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To See the Midnight Sun To See the Midnight Sun Free Will, Liberation, and Responsibility in The Lady from the Sea’s Subplot Julijana Arsovska Masteroppgave i Ibsen-studier Senter for Ibsen-studier Institutt for lingvistiske og nordiske studier Det humanistiske fakultet UNIVERSITETET I OSLO Mai 2015 II To See the Midnight Sun Free Will, Liberation, and Responsibility in The Lady from the Sea’s Subplot Julijana Arsovska Master’s Thesis in Ibsen Studies Centre for Ibsen Studies Department of Linguistics and Scandinavian Studies Faculty of Humanities University of Oslo May 2015 III © Julijana Arsovska 2015 To See the Midnight Sun: Free Will, Liberation, and Responsibility in The Lady from the Sea’s Subplot Julijana Arsovska http://www.duo.uio.no/ Trykk: Reprosentralen, Universitetet i Oslo IV Every new work has had as its purpose for me that of serving as a process of spiritual emancipation and purification; for no man ever stands quite without some responsibility and some complicity in the society to which he belongs. That was why I once wrote the following lines in a copy of one of my books as a dedication: To live is to war with trolls in the vaults of the heart and the brain. To write: that is to sit in judgement over one’s self. Henrik Ibsen, A letter to Ludwig Passarge, 16 June 1880 [H]ver ny digtning har for mig selv havt det øjemed at tjene som en åndelig frigørelses- og renselses-proses; thi man står aldrig ganske uden medansvarlighed og medskyldighed i det samfund man tilhører. Derfor skrev jeg engang som tilegnelsesdigt foran i et exemplar af en af mine bøger følgende linjer: «At leve er krig med trolde i hjertets og hjernens hvælv; At digte – det er at holde dommedag over sig selv.» Henrik Ibsens brev til Ludwig Passarge, München, den 16. Juni 1880 V VI Contents 1 INTRODUCTION ........................................................................................................................ 1 1.1 Approaching freedom in a deterministic society ......................................................... 2 1.1.1 The free will debate .............................................................................................. 2 1.1.2 Situation, projects, and responsibility: Sartre’s Being and Nothingness .............. 7 1.2 Literature review: The subplot’s reception .................................................................. 9 1.3 Research question, methodology, and design ............................................................ 12 1.3.1 Research problems, questions, and perspectives ................................................ 12 1.3.2 Overview of the thesis ........................................................................................ 14 1.3.3 Editions and translations .................................................................................... 15 2 SITUATIONS AND CONTEXTS: THE CASE OF EUROPE AND NORWAY ................. 17 2.1 Some thoughts on the wider European background .................................................. 17 2.1.1 John Stuart Mill’s The Subjection of Women ..................................................... 17 2.1.2 Simone de Beauvoir’s The Second Sex .............................................................. 18 2.2 The Norwegian socio-historical context .................................................................... 21 3 THE ETERNAL FEMININE AND THE NEW WOMAN IN THE EUROPEAN AND NORWEGIAN FISH POND: A DEADLOCK OF CONFLICTING FORCES ............................ 25 3.1 Performance and context ........................................................................................... 25 3.2 The New Woman by the pond ................................................................................... 27 4 IMMOBILITY AND STATUS QUO: DESIRES VERSUS UNPOETIC REALITY .......... 33 4.1 Outgrown carp and past regression ........................................................................... 33 4.2 Push and pull: Control and power struggles .............................................................. 37 5 CONFORMISM AND THE PROBLEM OF CLASS IDEOLOGY ...................................... 42 5.1 The victim’s assistance .............................................................................................. 42 5.2 Adjustment and resistance ......................................................................................... 48 6 CRITICISM AND META-CRITICISM IN THE LADY FROM THE SEA .......................... 54 6.1 Agency and individual responsibility ........................................................................ 54 6.2 “Could have done otherwise” and alternative possibilities? ..................................... 61 7 THE MARRIAGE-MARKET, LOVE, AND TRUTH ............................................................ 65 7.1 Love – Unnecessary Luxury? .................................................................................... 65 7.2 Spiteful rebel: Disclosure in The Lady from the Sea ................................................. 68 8 GOING BEYOND THE PALE: NEGOTIATING LOVE IN THE NINETEENTH- CENTURY SOCIETY ........................................................................................................................ 75 VII 8.1 The limits of (im)possibility ...................................................................................... 75 8.2 Love or manipulations? ............................................................................................. 83 9 REPETITIONS AND PARALLELS: DECONSTRUCTING FAMILIAR STRANGERS . 89 10 CONCLUSION ........................................................................................................................... 95 ACKNOWLEDGMENTS................................................................................................................. 100 BIBLIOGRAPHY ............................................................................................................................. 105 VIII 1 INTRODUCTION The Lady from the Sea as a text, like its main protagonist, Ellida, encapsulates many noteworthy and peculiar characteristics in Ibsen’s contemporary play cycle. It has not been seen as one of his most popular plays, nor is it considered one of the best. The initial reception (and some of the later criticism) deemed it strange and obscure. Brian Johnston, for instance, pointed out that this work seems an oddity among Ibsen’s realist plays (1989, 194), whereas Knut Hamsun thought his fellow countryman created “højere Vanvid” (as quoted in Hemmer 2003, 374). Its neat symbolism and undecipherable mysticism have often been denounced, such as in the case of Kristofer Randers’s review for the Swedish press (in Meyer 1971, 602), whereas C. D. af Wirsten anguished in front of the play’s peculiarity: “Come back, old Shakespeare, with your wholesome humanity, and dispel these eccentricities” (ibid.). Johan Irgens-Hansen is another in the line of critics who complained about its subject matter bordering on mysticism; yet, in spite of it, he writes that “Ibsen had proved himself again a ‘realist’ and even a ‘naturalist’” (as quoted in Koht 1971, 388). According to Meyer’s inquiry, Edvard Brandes and the Swede J. A. Runström were the only critics who gave positive reviews of the play upon its release (1971, 602). For M.S. Barranger, who agrees with many of the above mentioned judgments, The Lady from the Sea represents a “preparatory effort” to the new direction Ibsen took in his last plays (1978, 393), an opinion that I share. Additionally, the happy end, described as unconvincing and weak, contributed to critics’ reluctance to wholeheartedly embrace this play; as Fjelde put it, one has the feeling that The Lady From the Sea is “somehow not echt Ibsen” (1978, 379). Bjørn Hemmer notes other of its deficiencies, namely the obvious symbolism and the ending’s didacticism: «Likevel har dramaet også trekk som gjør det til et av Ibsens mest tydelige verk. Det er stedvis nærmest overtydelig i sin symbolikk. Og i sin avslutning kan det virke påtrengende didaktisk...» (2003, 374). I must agree with this criticism of the didactic tones of its ending, which I disliked as well; nonetheless, I consider this text, like many of Ibsen’s works, far from simple and obvious. In fact, I can forcefully argue that one may be quite unaware of how detailed and multileveled Ibsen’s plays are until the analysis is approached. The text’s complexity is one of the main reasons why my thesis is focused primarily on the subplot and not on the entire play.1 1 There have been, however, (female) commentators who have found this play intriguing and have paid significant attention to its themes. See, for instance, Toril Moi, Henrik Ibsen and the Birth of Modernism: Art, Theater, Philosophy, (Oxford: Oxford University Press 2006); Ellen Rees, “By the Open Sea: Ibsen's Fruen fra havet and Fosse's Nokon kjem til å komme,” Ibsen Studies 11, no.2 (2011): 192-222, and “Melodramatic Traces And Places In The Lady From The Sea,” Ibsen Studies 13, 1 The Lady from the Sea has been regularly associated with A Doll’s House due to the theme of acceptance and understanding between marital partners. Several commentators have pointed out that Ibsen has demonstrated to the readers and the audiences what he intended by the wonder (det vidunderlige) Nora awaited from her husband. That miracle comprises the gender issue – freedom for women in terms of being respected as autonomous beings. More precisely, in the case of The Lady from the Sea, this problem regards a woman’s right to follow her own free will. The concept of free will in the text prima
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