International Journal of Emerging trends in Engineering and Development ISSN 2249-6149 Available online on http://www.rspublication.com/ijeted/ijeted_index.htm Issue 2, Vol.5 (July 2012)

A COMPARATIVE STUDY OF PORTRAYAL OF WOMEN IN HENRIK IBSEN’S A DOLL’S HOUSE AND ’S MISS RAMANDEEP MAHAL MAHARISHI MARKANDESHWAR UNIVERSITY MULLANA (AMBALA) ______ABSTRACT

Norwegian playwright and poet Henrik Ibsen was an acclaimed dramatist during his times. He had a great pride in his country Norway. In 1877 he was influenced by the social structure of his country. He wanted to extol the values of truth and freedom in his people with his works like The Pillars of the Society (1877) and then in 1879 A Doll’s House which questioned the suppressed role of women in the society. He is best known for creating female characters in dramas like Hedda Gabler (1890) and A Doll’s House. Nora the protagonist in the beginning of the play seems to be content with her life. She prances about and exhibits child like qualities. When Torvald enters the scene, Nora's childlike behavior becomes more patent. Torvald calls her pet names "little lark", "little squirrel", and "little miss extravagant". However Torvald‟s true character is revealed when he accuses Nora for the forgery and tries to disown her, unaware of the fact that she had forged the signature for his sake. His attitude suddenly changes when everything is sorted out. She decides to walk out of her marriage. Johan August Strindberg was a Swedish playwright, novelist and essayist. He was a prolific writer who drew his writings from his personal experiences. In the play he confesses his hatred for the opposite sex. Julie suffers an identity crises. She blatantly displays her disregard for class and gender conventions. It is mentioned at the beginning of the play that the people of the estate are celebrating St John‟s eve with dance, song and revelry, and Julie mingles with the servants. Henceforth there is a discussion of Julie‟s behaviour between two characters indeed known to be the people of the low class. Her behaviour is quite absurd , at one moment she is forward and at next she is coy. Jean warns her against her impetuous behaviour. Julie further makes advances but Jean warns her of injury to his reputation. She wavers between the high and the low class identity and hence she is confused of her true identity. She has inherited the primitive intense passion of her mother and the aristocratic tendencies of her father. Her antics result in her downfall, in contrast to her Jean rises above her when she reveals her background of common birth. The play, A Doll’s House, emphatically stresses upon the status of women how their roles should be perceived in the context of the social norms, related with marriage and motherhood. It stresses the norms and functions of the Victorian women at that time. Further the play had been criticized on certain aspects of Nora. Strindberg was known to be a misogynist a, “hater of woman.” Strindberg was more of a confessional writer and much of his writings are an output of his three disastrous marriages. ______

A COMPARATIVE STUDY OF PORTRAYAL OF WOMEN IN HENRIK IBSEN’S A DOLL’S HOUSE AND AUGUST STRINDBERG’S MISS JULIE

The aim of our present study is to make a comparative study of women characters in Henrik Ibsen‟s A Doll’s House and August Strindberg‟s Miss Julie from a naturalistic point of view. Henrik Ibsen is known to be one of the most eminent playwrights of his time. He is often called the „father of the modern drama‟ because he had helped to popularize realism. Practically his whole life is devoted to the theatre. His spare hours were spent in the preparation for entrance to the Christiania University, where about at the age of twenty, he formed a friendship with Bjornson. During the winter of 1848 he wrote his first play Cateline. In about 1851 he was given the position of the „theatre poet‟. In 1857 he had become the director of the Norwegian theatre in Christiania. While there he published another work The Vikings at Hedgeland and married Suzannah in 1858. In 1860, he was under the attack of the press for the lack of productivity although he had published a few poems. The Christinia University went bankrupt in1862. During this period he completed The Pretenders (1863) and a dramatic epic poem Brand (1866) which soon achieved critical voice and this was followed by Peer Gynt (1867). The first of Ibsen‟s prose dramas were The League of the Youth, published in 1869, followed by Emperor and the Galilean (1873), his first work to be translated into English, and then The Pillars of the Society (1877), A Doll’s House (1879), Ghosts (1881), and An Enemy of the People (1882) are among the plays that contribute to realism. His next phase of works included a shift from social concerns to the isolation of the individual. The MasterBuilder (1892), Little Eyolf (1894), John Gabriel

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International Journal of Emerging trends in Engineering and Development ISSN 2249-6149 Available online on http://www.rspublication.com/ijeted/ijeted_index.htm Issue 2, Vol.5 (July 2012)

Borkman (1896), and When We Dead Awaken (1899), all treat the conflicts that arise between art and life, between creativity and expectations, and between personal contentment and self deception. The element of naturalism prevailed in his personal life. Ibsen himself was subjected to poverty as a result of his father‟s bankruptcy. Elizabeth Hardwick believed that, “his mother had suffered many hardships and had served as a model for the female characters” (43). In his early works Ibsen has used poetry with mythological themes but then switches to a realistic style with the play The Pillars of the Society. This realistic style is a break from the fanciful operas and the stock characters and Ibsen became a detailed observer of true human life. In 1888 women were finally given right of control over their money. In 1879 a wife was not legally permitted to borrow money without her husband‟s consent. This issue was already popular in Norway where Ibsen lived. Norway was a newly liberated country, having been freed from the Danish control. Norwegian law had passed laws regarding the protection of women and their employment. By the middle of the nineteenth century women had been provided the same laws of protection as to the male children. Women were permitted inheritance rights, though the employment wages they received were quite low. Although divorce was legal but it was only enacted if both the partners agreed. Such issues have been taken by Henrik Ibsen with great insight. In the book Performing Women: Female Characters, Male Playwrights and Modern Stage, Gay Gibson Cima says that, “Ibsen‟s work treats real life issues in an almost journalistic manner” (229). A Doll’s House was published on December 4, 1879 and was first performed in Copenhagen on December 21. This work was considered a publishing event and it sold around 8000 copies. However, it created a controversy that Ibsen had to disappointingly change its ending, he was forced to write a second ending for the play that he called as, “ a barbaric outrage” Ibsen believes that women were best suited to be mothers and wives, but at the same time, he had an eye for injustice and although he was embraced by feminists, Ibsen was no champion of human rights; he had only dealt with the problem of women‟s right as a facet of the realism within his play. Ibsen broke away from the romantic tradition with his realistic portrayals of individual characters and his focus on psychological concerns as he sought to portray the real world, especially the position of women in society. Ibsen had elevated theatre from mere entertainment to a forum for exposing social problems. Sheri Metzger in her essay discusses Ibsen‟s contribution to drama as a forum for exposing social problems remarked, “with A Doll’s House, Ibsen turned drama into a respectable genre for the examination of social issues” (25). Like exposing the flaws of Helmer and Nora‟s marriage, he made the private into the public and, “provided an advocacy for women”. A Doll’s House belongs to the second phase of Ibsen‟s career. It is during this phase he transformed from mythical and historical dramas to the social dramas. It is the first in the series investigating tensions in the family. Written during the Victorian era the controversial play featured the protagonist seeking individuality. This play introduced woman as having her own purpose and goals. The heroine Nora Helmer progressing during the course of the play. August Strindberg was a Swedish playwright, novelist and short story writer. He combined psychology, naturalism and later elements of literary forms. Having going through an unhappy childhood Strindberg had started writing at a very young age when his mother died when he was very young. His father remarried, it is believed that his stepmother did not treat him well. Circumstances made him a naturalistic writer. With his mother‟s background he wrote an autobiographical work The Son of a Servant Strindberg was enrolled in the University of Uppsalla, where he had failed to pass the preliminary examination in chemistry. He had worked for a little while in the Royal Dramatic Theatre, where he wrote three plays which were rejected. After various experiments, he resumed his studies in the University of Uppsalla. Back in Stockholm he worked as a journalist and wrote a historical drama known as (1872) when he was only twenty three years old. It is considered as Sweden‟s first drama. In 1874 he became an assistant librarian in the Royal Library, serving till he resigned in 1882. His first published novel was The Red Room in1882. It was his first work which was realistic, a robust satire on just anything Strindberg had observed all around. This work described the literary and artistic lives. The “red room” was a meeting place where all the journalists met; it was a small café in Stockholm. During all these years Strindberg led a bohemian life and earned his living as a private tutor, insurance agent and a journalist. In spite of Master Olof he was still unknown among his people. His collection of stories Married (1884) had reflected the bold treatment of sex, the second edition has illustrated the harsher treatment. However what outraged the public was the hatred for women, feminist movement and the emancipated women. Strindberg stood among the Scandinavian authors. A man who had three failed marriages insisted that a women‟s place is at home. His own environment was responsible for his hatred for women. Strindberg‟s relationships with women were quite troubled and have often been interpreted as misogynistic by contemporaries and modern readers. However it is believed that he has an uncommon insight into the hypocrisy and society‟s gender roles and sexual morality. Marriage and families were being stressed in Strindberg‟s lifetime as Sweden industrialized and urbanized at a rapid pace. Problems of prostitution and poverty were debated among

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International Journal of Emerging trends in Engineering and Development ISSN 2249-6149 Available online on http://www.rspublication.com/ijeted/ijeted_index.htm Issue 2, Vol.5 (July 2012) writers, critics and politicians. Strindberg contributed to drama two things: expressionism and naturalism. His naturalistic works include The Father (1887), Miss Julie (1888) and (1889). For six years Strindberg struggled with madness. He wrote no plays but an account of his madness led to the basis of his major work Inferno (1897). After his recovery, his intellectual interests turned to magic, Occult, Buddhism and Hinduism. He wrote more than thirty plays in all the coming years of his life. Strindberg  one of the famous American writer Eugene O‟Neill calls him the, “ precursor of all the modernity in the present theatre.” From the day of its publication Miss Julie has been source of critical controversy and debate. Written around 1888, the play was banned and censored throughout Europe as it dealt with situations and attitudes morally and socially offensive, the daughter of a count has an affair with a valet, who in turn coerces her to commit suicide. Miss Julie was symptomatic of all that was dangerous and corrupt at that time. The play was partly based on his relationship with his first wife Siri, who left her baron husband to marry Strindberg, the son of a servant. The play was set on a Midsummer‟s eve during the 1880‟s. Jean and Julie are both protagonists. As the social and sexual struggle develops between them, Julie must face the fact that Jean, a servant, is a stronger person. Trapped and unable to arrive at any reasonable plan, she orders Jean to hypnotize her into committing suicide. Initially banned in Sweden, time had allowed Strindberg‟s play to mellow from a bewildering attempt to look at the social issues of woman‟s place in the changing social order, into a modern tragedy. Miss Julie probably began as a two or three act play, but in order to capture the required intensity of emotion and opposition to conventional modes, Strindberg reduced Miss Julie to a ninety minute act. The build up to the climax, Jean and Julie having sex, and the resulting catastrophe are only broken by a dance and pantomimes, which allow the spectator to rest but not to escape from the influence of the author hypnotist. The play reveals that Miss Julie has no control over her sexual instincts from the beginning. Forty percent of the rising action of Miss Julie is leading to the climax and peripety that is the role reversal creating a two part structure of the play. Once Jean and Julie have seduced each other, their lives are suddenly changed, or what we may call it interchanged. The aristocrat in the social sphere becomes the slave of the valet and the valet becomes the aristocrat in the sexual sphere as Julie lowers herself beyond redemption. The stress on the multiple motivation of the action, random illogical dialogue and departure from the conventional depictions of the character makes Miss Julie an excellent example of the naturalistic movement, that is, the characters are seen as helpless products of hereditary and environment who interact with their minds and bodies as they would in real life. Strindberg‟s naturalistic techniques also extended to the aspects of stage décor, lighting and make up, and where to have strong repercussions in modern theatre. He used a realistic setting for the action believing that it was only way the audience could be completely involved in the play, but in order to capture the spirit of the finale, Strindberg needed the reality to fade. He called for the lights to replicate the slanting sun and fall on Jean alone so that the audience would be aware of nothing but a black undefined figure and Julie‟s voice leading the audience to be as hypnotized as Julie. Miss Julie demonstrates both the effectiveness and limitations of stage realism for while it allows the audience to participate fully it inhibits expressions of the spirit. Miss Julie with its realistic basis lifts to a very symbolic conclusion of great power when Strindberg stage directions are followed. The play seems to foreshadow the turn Strindberg‟s writing style would take. Strindberg‟s play is actually written as a response to Norwegian playwright Henrik Ibsen‟s play A Doll’s House. Ibsen, an early nineteenth century supporter of women‟s emancipation, wrote his play advocating women‟s rights, though he denied it and Strindberg had a contrary view. It was the aim of the play to discredit any form of intelligence in a woman. The objective of this study is to discuss the representation of the women by playwrights from a naturalistic point of view. Both the playwrights Henrik Ibsen and August Strindberg shocked the audience during their times with the way they had portrayed their women characters. Their ideas of frank portrayal of sex and divorce were not acceptable during those times. Ibsen‟s play A Doll’s House is considered by many to be a feminist work, illustrating the erroneous treatment of the „woman issue‟ as he called it. In Germany, the actress Hedwig Niewmann Raabe refused to perform the play as written, declaring that, “I would never leave my children” (Meyer 480). Ibsen avoided the danger of being rewritten by a lesser dramatist by committing what he called a „barbaric outrage‟ on his play himself and giving it an alternative ending in which Nora did not leave. The Swedish playwright August Strindberg is known to be a great rival of Henrik Ibsen in the Scandinavian theatre. Their enmity began with Strindberg‟s negative reaction to Ibsen‟s A Doll’s House, which he disapprovingly, considers feminist. However, his Miss Julie published in 1888, had also created controversy with its open discussion on sex. The idea of sex as an expression of base animal passion portrayed through the character of Miss Julie was scandalous in the late nineteenth century and inevitably, the play was banned. In Ibsen‟s A Doll’s House, the central conflict revolves around Torvald‟s controlling; demeaning treatment of his wife Nora. The tragedy of the story, however, is not only the superiority of the husband over his wife but also

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International Journal of Emerging trends in Engineering and Development ISSN 2249-6149 Available online on http://www.rspublication.com/ijeted/ijeted_index.htm Issue 2, Vol.5 (July 2012) the dehumanizing of the children, who are never given a voice or allowed the possibility of bettering their position. They begin the story under an institution that has marginalized them, and they remain confined to subhuman status throughout the play. In this way, Ibsen‟s work; as he claims goes beyond being a work about women‟s rights and becomes instead a work dealing with the rights of all human struggling under an oppressive, patriarchal society. Why does Nora adopt, participate in and follow the very relational structures that hold her in subjugation? The answer seems to be this: the patriarchal power structures that define the male – based society, by changing the concrete conditions in which the individual is existentially situated, serves to alter the way of thinking of those who find themselves in the society. In a world where interpersonal relationships are defined in terms of an oppressor  oppressed dichotomy, the oppressed internalizes that dichotomy and, rather than seeking to destroy the dichotomy, seeks to reverse its terms and himself occupies the place of oppressor. When humanity is conceived of only in terms of oppressor, aspiration to humanization is itself articulated in terms of the oppressive relational structure. Thus, when Nora relates to her children, her relation to them is a function of her inculcation into a thought structure determined by the structural power relations within her society. If this is the case, Nora‟s interaction with her children serves as perhaps the most important articulation of the play‟s central theme of patriarchal oppression, because it is in that interaction that the oppressive situation reaches its most comprehensive character. The depth of Ibsen‟s work is in its portrayal of what is perhaps most tragic, most insidious, and most powerful in the patriarchal power structures: the internalization of those structures on the part of the oppressed; the inculcation of oppressive values; the formation of patterns of thought and behaviour that reinforce and perpetuate oppression through all levels of the social body. Nora is depicted until the end of the play as the helpless, mindless fool who wastes her husband‟s hard earned money. She is Torvald‟s plaything, his burden and responsibility. Joan Templeton describes this marriage as a “pan cultural ideal . . . a relation of superior and inferior in which wife is a creature of little intellectual and moral capacity, whose right and proper situation is subordination to her husband” (138). The problems that Nora, Anne•Marie and Christine Linde face are compounded by their gender. Ibsen said in a speech once that Nora was supposed to represent the Everyman, and that he hadn‟t been trying to address the issue of women‟s rights, critics argue that the presence of feminism in the play is inherent and “justifiable whatever Ibsen‟s intention was and in spite of his speech” (Templeton 111). By the end of the story, Torvald‟s degrading treatment of Nora is resolved, though perhaps imperfectly and sadly. Nora asserts to her husband, upsetting the terms of the relational structure that defines their interaction throughout the earlier portions of the play. Unfortunately the plight of the children receives no such solution. In one of her triumphant moments, Nora declares:Nora: I believe that before everything else I‟m a human being. (84) On the other hand Helen Cooper has celebrated the character of Miss Julie for her complexity. Conflicted and contradictory, she does not seem “wanting in personality and character. Daughter of a feminist, she struggles to live up to the equality ideals of her mother while battling lust and human fallibility” (43). Helen Cooper writes: It is ironically enough; through his obsessive revenge against women that Strindberg created the most wonderful parts for women . . . Strindberg pulls his women down from pedestals and subjects his female characters to the same ruthless and skeptical observation, which had of course, long been accepted in the creation of male characters. (43) Strindberg and Ibsen have different opinions regarding the women characters in their works but still they have not failed in captivating the audience. Julie who seems to be a hardcore character from the outside is finally conceived as a weakling at the end of the play. On the other hand Ian Johnston states that, “Nora‟s exit is a heroically brave manifestation of her uncompromising integrity, her passionate sense of herself, her absolute refusal to live a life where she is not in control if her actions. There is about her actions something grand, defiant, and totally free, values all the more precious given the infected society she is rejecting” (17). Julie is deprived of love throughout her life and intended to achieve it from an outsider. In addition to the outrage caused by Julie‟s lust, her rebellious attitude towards her aristocratic background adds to the subversive content of the play. Not only, does she reject the conventions of the ladylike behaviour, she breaks through the class divisions which separate her from the servants, and it is this disregard for the rules of gender and class of that period. August Strindberg, himself the result of the class conflict between his parents, never felt at home with either of them. All his life he was galled by the irreconcilability of the classes; and though he was no sermonizer in the sense of offering a definite panacea for individual or social ills, yet with a master touch he painted the degrading effects of class distinction and its tragic antagonisms. Emma Goldman states that, “In Miss Julie he popularized one of the most vital problems of our age, and gave to the world a work powerful in its grasp of elemental emotions, laying bare the human soul behind the mask of social tradition and class culture” (61). Strindberg was a victim of an unhappy childhood deprived of mother‟s love and attention. He picked up a bias against women as a mother figure due to this childhood experience. With three unhappy marriages his

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International Journal of Emerging trends in Engineering and Development ISSN 2249-6149 Available online on http://www.rspublication.com/ijeted/ijeted_index.htm Issue 2, Vol.5 (July 2012) experience of women as a grown up and a life partner were also unpleasant. This probably made him create Miss Julie as an over bearing, unpleasant and a mixed up personality. Miss Julie in the play emerges as a character whose impulsive behaviour creates an environment which she escapes by suicide. As a conclusion a character that was loud and overbearing eventually emerges as confused and weak. However by committing suicide Julie escapes from the net of conflicting desire. Her last action is a result of the aristocratic society of that period. A society which doesn‟t allow a woman to take any step against it. And if a woman dares to do so, she faces so much conflict that ultimately she thinks of committing suicide. Her suffering comes from a belonging to a higher class of society. Virginia Woolf believes that Julie like Judith, the Shakespeare‟s character commits suicide out of fear of her consequences of her sexual licentiousness­ repercussions unique to the female position in her society. She observes that, “her death could have been prevented, not by a switch of gender, as Strindberg suggests, but by a switch in the demands upon her gender. Had Julie been a nobleman‟s son, she need not have killed herself to avoid the disgrace of sleeping with the kitchen maid.” (55) On the other hand Ibsen who loved his mother and lost her as a child had to struggle as a youngster who established himself through hard work seemed to have experienced better female acquaintances. He succeeds in portraying Nora as a flirty character caught in the patriarchal society of that time who emerges stronger as the play progresses further. Nora, as she moves along in this play reinvents herself as a personality who was dependent on the seemingly strong male character that became supportive of her husband. Nora became a sign of the woman who emerged from society norms of those times and learnt to handle her affairs. Both the women characters in their respective plays have their strong and weak traits. A more dependent Nora turns out be an independent individual at the end and, on the other hand, Miss Julie who seems to a be a loud and open individual eventually falls by committing suicide. The relevance of Miss Julie in the present day times is basically the beginning of the meltdown of the class system which was a predominant factor that affected the behaviour and social interaction between different levels of society. Strindberg was bold enough to reflect it in this play and unusually intelligent to notice the first signs of the breakdown of classes of the society in that period. Today the women have not only bridged the class system but also have succeeded in being noticed and heard. Unfortunately Julie had to exit the play in disgrace because what she tried to, stand for was an idea unheard and unacceptable by society at that particular time. Similarly A Doll’s House indicates the breaking of the female mold of a mindless and a clueless housewife who was more of a play•thing. She was replaced by an enlightened, determined and more useful member of society who tries to make a positive contribution to help her husband in his difficulty. These days modern life has thrown countless examples of women struggling for their identities and thus emerging in the same way as Nora and Julie did. Ibsen and Strindberg, though in their own ways, are probably the playwrights to bring this change noticeable in their respective plays.

WORKS CITED

Cima, Gay Gibson. Performing Women: Female Characters, Male Playwrights, and the Modern Stage. Ithaca: Cornell UP, 1993. Print. Daiches, David. A Critical History of English Literature: Drama from 1700. Press, 2009. Print. Metzger, Sheri. Drama for Students, Gale, 1997. Print. Goldman, Emma. The Social Significance of the Modern Drama. The Gorham Press, Boston, 1914. Print. Johnston, Ian. On Ibsen’s A Doll’s House. Oxford: OUP, 1981. Print. Meyer, Michael. Ibsen. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1974. Print. Strindberg, August and Helen Cooper (trans.).Miss Julie. Metheun Drama: London, 1992. Print. Templeton, Joan. Ibsen’s Women. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1997. Print. Woolf, Virginia and Joanne Trautmann Banks (ed.). Congenial Spirits: The Selected Letters of Virginia Woolf. London: The Hogarth Press, 1975.

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