawn down into a more ancient, more fisher-girl. For the Manager of the swampy terrain. “Nearly all young Savings Bank is also musical; he men who go to the bad have had lying plays the piano and takes care of the mothers,” Helmer concludes. choreography. And he can describe the aesthetic difference between embroidery and knitting.

32 Façades and brand the side of the truth she represents, names but, it turns out, he does not. So, in a The observation “Torvald can’t bear to way, they are already separated, their see dressmaking” touches the very home is already (morally) broken, nerve of bourgeois male-dominated regardless of how many Christmas society – or the prevailing lie at the trees are lighted. time. The façade must shine, the costume must sparkle, just as in the The family friend Dr. Rank, the ailing age of the brand name, while the doctor who suffers from consumption suffering beneath the surface, the of the spine as a result of his father’s stitches that hold it all together, must syphilis, is Nora’s other shadow. be hidden at all costs. It is a question Through the very nature of his illness, of maintaining the scenographer’s he raises questions about the ability to seduce, to sell the product, psychological and sociological factors to camouflage crime, forgeries, of sexual instinct, and bodes deficits and deceit. dissolution of the inner being. His diagnosis, his status is: bankrupt. If it were not for the realities of the outside world, Nora could have Nora and Dr. Rank share the fate of continued her existence as a puppet being condemned by another’s actions. and could safely have allowed Torvald Nora will go to jail for saving her to pull the strings. She could have gone husband’s life. Dr. Rank will pay for his on playing at being a squirrel, performing father’s excesses with his own life. For tricks and dancing on a moonbeam for Dr. Rank’s father was too fond of her husband. But she has a debt to pay. asparagus, fois gras, truffles, oysters, In the world outside, she owes money port and champagne. The syphilitic’s to Krogstad, and she has a debt to pay menu translated into the language of to society for her crime. But above all, the Oslo parlour, anno 1879. she owes it to herself to live according to her own truth. Dr. Rank knows, as Nora does, that Helmer cannot stomach the foul- The play could have had a happy smelling truth behind the façade, and ending if Torvald had been part of the that he must therefore be kept from reckoning. But sadly, he is not. Nora his friend’s sick bed, soon to be his assumed that he would join her on deathbed.

33 Dilara Begum Jolly, Mukti © Ibsen Commemoration 2006

Images of Ibsen’s Life and Plays, an exhibition in Dhaka, Bangladesh. You should not take away a person’s suspicious. Why was Nora so life lie, as Ibsen is well known to have determined to save her husband’s acknowledged. But this is exactly life? Was the real reason that she what Ibsen always does. And acting wanted to keep at any cost the the part of skylark in a doll’s house is authoritative father figure who would not Nora’s only life lie. There is more protect her from her own true desires to it than bird song and fancy-dress and (self)destructive passions? parties. There is also this family When we try to balance the accounts friend’s genuine erotic fascination of love, we see that there is an with her, which she chooses to element of duty in Nora’s feelings for interpret as harmless affection. her husband. She is afraid of him, Nevertheless she envisages the she needs him as head of the family, possibility of exploiting his interest to but there does not seem to be much pay down another instalment on the pleasure involved. He, on the other loan from Krogstad. hand, regards her with desire – his secret fiancée, his little bride, his Stroke of genius pretty doll. Again this is a stroke of genius on the part of Ibsen. Nora is no better Can the doll’s house accommodate than Helmer when it comes to life the new situation? Nora dances the lies. And Nora too finds security in tarantella a bit too easily. She reveals the façade. Her life is also divided that beneath the skylark image there into an upstairs and a downstairs. is a bird of prey. Her successful Love resides upstairs, personified performance, which gives free rein by her father and her husband, and to her eroticism, is also a death the more unbridled passions are dance. Nora and Dr. Rank have let loose downstairs in the maid’s become allies, and together they room, among the servants and the have danced into the kingdom of attractions of the (syphilitic) life below death. She turns down her husband’s stairs. A division between those one advances and is far more concerned loves and those one would rather be about what the two of them – she with. Ibsen has placed Dr. Rank in and the doctor – are to be at the the latter category. next fancy-dress party, to which the doctor replies that he will be wearing The reader immediately becomes the “Invisible Hat.”

35 Sex and disease This is one of Helmer’s key lines. Dr. Rank announces his forthcoming Nora’s change of clothes after the death by leaving a visiting card with fancy-dress party represents the a black cross over his name, and undressing of their marital relationship. we hear that he has gone away like Truths are bared. a “wounded animal”. The image of the wounded animal, the castrated, Helmer has in fact kept his part of life-threatened creature, is one that the bourgeois family contract, and he Nora and Dr. Rank share. The doctor intends to continue to do so in the has inherited a sexually transmitted future. Nora will remain his child disease from his father, while Nora bride, and he is willing to be a father has inherited the disease of her sex to her. He will be her will and her through social norms and conventions. conscience. It is Nora who breaks Ibsen is more than hinting at the close the contract, and from now on will connection between the rampant have to take responsibility for her will venereal diseases of the time and the and her conscience herself. well established norms that suppress women. Nora’s new self-awareness brings her into contact with the masculine Helmer realises that the doctor is aspect of herself, and she decides to necessary for his and Nora’s leave the infantilising sphere of the happiness. It may be that it was the family, its repressive tendencies and presence of their family friend that attractions. made it possible for Mr. and Mrs. Helmer to live together. They are Eternal question being drawn closer to the crisis, to How can anyone develop within a the edge of the abyss, where the family? This is the eternal question. doll’s house is in danger of collapsing Just like Helmer, Nora has dreamt like a house of cards. It is here that of “the miracle”, where her husband the “miracle” is to happen. would appear as a knight in shining armour and rescue her from the real “I’ve often wished that you could be world. The miracle would in fact be threatened by some imminent Torvald sacrificing his life, his honour, danger so that I could risk everything for her. I had – even my life – to save you.”

36 But Torvald has revealed in a moment Paradoxically, love, the “miracle”, of anger that just where Nora had comes true for two of the minor hoped he would act like a man, he characters in the play, Krogstad and did not. And that is perhaps the most Mrs. Linde, who have been through telling thing about the marriage. The such hard times and have put all their “miracle” would be the ability to sorrows and disappointments behind overcome the recurrent disappoint­ them. ments of the real world. Their relationship bears little resem­ But Nora makes her choice when blance to society’s concept of she withdraws her wounded pro­ happiness and success. The “miracle” jections, and cuts all the ties that comes about in an unexpected way have forced her to lie and dissemble; for this ship-wrecked couple who and she enters into a new illusion – have no parts in the role play of the misconception that you can only respectability and marriage. Where be yourself, you can only stand on all is lost, love may grow. your own feet, if you are alone. Translated into English from Kjell And the future awaiting Nora as a Risvik’s Norwegian translation of the divorced woman with no money and Danish text. no education in the society at the time can be read about in the works This article was first published in of writers like Amalie Skram. “A- magasinet” May 19 2006.

Ibsen leaves his main character in a Suzanne Brøgger (b. 1944). Danish writer, poet classic Kierkegaardian double bind. and essayist was born in Copenhagen. Her debut Whatever she decides to do will be novel “Deliver us from Love” (1973) whose topic wrong. It will be wrong to stay and it was concerned with the problem of liberating will be wrong to go: oneself, was translated into twenty languages. Her subsequent works includes “Crème Fraîche” ( 1978) “Marry, and you will regret it. Do not and “The Jade Cat” (1997), a study of a collapse of marry, and you will also regret it. a family. In 1997 she became the third woman ever Marry or do not marry, you will to become a member of the Danish Academy. regret it either way.”

37 Kari Gisholt Noddeland: Osvalds father, 2003 © Kari Gisholt Noddeland JØRGEN LORENTZEN

Wild Duck Fathers

In the play The Wild Duck Henrik continuity/discontinuity. In The Wild Ibsen illustrates three fathers by Duck the focus is on the family presenting three different forms relationships, or the “family sorrows,” of fatherhood: the patriarchal and more precisely, the family father, the fallen father, and the represented through the father-child loving, but helpless father. relationship.

They are significant forms of I can hardly think of a more pervasive fatherhood in Ibsen’s drama that motif in Ibsen’s works than correspond to actual father roles in fatherhood. However, fatherhood is Ibsen’s time. not what most of us associate with Ibsen’s dramas. Fatherhood lies in In the play we meet three real father the background, ahead of the drama figures in three father-child relation­ and underlying the dramatic , 2003 © Kari Gisholt Noddeland ships: Werle-Gregers, Ekdal-Hjalmar, interactions and scenes. Fatherhood and Hjalmar-Hedvig. One key aspect is pervasive, yet kept discretely in of Ibsen’s dramas is the manner in the background. Osvalds father which he weaves together these father roles. He does not separate Ibsen’s dramatizations of fatherhood them as three distinct forms of are part of a contemporary social fatherhood, but instead demonstrates debate in which fathers and paternal how they are interconnected through authority are subjected to a sweeping

Kari Gisholt Noddeland: relationships, dissolutions and critique. The spotlight is placed on

39 the father, both on and off stage, and their 16-year separation; instead, he must explain himself. The role of their correspondence has been the father is not taken for granted. strictly businesslike.

The Wild Duck is especially effective Their family life has consisted of an at illustrating the significance that the ongoing battle between Mr. and Mrs. various father roles may hold for the Werle, and the most important fight next generation. Almost as in a novel, between the couple was for power we can read of the life connections over their son Gregers. In this fight between three generations in this we recognize gender-oriented tightly constructed drama. positions: Mrs. Werle is emotional and long-suffering, “sickly” and The Patriarchal Father “high-strung,” as Werle calls her. Old Werle in The Wild Duck is a Werle is rational and authoritarian. patriarch willing to do anything to save The rationality emerges since the his own skin, including abandoning marriage was not based on love, but his own son. But in the end Werle on economic motivation. Later it emerges as the only one who seems became apparent that Werle had capable of changing both his attitudes miscalculated, and a large dowry did and perspective on life, and the only not accompany the marriage. The one capable of creating a relationship economic motivation is clear in of truth and openness in his new Werle’s persistent hate, as expressed marriage to Mrs. Sørby. in the drama by Werle’s bitter comment: At the opening of the play, we become acquainted with Werle, both Werle [...] From being a child, you’ve as a “stud” who has had erotic always had a sickly conscience. It’s a escapes and as a father who, in his heritage from your mother, Gregers... instrumental reason, has not publicly one thing she did leave you. acknowledged for the past 16 years that he actually has a son. His Gregers. [With a contemptuous estrangement from his son is smile.] That must have been a bitter demonstrated in a number of ways. pill to swallow when you found you For example, Werle has not written had miscalculated, after expecting one personal word to his son during her to bring you a fortune. (VI: 196)

40 In the same conversation between results. On the contrary, he has failed father and son at the end of the third miserably. The fight between Mr. act, the father’s authoritarian role and Mrs. Werle, or a family drama also emerges. Gregers says: “I didn’t based on economics rather than love, dare. I was scared... too much of a leads to loss for both husband and coward. I can’t tell you how frightened wife, to the son’s blind, unrealistic of you I was then and for a long time idealism and, ultimately, to the death after, too” (VI: 196). Because Gregers of the illegitimate child. was so frightened of his father, he stayed away from him for 16 years. In 1884 The Norwegian National In the end, the loss of his son has Assembly debated the issue of separate cruel consequences for Werle, who property rights for married women. In a loses his heir when Gregers rejects petition dated 12 April 1884, Norway’s all his inheritance rights out of most acclaimed authors at that time, contempt for his father. Bjørnstjerne Bjørnson, Henrik Ibsen, Jonas Lie and Alexander Kielland wrote It is often overlooked that Werle loses to the Norwegian National Assembly, even more than this. He also loses requesting that women be granted his other potential heir, his illegitimate separate property rights. They also child, Hedvig. When Hedvig dies, this criticized the Assembly for its opportunity is also lost, and Werle unwillingness to go all the way and make finds himself completely alone again. these rights automatic. In April of the His loneliness is also expressed in same year Henrik Ibsen had begun particular passages when he touches writing The Wild Duck. Its theme was upon his own suffering. In a the consequences of a failed marriage, conversation with Gregers, he says: in which the issue of economics and “I’m a lonely man Gregers; I’ve always love played a key role. felt lonely, all my life; but especially now that I’m getting on a bit in years” The Fallen Father (VI: 148). He also says later: “Laughter The other form of fatherhood in The doesn’t come so easily to a lonely Wild Duck consists of the relationship man, Gregers” (VI: 150). between old Ekdal and Hjalmar Ekdal.

Werle’s authoritarian and economic The fallen father has received little rationality has not achieved any attention although this form of

41 Tina Barney: The Ancestor, 2001 © Tina Barney/Courtesy of Janet Borden Gallery, New York fatherhood was probably not too patrician villa in Skien to a smaller unusual in the 1800s. This omission house in the country. The father has a likely cause: The patriarch who never recovered from this fall from does not master the task of building their economic and social class. He a masculinity that is solid, acceptable died a poor, lonely alcoholic in 1877. and strong of character, and who thus falls by the wayside, leaves little Henrik Ibsen, who was the family’s source material about his own eldest son, left his father immediately demise. While bourgeois men write after his confirmation in 1843 and autobiographies about their probably made a visit home in 1850 masculine achievements, there are before leaving for Christiania. After very few who write extensively about this, father and son never saw each their own failures and unmanliness. other again. Nor did Henrik ever send a letter or greetings directly to his There is a much-discussed fallen father and this can be seen as father in the Norwegian material evidence of the pain the father’s from the 1800s, though, namely downfall inflicted on the son. Henrik Ibsen’s own family history. While historical documentation on His father, Knud Ibsen, was a Knud and Henrik Ibsen lacks successful businessman in Skien, ­reflections on the downfall, it none- who married Marichen, the daughter theless tells indirectly of the great of the well-to-do John Andreas emotional cost of such a downfall: Altenburg. When Knud Ibsen social marginalization, loss of face received an inheritance following the and position, isolation and loneliness, death of his father-in-law in 1830, cooling of family relationships the Ibsen family became one of the ­(between mother and father, as well most prosperous in Skien. However, as between father and son), and just a few years later in 1834-35, ­finally alcoholism and abject poverty. Knud Ibsen lost the entire fortune. In this context, the term unmanliness Partly due to over-investment and is relevant. Henrik Ibsen’s relation- poor management and partly due to ship to his father emerges, though, an economic recession, the family in the continual problematizing of fa- was forced to give up all its property. therhood throughout his works. The The family had to move from their most amenable of the fallen fathers

43 is possibly old Ekdal in The Wild than old Werle’s authoritarian egoism. Duck. Therefore, it is not his striking egocentrism, but his comical way of Old Ekdal experiences a greater fall taking himself too seriously that than Knud Ibsen. He is prosecuted makes him a rather pathetic and for illegal logging, imprisoned for wretched fellow. several years, and returns a broken man. His punishment is even harder This creates a strong ambivalence in to bear because his partner and the character; clearly comical, but friend, Werle, lets him down by utterly without self-insight into his allowing him to take all the blame for own comic effect, and at the same the illegal logging. He has been both time, clearly pathetic, but apparently punished and betrayed, and upon his with great self-confidence. return he finds that the man who betrayed him has become one of the Hjalmar behaves exactly the opposite city’s most prominent men. He seeks of what we saw in Henrik Ibsen’s isolation in the attic and drowns his relationship to his own father. While sorrows in alcohol. Old Ekdal has lost Henrik leaves his father at an early his masculinity and tries to restore it age and never sees or contacts him metaphorically by putting on his old again, Hjalmar and his father seek out lieutenant’s uniform once in a while each other in their sorrow over the and going on an illusionary hunt in father’s downfall. the attic. Hjalmar’s relationship to both his His son, Hjalmar Ekdal, is also greatly father and his illegitimate child Hedvig affected by his father’s downfall. He is unusual. He is the only man in the withdrew behind the blinds when his drama, and one of the few in all of father was imprisoned, he has since Ibsen’s works, who openly expresses moved into the dark attic with his love. For this reason, this part must own family, and we come to know be taken seriously, and I will do just him as a person with amazingly little that in the next aspect of fatherhood self-insight and inflated notions of his brought forth in The Wild Duck. masculinity and of his own role as provider. Hjalmar’s self-absorption falls into a totally different category

44 The Loving, but has disclosed Werle’s plot against ­Helpless Father the family, Hjalmar exclaims: Many Ibsen critics have taken Gregers’ plan in relation to the Hjalmar. I can’t tell you how I loved Ekdal family too literally. That is, a that child. I can’t tell you how happy genuine idealism lies at the bottom I felt every time I came home to my of his play-acting, and he knows the modest room and she would come truth about the Ekdal family’s false running across to me, with her poor foundation. sweet, strained little eyes. (VI: 235)

There are good reasons to doubt that Hedvig’s relationship to her father is Gregers’ discourse is the truest one also shown in a clearly positive light. in this work. Everything suggests She runs to meet him, sits on his lap, that Werle is Hedvig’s biological expresses love for her father and father and that Werle has actively manifests purity and goodness, manipulated the situation so that always seeking out love. As the Hjalmar is prepared to marry Gina. others, however, Hedvig is a product The other true narrative in this drama of the family she grows up in, and is in fact that Hjalmar clearly married her feelings of love are spawned Gina for love and that he has always from the Ekdal family and no other. regarded Hedvig as his own daughter, While Gregers and Hjalmar are each loving her more than anything else in in their own way negatively affected the world. Hjalmar has achieved a by their childhoods, Hedvig is the good marriage based on love rather exact opposite. She has grown up than economic motives, in contrast with love and expresses love. to the marriage of old Werle. Gregers does not see this. He is so Similarly, the relationship between deprived of love that he is not able to Gina, Hedvig and Hjalmar (and old see love when it is present. His Ekdal) is characterized by solidarity admission of the truth is therefore and a great deal of trust in and caring based on blindness to the truth that is for each other. There is love within right in front of him, the Ekdal family’s the Ekdal family, in contrast to the relative happiness. And it is in this Werle family. In a conversation with context that we must understand the Gregers in the fifth act, after Gregers inversion of the stage rooms.

45 The Werle family is wealthy, but indicate that he in fact is the father. loveless, while the Ekdal family is In many ways he is truly “a man with poor, but filled with love and warmth. a childish disposition,” as Relling Werle is characterized by a patriarch’s points out within the play. He trusts rationality and emotional absence, others with an absolute naivety and while Hjalmar is continually present, changes according to whom he is over-emotional and non-rational. talking to. The consequence of this is Werle’s choice of a spouse was that it becomes difficult to talk about based on economics, Hjalmar’s on Hjalmar as egotistical in the true love. meaning of the word since we can hardly speak of the presence of any However, it should not be ignored ego in Hjalmar at all. that Hjalmar’s ability to care is limited at times. His self-pity makes it When Hjalmar pulled down the blinds, sometimes difficult for him to show his mind and soul remained real caring. He forgets to bring undeveloped, and thus we meet a something tasty to Hedvig from the childish disposition with the same party at old Werle’s as he promised, longing for love as Hedvig. As a and asks her to be satisfied with a grown person who tries to act like an menu instead. He is not willing to adult, he becomes cowardly and take responsibility for her eyes when helpless, largely guided by the whims she takes over his job to earn money and suggestions of others (which he for the family, so that he can go up to does not manage to see through), the dark attic: except at home, where he attempts to play the role of the father. It is thus Hjalmar. But don’t ruin your eyes! a loving, but helpless father role that D’you hear? I’m not taking any he plays. responsibility; you have to take the responsibility yourself. Understand? A reading such as this, emphasizing (VI: 179) Hjalmar’s ability to love, makes the tragic aspect of the play emerge even Hjalmar is not a mature, responsible more clearly. Hjalmar becomes more father. He likes to be seen as the than a self-absorbed idiot without father in the house, but he does not the ability to understand what is act with the authority, which would happening. In his own way he has

46 tried to achieve a genuine marriage McFarlane. London: Oxford and give Hedvig a life of love. Gregers University Press. not only leads Hedvig into death – he also kills the attempt to establish a Ibsen, Henrik 1964: Ibsen’s Letter family based on love. Hjalmar thus and Speeches. Edited by Evert becomes even more of a tragic figure, Sprinchorn. New York: Hill and first subjected to old Werle’s game, Wang. then exposed to Gregers’ game, which he believes in just as much. Tosh, John 1999: A Man’s Place. He believes just as easily in Gregers’ Masculinity and the Middle-Class proposition as in Werle’s. The tragedy Home in Victorian England. London: lies in this combination of Gregers’ Yale University Press. false idealism and Hjalmar’s lack of inner strength and sense of Jørgen Lorentzen (b. 1956). Dr. art. in Comp­ responsibility. arative Literature. Associate professor at Centre for Women’s Studies and Gender Research, University The Ekdal family is the personification of Oslo. Researcher on gender issues, male roles of the patriarchy as comic tragedy and masculinity. Currently working on The History and a portrait of the infeasibility of of Fatherhood in Norway, a cultural study of the loving father role at the end of development and changes in modern fatherhood in the 1800s. Norway.

Bibliography Bjørnson, Bjørnstjerne, Henrik Ibsen, Jonas Lie and Alexander Kielland 1884: Skrivelse til Stortinget ang. gifte kvinners særeie. Oslo: Stortinget, Dokument no. 92.

Høst, Else 1967: The Wild Duck av Henrik Ibsen. Oslo: Aschehoug.

Ibsen, Henrik 1960: “The Wild Duck.” In The Oxford Ibsen, Volume VI. Translated and edited James

47 Mercy Moyo: Strings of Confusion, 2006 © Mercy Moyo BRIT BILDØEN

What Helmer Said

Ibsen was first and foremost desperation, Ibsen did not himself concerned with people’s lack of serve it on a platter. The truths in his will or opportunity to live a life of plays are numerous, and it is up to us truth and freedom. to find them. These truths are fluid, depending on the perspective taken. There is one particular reason why Historical perspective, the director’s we never cease to be intrigued by A angle and our own experience all in- Doll’s House, Peer Gynt, The Wild fluence our interpretation. Duck, Hedda Gabler and Ibsen’s oth- er plays, and that is that the charac- A Doll’s House has meant a lot to ters in his dramas are always search- many people, but it has been ing for the truth in some way or other. particularly important for the female They are searching for their inner core half of mankind. The drama played a and how best to live their lives. key role in the past century’s greatest Throughout the century we recently political movement – the women’s put behind us, a century character- liberation movement. Nora’s rebellion ised by individualism, this theme was against a man who did not appreciate perceived as fresh and exciting. The her as a human being, and against a reason why Ibsen’s dramas have not society that gave women very little lost their vitality, but can still be pre- freedom, has acquired great symbolic sented and experienced in new ways, value. For 125 years Nora’s famous is that while letting his characters statement, that before all else she is grope for truth in varying degrees of a human being, has been a beacon

49 for countless women. But attempts crutches, and this time there was to cast Helmer as “the bad guy” and not even applause when Nora left Nora as “the good girl” have not him. Somehow the woman’s victory always been easy – except perhaps lost some of its luster when her male in the 1970s. The characters are counterpart was left abandoned and simply too human. This was one of incapacitated. As we see, the verdict Ibsen’s strong points, one that would of the 70s was so harsh that Helmer make him and his characters had to be played with crutches. immortal. He created complex characters and wove the ties Nora and Helmer in between them into intricate fabrics China that nobody is quite able to unravel. Agnete Haaland had an in some ways similar, yet quite different, Nora and Helmer in experience when she was playing the 1970s Nora in a Chinese production in 1997. In several interviews, Liv Ullmann She noticed that if the audience has told a revealing story from when was young, it supported Nora with she was playing Nora on Broadway shouts of encouragement. On in 1975. Since this was in the heyday the other hand, the more mature of women’s lib, Nora was the great audiences vociferously expressed heroine, and Sam Waterston, who their sympathy for Helmer. But in was playing Helmer, had a hard time this production, Helmer had studied inspiring any enthusiasm for his in the West, and had brought the character. At the last rehearsals, at Norwegian Nora back to China. The which an audience was present, he conflict between Nora and Helmer is was booed outright. Waterston was therefore not only a marital conflict, upset by this, and wanted to quit. but also a cultural clash between Ullmann suggested that they should a Western woman and a male do yoga before the dress rehearsal representative of the old China. Here, to bolster his resolve. As a result, he the man still wears the pants, and sprained a toe and had to use a small losing face is the worst thing that walking stick on stage. This proved can happen. Seen in this perspective, to be just the thing. There was Nora’s financial manoeuvres are the no more booing. At the premiere, acts of a Western woman who, due Watson had upgraded the stick to to lack of respect for Chinese culture,

50 causes great harm to her husband. still live in the same kind of bourgeois Therefore, many in the audience society that inhibits us and deprives breathed a sigh of relief when Nora us of our freedom. took her bags and walked out the door. But seen from a different One of the most disturbing scenes in angle, Nora was rebelling against the play is the “macaroon scene”, in the establishment, and this could be which Helmer completely infantilises interpreted as an allusion to rebellion Nora, but where it also becomes against Mao. Perhaps she could in clear that Nora is resorting to lies and fact play a useful role out there. So deceit: Nora’s departure elicited approval among the young and relief among HELMER. [Threatening with his the older members of the audience. finger.] Hasn’t the little sweet-tooth Therefore nobody was upset by her been playing pranks to-day? exit in China. NORA. No; how can you think such a Those wretched thing! ­macaroons Ibsen’s Nora became a symbol of Helmer. Didn’t she just look in at the the women’s liberation movement, confectioner’s? but Ibsen was first and foremost concerned with people’s lack of will Nora. No, Torvald; really – or opportunity to live a life of truth and freedom. And in this respect, women Helmer. Not to sip a little jelly? were indeed at a disadvantage in Ibsen’s time. The playwright was Nora. No, certainly not. crystal clear about one thing: Without truth there can be no change and no Helmer. Hasn’t she even nibbled a real freedom. But he does not lecture macaroon or two? us, and he does not venture into psychological analysis. Rather, he Nora. No, Torvald, indeed, indeed! explores the place of the individual in a given context. A question that must Helmer. Well, well, well; of course be raised in connection with Ibsen’s I’m only joking. family dramas today is whether we

51 Merry Alpern: Shopping, 1999 © Merry Alpern/Courtesy of Bonni Benrubi Gallery, New York Nora [Goes to the table on the right.] express what the protagonists are I shouldn’t think of doing what you not capable of putting into words. disapprove of. These concepts become the core of the drama, or rather the black hole Here, Nora has just stealthily eaten a that everything revolves around. macaroon and brushed off the Indirectly, Ibsen gives us a key to crumbs. Of course it seems silly of what is going on inside the characters, her, but we find his behaviour even to their deepest, darkest, strongest more objectionable. And perhaps we feelings and desires. Again and again think “Thank God we don’t go on like we can discuss what Nora means that nowadays!” But wait a second… when she longs for the “the miracle Don’t we? Today’s women hide their of miracles”, and what it signifies impulse purchases at the back of the when, at the very end, Helmer utters wardrobe, so that when the new the same phrase. handbag or jacket finally emerges, they can exclaim “But I bought it Ibsen gives us quite a few clues as to ages ago!” Even today, the idea is what Nora means. To her “the miracle apparently to pull the wool over of miracles” would be to find the Helmer’s eyes. But what impact do evidence that she is so desperately such “macaroon scenes” have in looking for, to prove that Helmer is, Norwegian homes, now that most in fact, the strong, wise husband she women are financially independent? hopes and believes him to be. She That is not easy to determine. But wants proof that he is worthy of her there is reason to believe that in many love and of the sacrifice she has cases women still need to fight for made by borrowing money to save their freedom. his life. To Helmer, those same words express his hopes of getting Nora “The miracle of back, at least as he utters them. But ­miracles” it is possible they will take on greater The key phrase “the miracle of meaning for him too, if only he lets miracles” has counterparts in several them resound in his mind for a of Ibsen’s other plays, for example in while. “the unspeakable” in The Lady from the Sea. In these plays, abstract, There is no end to the discussion enigmatic concepts are used to about what happens to Nora after

53 and me, we must make no outward she slams the door behind her, and change in our way of life – no some of the many interpretations of outward change, you understand. the play have been pretty imaginative. Of course, you will continue to live But what happens to Helmer? Here here. But the children cannot be left there are fewer theories. Helmer pays in your care. I dare not trust them to a high price too. He has followed the you. rules of the game, as he understood them to be. In Beijing the older members of the audience breathed a How do you assess your worth, your sigh of relief when Nora left. At last position in a marriage? One indicator Helmer was rid of this source of worry might be how well equipped you are in his life. In New York he was left to deal with adversity. Nora and abandoned – pitiful and dejected – Helmer have enjoyed some good with his crutches. In fact, wherever years – at least it seems so to Helmer, Helmer is placed in space and time, who has been happily ignorant of No- his future life as a single parent will ra’s financial machinations. Now probably not be easy. things have suddenly changed for the worse, and, incomprehensibly to What Helmer said Helmer, it seems that everything he It is unthinkable that the relationship has believed in, everything he between Nora and Helmer should ­believed to be firmly established, has continue after what has happened, vanished in a split second. once innocence has been lost and Helmer has uttered the fatal words. Helmer. [Walking up and down.] That would imply an unbearable Oh! What an awful awakening! undermining of Nora’s position, now During all these eight years – she that its precariousness has been who was my pride and my joy – a revealed. Throughout the play, Nora hypocrite, a liar – worse, worse – a has been assessing her own worth, criminal. Oh, the unfathomable and now Helmer’s simple words hideousness of it all! Ugh! Ugh! have made it clear to her that she is not held in particularly high esteem: Even when the letter of regret from Mr. Krogstad, the lawyer, has put an Helmer. The matter must be hushed end to the crisis, and Helmer is up, cost what it may. – As for you basking in his feeling of magnanimity

54 over having forgiven Nora completely, said had never been uttered, the rest she cannot accept simply being of her life would become an even erased from history in this manner. It greater lie than the one she has been is impossible for her to stay in a living so far. house were she can be demoted at any moment, just by Helmer opening (All quotations are from William his mouth. Nora realises that she has Archer’s translation of A Doll’s never been happy in Helmer’s home House) – “only merry”. The full extent of the falseness on which their marriage is Brit Bildøen (b. 1962). Her first collection of poem built dawns on her. It has all been a “A Picture of Men” was published in 1991. Her game. Their common life does not breakthrough novel was “Everything that Is” have room for truthfulness and moral (Samlaget 2004). She has been rewarded several integrity. Having realised all of this, Norwegian literary prizes. She also writes poetry Nora has nobody to rely on but and children’s books and currently holds a position herself. If she stays with Helmer, one in the official forum for literature critics. thing is for sure: She will never experience “the miracle of miracles”. If, on the other hand, she leaves, there is a chance that they will both experience it some day, either separately or together.

Ibsen concedes that society is at fault, but he is very clear in placing responsibility on the individual. In A Doll’s House, the moral of the story is very explicit, in that Nora acknowledges her responsibility, takes the consequences, and leaves. Unlike Peer Gynt, she is not tempted by “the Boyg” (also known as “the Voice in the Darkness”) to go around all obstacles. She realises that if she were to pretend that what Helmer

55

TORIL MOI

Ibsen as Analyst of ­Power: A Scene from The Lady From the Sea

What looks like a free choice may after the death of her father, she be the result of coercion embed- married the kindly Dr. Wangel. ded in a particular social situa- tion. Over the course of the play, Dr. Wangel helps Ellida to emerge from Set in a small town by a fjord in the her tormented state by patiently and west of Norway, The Lady from the lovingly listening to her attempts to Sea (1888) deals with women’s explain herself. (Their conversations freedom in relation to marriage. are precursors of Freud’s “talking cure.”) In the end, Ellida chooses Dr. At the beginning of the play, the pro- Wangel again, this time freely and tagonist, Ellida Wangel, is almost with love. In a contrasting subplot, mad, broken down by her sense of Ellida’s stepdaughter, Bolette Wangel, guilt over the death of her baby and decides to marry her old tutor

, 1998 © Signe, 1998 Marie Andersen/Courtesy of Galleri Riis, Oslo. persecuted by the idea that the baby Arnholm, who now is a headmaster died because she failed to remain in the capital. By juxtaposing the two faithful to the Stranger, a sailor (and marriage plots, Ibsen gives us an

From the Sea quite possibly a murderer), who once uncommonly subtle analysis of threw their entwined rings into the freedom, choice and the force of sea, and made her promise to wait promises. for him. Although Ellida wrote to him several times to call their “engage- ELLIDA. Freedom acknowledged

Signe Marie Andersen: ment” off, he never replied. Later,

57 A conversation in Act 4, in which WANGEL. [Looks at her.] Not of your Ellida tries to explain how she came own free will! to marry Wangel after the death of her father, brings out the key ELLIDA. No. I did not go with you of concerns: my own free will.

ELLIDA. And I for my part –. There I Ellida challenges the notion of “free was, helpless, not knowing where to choice” just as profoundly as Nora turn, and so completely alone. So it challenges the notion of marriage. was only reasonable to accept – when “I asked you honestly if you would you came and offered to provide for share with me and the children what me for the rest of my life. little I could call mine,” Wangel says. He means that Ellida can hardly say WANGEL. I didn’t see it as providing for he forced her: she chose to marry you, dear Ellida. I asked you honestly him. By rejecting this idea, Ellida if you would share with me and the shows that to her the verb ville [“will” children what little I could call mine. or “would”] is not at all synonymous with “i frivillighed – og efter eget ELLIDA. Yes, you did. But I shouldn’t valg” [freely – and by my own choice]. have accepted it anyway! Not at any If a promise has been made under price should I have accepted! Not coercion, it is worthless. This explains have sold myself! Rather the most why she is inclined to think that only wretched work and the most her first promise (to the Stranger) miserable circumstances – freely – could have turned out to be a and by my own choice! “complete and pure marriage,” for as she puts it: “a promise freely given is WANGEL. [Gets up.] Then the five–six just as binding as a wedding years we have lived together have ceremony”. been completely worthless to you? What, then, does it take for Ellida ELLIDA. No, don’t ever think that! I freely to choose Wangel as her have been as content here with you husband? To find some answers, we as any human being could wish for. need to turn to the scene in which But I did not enter your home of my she makes her choice. It is common own free will. That’s the point. to interpret the climactic scene of Act

58 5 as if it simply showed Dr. Wangel That is what it would take for her to giving Ellida permission to choose. recognize that he too is transformed, Ibsen, however, goes out of his way that he has learned to consider her a to show that this is not at all what free and equal human being, and that happens, by inserting the following he therefore is qualified to be her conversation at the very beginning of husband. Marvellously, in the Act 5: decisive scene, Dr. Wangel finally rises to the challenge: ELLIDA. I must speak to him myself. For I am supposed to make my WANGEL. Now you can choose your choice freely. path – in full – full freedom.

WANGEL. You have no choice, Ellida. ELLIDA. [Staring at him, as if You won’t be allowed to choose. I speechless, for a while.] Is it true, – won’t let you. true, – what you are saying? Do you mean it – in your innermost heart? ELLIDA. You can’t prevent my choosing. Neither you nor anyone else. You WANGEL. Yes, I do mean it – in my can forbid me to go away with him innermost, suffering heart. – to follow him – if that’s what I choose. You can keep me here by ELLIDA. And can you do it, too? Can force. Against my will. You can do you let this happen? that. But that I choose – choose in my innermost mind – choose him WANGEL. Yes, I can. I can – because I and not you, – in case I will and love you so much. must choose that way – you can’t prevent that. ELLIDA. [Slowly, tremulously.] I have come this close – so deeply inside (så WANGEL. No, you are right. I can’t inderligt) your heart? prevent that. WANGEL. The years and our life Ellida knows that she does not together brought it about. require Dr. Wangel’s permission to choose. She requires him, rather, to ELLIDA. [Clasping her hands.] And I acknowledge her right to choose. never noticed it!

59 John Ngugi: African Queen, 2005 © John Ngugi Ellida’s questions are quintessentially delight: “Oh, I could both laugh and skeptical: Are you really speaking the cry for joy! For happiness and bliss! truth? Do you really mean it? In your Oh, then I’ll really get to live after all. innermost heart? And even if you say I was beginning to be afraid that life you mean it, and really think you do, would pass me by”. But her joy is you may still be mistaken, so the short lived, for Arnholm quickly question is can you really let it explains what he has in mind: happen? Can you let me go off with this stranger standing here with a ARNHOLM. Well – since you are free, gun in his hand? When Wangel Bolette, since no relationship binds claims that he does and he can, Ellida you –. So I ask you then – if you strikingly replies by talking about love, could want (kunde ville) – could closeness and intimacy. want to join me – for life?

In the end, by choosing finite, imper- BOLETTE. [Recoils in horror.] Oh, – fect, ordinary love over fantasmatic what are you saying! and obsessive Romantic ideals, Ellida chooses human community. Choos- ARNHOLM. For your whole life, ing to “acclimatize herself,” Ellida Bolette. If you will (vil) be my wife. embraces change, evolution, trans- formation and frees herself from the BOLETTE. [Half beside herself.] No, frozen stasis of her mad longing for no, no! This is impossible! Com­ absolute infinity. pletely impossible.

BOLETTE. Freedom Denied Twice Arnholm says not just ville, but kunde ville (“could will,” which here The crucial scene between Arnholm means something like “could you and Bolette begins innocently bring yourself to want”) – as if he enough. Arnholm offers to help knows that Bolette will have to Bolette to get out in the world, to overcome a resistance in order to travel, to get the education she is want to marry him. The third time, longing for. Although she is a little however, his proposal has come to dubious about whether she can sound like a simple choice (“will receive such a great gift from a you”), and Bolette recoils in horror. stranger, she soon expresses her But Arnholm does not give up:

61 stressing the economic and sexual works: a moment later, he gets his facts, he reminds Bolette that when wish. In this sequence, Ibsen handles her father dies, she will need money all the different expressions for (just like Ellida once did), and that if choice and will in a particularly she refuses him, she may one day masterful way: have to accept someone she likes even less. These are scare tactics, ARNHOLM. Do you mean that you and it is not surprising that in the end, perhaps nevertheless could be Arnholm’s proposal sounds more like willing to (kanske dog kunde være a threat than a promise: villig til) –? That at least you could want to allow me (kunde vilde unde ARNHOLM. Then will you (vil De) mig) the pleasure of helping you as a rather remain at home and let life faithful friend? pass you by? BOLETTE. No, no, no! Never that! For BOLETTE. Oh, it is so terribly painful that would be completely impossible to think of it! now. – No, – Mr. Arnholm, – then you’d better take me. ARNHOLM. Will you (vil De) renounce the opportunity to see something of ARNHOLM. Bolette! You will, after the world outside? Renounce taking all! part in all those things that you say you have been yearning for?... Think BOLETTE. Yes, – I think – I will. carefully, Bolette. ARNHOLM. Then you will be my BOLETTE. Oh yes, – you are so wife! completely right, Mr. Arnholm. BOLETTE. Yes. If you still feel that - Playing the phrase Vil De (“do you that you ought to take me. want to”; “will you”) like a virtuoso, Arnholm makes it look as if by As the dialogue develops, Arnholm refusing him, Bolette freely chooses moves from his hesitant kunde vilde to renounce all her dreams and (could bring yourself to want) to the ambitions. His final “Think carefully, triumphant vil. The repetition of “will” Bolette” is pure menace. And it reinforces the ideology, making it

62 look as if Bolette here freely chooses Toril Moi (b. 1953). Dr. art. at the University of to marry him. Her repetition of the Bergen (1985). She is James B. Duke Professor of phrase “take me,” on the other hand, Literature, Romance Studies and Theater Studies at signals not only that she feels sexually Duke University (USA), and the author of Sexual/ threatened, but also that she knows Textual Politics: Feminist Literary Theory (1985); that she is here agreeing to Simone de Beauvoir: The Making of an Intellectual commodify herself. Does Bolette Woman (1993) and What Is a Woman? And Other freely choose to trade her body and Essays (1999). Her most recent book is Henrik Ibsen her life for financial security, travel and the Birth of Modernism: Art, Theater, Philosophy and an education? What powers (2006). does she have to ensure that Arnholm keeps his part of the bargain?

Ibsen’s analysis of the ways in which what looks like free choice may be the result of coercion embedded in a particular social situation is matchless. The Lady from the Sea shows us both how difficult it is for a woman to assert her freedom and have that freedom acknowledged, and how easy it is for a woman’s freedom to be perverted and undermined.

All translations of Ibsen’s text are by Dr. Moi.

63 Norwegian Gender Equality Milestones 1839 “Feeble women over the age 1869 Unmarried women attain 1887 Public prostitution is banned of 40, who were otherwise unable majority at the same age as men, in Norway. to make a living”, are allowed to 21 years old. become master craftsmen. 1888 A new Marriage Act is passed 1874 Charlotte Lund takes the by which married women retain 1842 All women who are not finan- middle school examination in their majority and have the right to cially provided for, are given the Stavanger, and two years later the separate ownership. right to conduct business: “Wid- Ministry states “there appears to ows, wives living completely sepa- be no obstacle preventing young 1889 Women are allowed as rate from their husbands, and un- women from achieving the middle members of School Boards. Girls married spinsters, when regarded school examination“. are allowed to “accompany” the as being of legal age by concession boys in the National Day Parade in of the king.” 1875 “The Women’s School of Arts Oslo, the 17th of May. Women and Handicrafts” opens in Chris- working in a matchstick factory go 1845 Unmarried women over the tiania. on strike. age of 25 are given the same rights by law as “male persons who have 1882 Women are given the right to 1895 Women are allowed to vote not attained majority”. attain “artium” (university for the first time. This applied to entrance) examination, and Cecilie referendum in the municipalities 1854 The same rights of inheritance Thoresen is the first woman student concerning the sale of spirits. for sons and daughters. Before this to do so. date, sons inherited twice as much 1898 The National Women’s as their sisters. 1884 Women are given the right to Suffrage Association is founded, study and achieve the final exami- with Fredrikke Marie Qvam as 1858 The telephone and telegraph nation at all faculties at the Univer- chairman. administration is opened to women, sity. After completing the examina- as first among the public services. tion, women could open practice as 1900 Women are allowed as medical doctors and dentists, but member of the “Poor Relief Board” 1860 Women are given permission in other respects they were not in the municipalities. to work as teachers in rural, primary given access to work in public schools. In 1869 they were given ­offices, such as law, philosophy 1901 Women are given a limited the same right in city schools. and within other fields for which right to vote, and can be elected in they were qualified. The Norwe- the municipalities’ elections. 1863 Unmarried women over the gian Association for Women’s age of 25 attain majority like adult Rights is founded, with Gina Krog 1906 Mathilde Schjødt becomes men, but lost this status when they as chairman. the first woman obtaining a married. Norwegian official post. 1885 Ragna Nielsen establishes 1866 Women are given the same the first integrated school for girls rights as men to carry on a trade. and boys. Continues on inside cover >

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