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1973
What Price Greatness: A Study of the Protagonists in Three Plays by Henrik Ibsen---"The Master Builder", "John Gabriel Borkman", and "When We Dead Awaken"
Janet Rose Fuchs College of William & Mary - Arts & Sciences
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Recommended Citation Fuchs, Janet Rose, "What Price Greatness: A Study of the Protagonists in Three Plays by Henrik Ibsen--- "The Master Builder", "John Gabriel Borkman", and "When We Dead Awaken"" (1973). Dissertations, Theses, and Masters Projects. Paper 1539624815. https://dx.doi.org/doi:10.21220/s2-7wrb-5n62
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JOHN GABRIEL BORKMAN, AND WHEN WE DEAD AWAKEN
A T hesis
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" • 1 - t - ' j - ABSTRACT
This paper approaches three of Ibsen's last protagonists-- Halvard Solness in The Master Builder, John Gabriel Borkman in John Gabriel Borkman, and Arnold Rubek in When We Dead Awaken-- as studies in the "paradox of greatness." These men were all doomed by the very "greatness" that raised them above other men because in so doing it confronted them with questions of personal responsibility that were unanswerable and moral choices that were ultimately paradoxical.
Their personal histories point to failure, although, ironi cally, they all sacrificed love and ordinary "happiness" to achieve the special kind of success (in terms of self-fulfillment or realiza tion of their special talents) they felt could and should be theirs. In other words, their sense of mission seemed to demand of them a withdrawal from love and a denial of commitment to others, yet it was this loss of humanity that kept them from fulfilling themselves and their missions.
Part of the burden of this paper must be to assess Ibsen's judgment of these men. Although their failure and suffering--as well as the suffering they caused others—can, indeed, be traced to decisions made much earlier in their lives, Ibsen cannot condemn any more than he can condone the choices they made. He finds them unpardonably guilty of having killed love in others, but he will not say that they were wrong to sacrifice as they did, believing in their own nobility of purpose. He has no answer to the paradoxical problem of greatness; he can only suggest that greatness has its p ric e o
Before examining the three plays in turn, this paper sets down some preliminaries that are essential to a clear and meaning ful presentation of the thesis. First, a brief background of the changing critical approaches to Ibsen will help the reader place this study within the framework of Ibsen criticism and to see that the emphasis here falls on the moral dimension in Ibsen’s work (and what, exactly, that is taken to mean). Second, it is important to define, as best we can, terms such as "greatness," "duty," and "responsibility." Third, the exclusion of Little Eyolf from this study (although that play appeared between The Master Builder and John Gabriel Borkman) must be fully explained.
There follow separate considerations of the protagonists in the plays: three portraits of greatness, flawed, and of suffering. These discussions all lead to the conclusion that while Ibsen may not always admire Solness, Borkman, or Rubek, he does remain sympathetic to them in their struggle as exceptional men, and he does imply that the price of greatness may be worth paying.
i i i WHAT PRICE GREATNESS? : A STUDY OF THE PROTAGONISTS IN
THREE PLAYS BY HENRIK IBSEN—THE MASTER BUILDER,
JOHN GABRIEL BORKMAN., AND WHEN WE. DEAD AWAKEN Through the histories of the protagonists in The Master
Builder (1892), John Gabriel Borkman (1896), and When We Dead
Awaken (1899), Ibsen explores problems of moral choice and questions
of personal responsibility that confront the exceptional individual.
In all three cases, he finds that the questions of responsibility
can never be fully or adequately answered and the problems of moral
decision are ultimately paradoxical. The purpose of the present
study is to examine this paradox--which we will call the "paradox
of greatness"—as it is presented and developed in the three plays
under consideration.
Since so much has been written about Ibsen, a brief account
first of the changing perspectives on his work will enable the
reader to see this approach in relation to the vast body of Ibsen
c r itic is m .
The nature of Henrik Ibsen’s literary reputation has shifted
considerably since his death in 1906. In his own day, Ibsen was
regarded as an iconoclast and an unrelenting social reformer.^ The
appearance of plays such as A D oll’s House, Ghosts, An Enemy of the
People, and The Wild Duck brought great excitement and praise from
the Ibsenites, who saw in them mainly a challenge to "the sanctity
of marriage, the omniscience of the church, the efficacy of idealism,
the probity of constituted authority, the wisdom of the ’compact 2 majority.’" His eminent supporters in the last century, the
' k'.: . 2 intellectuals George Bernard Shaw and Georg Brandes, saw Ibsen in 3 the role of preacher: Shaw examined the "lessons” of the plays;
Brandes emphasized the essentially polemical quality of Ibsen’s
work.^
Although Ibsen himself had said in a now famous speech before
the Norwegian Women’s Rights League in May, 1898, "I have been more
of a poet and less of a social philosopher than people generally
seem inclined to believe,""* it was not until twentieth-century Ibsen
study was well under way that this statement was taken seriously.
In 1928, Halvdan Koht wrote in his biography of Ibsen that "too many have attempted to make him a thinker or a philosopher, a social 6 critic or a social reformer." Subsequent criticism began to turn away from the search for social and moral instruction in Ibsen's plays. Part of this shift was, no doubt, due to the continuing popularity of Ibsen’s plays long after the social dogmas he attacked in nineteenth-century Europe had ceased to exist as such. Critics were forced to account for the survival of Ibsen's plays by looking beyond his insights into social and political questions. This re valuation of Ibsen’s contribution to the drama took two basic forms: on the one hand, appreciation of his technique as a journeyman drama- 7 g tist; on the other hand, recognition of Ibsen as a poet, regardless of whether he was writing in verse or in prose„
These approaches to Ibsen’s plays have done much to free him from the role of scourge of nineteenth-century European society and to reinstate him at an artistic level. As James Finn suggested in his 9 f 10 review of Koht s Life of Ibsen and Meyer s Ibsen: We now smile condescendingly at the fatuous idea that Ghosts is about syphilis, that notion being sufficient for the less so phisticated of our forebears; but .such views are a long time dying. There are still people who wish to treat A Doll1s House and Hedda Gabler as if Ibsen were an early enlistment in Women's Lib. There is nothing Ibsen would have scorned more, as his verdict on contemporaries who were so tempted makes clejj, and nothing less justified by the progression of his plays*
Indeed, the view of Ibsen as social commentator on such matters as the role of women, the position of the church, and prevalent a tti tudes toward sex is now generally rejected as short-sighted and superficial. But this should not mean the rejection of the essen- 12 tially moral concern that pervades his work. I would agree with
T. F. Driver's premise for his study of Ibsen:
One may err in finding only the propagandist in Ibsen. One may err in judging him only by the realistic plays of the middle period, for which he has become most famous, and by seeing these as "problem" plays. Yet even when one has adjusted his sights and looked at the whole of Ibsen's life and work, he will find that the element of poetic acceptance in Ibsen-is everywhere overshadowed by the factor of moral judgment.
This dimension of Ibsen's work--"the factor of moral judg- ment"--is not always easy to separate from social-political questions in the popular middle-period plays. While there is certainly an underlying moral concern in those plays, it is directed to the indi vidual's role in society and is thus inevitably bound up with the social order itself. But in the last plays, the emphasis shifts from the individual's relationship to society to the individual as he sees himself and as he seeks to fulfill himself* Thus, problems of moral choice turn inward to become what we will call questions of
"personal morality." It is this personal morality, which absorbed
Ibsen in his later years, that we will examine here. 5
Only recently has Ibsen criticism begun to direct itself 14 specifically to the final plays, which have been generally regarded 15 (with the possible exception of The 'Master Builder) as lesser works.
Initially, they stirred interest as autobiographical portraits of the 16 aging artist, mirrors of Ibsen s fears and worries about himself.
Closer scrutiny of the last plays, however, reveals them to be an
exceedingly important part of the Ibsen canon. Not only are these
his final words to his public, but in them he explores with greater
intensity and, I believe, with keener understanding than before, the
inner recesses of the human mind and heart.
In the three plays under consideration, Ibsen probes the moral dilemma of the man touched by greatness. "Greatness” connotes a special capacity or talent, the gift of unusual imagination and great vision. In his discussion of John Gabriel Borkman, Hermann Weigand suggests that for the aging, sceptical Ibsen, "greatness" came to de- 17 fine itself as "the capacity for holding great illusions." In a recent study of The Master Builder, Michael Kaufman offers a Nietzschean interpretation of Ibsen*s perception of human greatness as "that quality of ’soulness* that urges the individual beyond the narrow 18 horizons of conventional assumptions."
We are not talking exclusively about the artist*s greatness here, for Ibsen has taken care to make one of his late protagonists,
Borkman, a financial wheeler-dealer whose affinity is for the mines, not for cathedral spires or stone sculptures. Perhaps it may not be going too far afield to think of "greatness" as the American F. Scott
Fitzgerald wrote about it in his novels. He described Jay Gatsby as a man with "an extraordinary gift for hope, a romantic readiness . . some heightened sensitivity to the promises of life”; he said of
Monroe Stahr: "He had flown up very high to see, on strong wings, when he was young. And while he was up there he had looked on all the kingdoms, with the kind of eyes that can stare straight into the s u n ." 19
Ibsen sees the exceptional individual as one who is psycho- \ logically compelled to strive for complete self-realization—to seek fulfillment for personal reasons, although he may be benefiting society in the process (as a builder, a sculptor, or a socially- minded financier may) . Such a person, Ibsen suggests^ is often forced to make sacrifices not only in terms of his own personal
"happiness” (according to the conventional use of the word), but also in terms of the lives of those closest to him. His superior quali ties demand of the exceptional person a sense of mission that de prives him of some of his humanity, that makes him a less-than- complete human being. Not only must he suffer, but others must suffer .
It is time we saw "the stern judgement of individual responsibility" and "the scorn of inauthentic living and thinking" not just as "quali- 20 ties of the author" embodied in the plays (to quote James McFarlane ), but as clues to a conflict of basic importance in Ibsenfs work.
To see the conflict as one between "claims of vocation and of 21 the personal life" is to oversimplify and greatly diminish the plays. In the three plays under consideration, Ibsen explores a moral conflict between responsibilities: the responsibility of the excep tional person to fulfill his potential versus his responsibility or commitment to a particular person close to him. The question at hand becomes, then, whether Ibsen can resolve this dilemma of the 23 "divided soul," that is, ultimately, can a moral value be placed
upon each of these conflicting responsibilities?
It would be helpful here to point to a distinction Ibsen 24 seems to draw between "responsibility" and"duty." He sees as
"duties" those obligations that come from outside the individual;
these are externally dictated to him by the expectations of his
particular society. "Responsibilities," on the other hand, are
obligations to oneself and to others that follow from moral standards which have been, to some degree, internalized in the individual (at
least to the extent that he feels he should conform to them) . In some of the earlier plays, Ibsen had questioned obligations imposed by societal norms or patterns, by mores. For example, obviously, he did not consider it wrong for Nora Helmer to leave her husband and family (A Polios House) and he certainly had grave doubts of the rightness of Helen Alving’s having remained with the husband she did not love (Ghosts) . These were obligations dictated by society,
"duties" that weighed upon the women in question ("the path of duty . 25 the call of duty and obedience" ). "Duty," in Ibsen s particular usage of the term, becomes a rather loveless word. We see this in
The Master Builder, when Aline Solness goes to prepare a room for
Hilde because -".it's my simple duty," and later she offers to buy her some things in town because, again, "it s my simple duty."26 In con trast, Hilde, guided by a delight in spontaneity and a yearning for love, detests the mere word "duty": "Oh, I can’t stand that nasty, 8 beastly word. . . . It sounds so cold and sharp, like a knife. Duty, duty, duty! Don't you feel that, too? That it—somehow—-pierces you?” (Act 2, p. 172).
Although A Doll's House and Ghosts scandalized many people"”/ by questioning society's expectations, in these plays Ibsen was actually beginning to raise more universal questions about personal freedom and the sense of personal identity. He was, in effect, sepa rating social sense of "duty” from moral "responsibility" or commit-^ mervt_J In the last plays, he goes more deeply into the problem of personal responsibility. All three male protagonists of the plays--
Halvard Solness, John Gabriel Borkman, Arnold Rubek--violate (in different ways) their commitment to another human being, and all three are doomed. They all withdraw from human contact and love, each believing he has a mission to accomplish, and ultimately each forfeits the chance for "happiness" and threatens his own creative powers in the process (or, in the case of Borkman, loses his oppor tunity to exercise them) .
The histories of these three men, all of whom fail to realize themselves fully and all of whom die as less-than-complete human beings (in the case of Solness and more so Rubek, with an insight into what they have missed in life), raise the logical question: what should they have done? Does Ibsen mean that they should not have sacrificed love and personal "happiness" for the sake of their 27 missions? that love is indeed the life-giving principle of art and 28 truth? I think not. He suggests that while sacrifices could not ensure their success, greatness must seek its finest achievement. 9
I would argue that Ibsen does not say these men were wrong; rather,
they were forced to pay the price of greatness. And although Ibsen
seemed unable to condone the failure to meet moral responsibilities,
he saw no way out. He felt the paradoxical nature of the problem of
greatness. Perhaps his epilogue is called When We Dead Awaken (and his protagonists in the plays discussed here all die at the end) because he saw no r e a l way o f re c o n c ilin g in l i f e the dilemma he had
come to understand. In When We Dead Awaken, Rubek awakens only to die;
in the other plays, the protagonists are vital men in their last moments, as death approaches.
Before proceeding to a close examination of Solness, Borkman, and Rubek, it would seem in order here to explain the choice of plays for this study. There is little difficulty in pointing to Ibsen's
"last" plays, when we compare The Master Builder, John Gabriel Borkman, and When We Dead Awaken with earlier works--their greater exploration of psychological rather than social problems, as well as their heavier 29 use of symbols. That these plays form a final group is supported by the dramatist^ own testimony: "You are basically right when you say that the series which is concluded by the epilogue [i.e.,
When We Dead A w akenactually began with The Master Builder " (Ibsenfs v 30 letter to Count Moritz Prozor, March 5, 1900). More notable here is our conspicuous exclusion of Alfred Allmers, the protagonist in
Little Eyolf (1894), the play that appeared between The Master Builder and John Gabriel Borkman.
A clear case can be made for not admitting Allmers into the company of Solness, Borkman, and Rubek. He lacks the stature, the grandeur, the "greatness” of the others. To begin with, he seems in sincere: his talk of his great revelation up on the mountain peaks, of some day disappearing back up the mountain when his "successor" 31 (presumably Eyolf) has come to carry out his work, has a hollow ring. The more we see of Allmers, the more ridiculous such words be come. With his wife, Rita, and with Asta, Allmers behaves like a spoiled child, blaming everyone else when something goes wrong.
Allmersf self-delusion is so transparent and his supposed mission
(ironically, to write a book on "Human Responsibility"), in which he has obviously made no progress at all (nor is there reason to believe he ever will), seems so impossible that he appears to be a fraud.
I would agree with Weigand that whereas Borkman*s self-delusion elicits our "compassion and awe," the self-deception of Allmers earns 32 him only our "contempt." Allmers is less of a heroic figure, more of a comic-pathetic figure who reminds us of old Ekdal in The Wild
Duck. Valency describes Allmers as "a neurotic, pretentious man of considerable sensitivity, comically self-centered, whose manifold shortcomings are brought sharply into view by the melodramatic pos- 33 tures he affects."
The play Little Eyolf deals more with guilt (for the crip pling and death of Eyolf) than with the problem of greatness, more with self-delusion than with grand illusion. Therefore, although the ending of the play presents a possibility, though not entirely convincing, of compromise, the play is not at all an answer to the 34 dilemma of greatness we are considering here. Little Eyolf is not 35 about the "paradox of the engaged personality" for whom love is at the same time the obstacle to dedication and the necessary element for reaching a supreme goal. Allmers may be well meaning, but he lacks the ability and the character to fulfill the kinds of expecta tions he allows others to hold for him; ultimately, he must confront his own inadequacy. (Inadequacy is not the problem of Borkman and
Rubek; for Solness, there is a fear that he may not be adequate to his grand dreams, but this is an imagined inadequacy.)
Excluding L ittle Eyolf, we move now to examine the problem of greatness in The Master Builder, John Gabriel Borkman, and When We
Dead Awaken--to understand the potential greatness of three men, why they fail, and what, taken together, their personal histories suggest.
For it is curious that in all three cases we encounter a middle-aged
(Solness) to older (Borkman, Rubek) man whose life must be counted a failure; we meet each at a moment of crisis that precipitates his death, yet the plays do not end on a gloomy note. Rather, there is at the end a feeling of elation, of inspired, renewed confidence in 36 the value o f human endeavor.
At the outset of our study, we should emphasize that despite the similarities among the protagonists, they are really three diffe rent men who must be regarded as individuals if we are to arrive at a clear conception of each. They are not one man placed in three different settings, nor are the plays three versions of the same story. Although the men have much in common, as do the paths they follow (which is not surprising, since there is a great deal of Ibsen himself in each), no one judgment can be made of all of them. Part of the burden of this paper will be to point out the differences among Solness, Borkman, and Rubek, and further, to show that Borkman, who may not appear to be of the same grand mold (because of his crime of embezzlement and his years in jail, because of his attachment to money, rather than art), does belong with the other two last great
Ibsen heroes. To this end, I would like to deal first with Solness, then Rubek, then Borkman.
Much of the interest in The Master Builder has centered on
Ibsen himself, rather than on his play. "Put bluntly," says Michael
Meyer, "The Master Builder seemed primarily to be a play about sex; one did not need to wait for Freud to be made uneasy by all that talk about the beauty of towers and spires" (Introduction to the play, p. 112)
By the time this play appeared, Ibsen was sixty-four years old and had been writing plays for more than forty years. Since his work was known to be somewhat autobiographical (he himself had said that 37 Brand--in the play Brand, 1865--was "myself, in my best moments" ), it is not surprising that The Master Builder was greeted with much curiosity and speculation about what in Ibsen*s life would have led him to write a play so filled with sexual metaphor and the power of a 38 young girl to inspire an aging, restless artist. But while such biographical information may be helpful to a full appreciation of the play, it should not be allowed to draw our attention away from master builder Solness and how he asserts himself in a final moment of courage before he dies.
Bearing in mind (as we must throughout this treatment of the plays as "literature") that Ibsen intended his plays for performance, we can observe in The Master Builder his skillful dramaturgy at work,
especially in Act 1, as he prepares for the hero's entrance.
From the beginning of the play, we know that Halvard Solness
is no ordinary man. In the opening scene in the drawing office, we
sense the power he exercises over young Ragnar, his draughtsman, his bookkeeper Kaja, even old Knut Brovik, his former employer now serving
as Solness' assistant. As the play opens, Kaja and Ragnar are urging
the old and now ailing Brovik to leave his work for a while, but
Brovik insists: "I'm .not going before he comes I This evening I'm
going to have it out with--" (the stage direction here is "Bitterly")
"--with him. The master builder)" (p. 134). And Kaja's warning,
"Ssh! I can hear him coming up the steps,” rivets our attention on
the approaching,figure of Halvard Solness, who seems to hold in his hands the fate of these three people.
Solness makes his grand entrance—"an oldish man, strong and vigorous," as Ibsen describes him (p. 134). In the exchange that
follows we see not only old Brovik's hatred and resentment of Solness, who displaced him as an architect and stands in the way of his son's
future, but a very telling portrait of Solness himself.
Although he is obviously a "success" in his vocation, he seems neither happy nor satisfied; we feel his insecurity, his restlessness and anxiety. First, he loses his patience when he hears that a young couple are pressing him for drawings for their proposed villa: "Oh, yes, yes. I know that sort. They'll take anything with four walls and a roof over it. Anywhere to lay their heads. That's not what I call a home. If that's what they want, let them go to someone else. . I'd rather that than build rubbish” (p. 135) • Yet, when Brovik suggests that Ragnar take on the contract, Solness responds with such vehemence, such exaggerated concern for his own status, that he sounds not at all like a "master builder." Brovik1s plea unleashes from Solness a torrent of bitterness that stems clearly from a deep- seated fear of the younger generation's supplanting him (as he sup planted old Brovik): "(Laughs bitterly) So that's it! Halvard
Solness is to retire I Retire to make way for younger men! ■for apprentices! Make way for the young! Make way! Make way! . . .
I shall never give way! I shall never make way for anyone! Not of my own free will. Never, never!" (p. 138). When BrOvik begs that he at least be allowed to die in peace believing in his son's future,
Solness coldly, brutally refuses to sign the papers that would enable
Ragnar to strike out on his own. And Solness has power enough over both of his assistants to tell Brovik, "You must die as best you can** (p . 139).
Despite his own doubts and anxieties, Solness exercises similar, perhaps even greater, control over his bookkeeper, Kaja.
When he privately urges her to remain with him on the ground that he needs her (although we know it is really his paranoic fear of Ragnar's leaving him), Kaja acts more like a subject before a king or even a worshipper before her God than an employee with her employer. She drops to her knees before Solness: "Oh, you're so kind to me! So wonderfully kind!" (p. 141). 39 As Orley Holtan observes in his mythic approach to the play,
Solness is "part god, part man": he is king to his employees, God to 15
Kaja and in a way to the others because of his control over their future. The first two scenes in the play are essential in estab lishing this position of the master builder. The rest of Act 1—the entrance of Aline Solness and the arrival of Hilde Wangel--completes the portrait of Solness, with all his powerful but frustrated imagina tive energy.
Aline appears first, a melancholy shadow of a figure, ,Tthin and haggard” with ’’traces of former beauty," dressed "all in black"; she speaks"rather slowly and plaintively" (p. 141). She seems joy less, almost lifeless, as she and Solness go through the motions of a relationship. Our main impression is that she is a burden to him.
This is directly confirmed by Solness* conversation with Dr. Herdal.
He alludes to his "great debt" to Aline, "a debt so vast it can never be settled," and explains to Herdal that he keeps Kaja but allows
Aline to misconstrue his interest in the girl "because somehow I feel it does me good to suffer Aline to do me an injustice." He is amused that Herdal "must be labouring under the illusion that I am an ex ceedingly lucky man" (pp. 148-49). They talk of the fire that brought great "luck" to Solness in his career (though it was Aline*s ances tral home that burned to the ground) and of an even heavier blow from which Aline never recovered. The latter remains a mystery at this point in the play, but we cannot help noticing the conspicuous 40 absence of children from the Solness marriage.
The timing of Hilde*s arrival is significant. Solness has just revealed to Herdal his feeling that Aline thinks him"mad" and that she may not be entirely wrong because of the power he seems to have to call people (Kaja, for instance) to him just by willing, and he is in the midst of a tirade against youth ("shaking their fists and shouting: 'Hake way! Make way!*" —p. 150), when young Hilde
Wangel arrives, an attractive, vibrant picture of life entering the gloomy Solness household. Hilde*s recounting of the glorious episode ten years before when Solness climbed to a moment of splendor atop the church tower at Lysanger brings new vigor to Solness. She has come, she says, to claim the "kingdom" he promised her ten years be fore. Her talk of the "kingdom" and her recollection of hearing harps in the air when Solness scaled the heights of the tower point again to the master builder*s having been singled out for some special role--a role which Hilde has now come to help him achieve. One won ders about his powers to will events to happen and to draw people to him. Despite the apparent waning in his creativity--the grand designs of churches have given way to plans for humble dwellings (and most of the work for these seems to be handled by Brovik and his son)
—, "his personal magnetism, the potency of his will seems un- 41 diminished." He willed the fire, willed Kaja to him, seems even to will the arrival of Hilde, ironically the epitome of the youth he fears yet, at the same time, the source of inspiration he so desper ately craves when all seems lost to him. (His immediate attraction to
Hilde suggests that Solness* attitude toward the younger generation is really a mixture of fear with envy and a longing to regain the inno- . 42. cence and energy of youth. )
One cannot help wondering, too, whether the event of ten years ago really occurred as Hilde describes it, for Solness is slow in claiming to remember it. Exactly what happened in the past seems unimportant, though; Hildefs recollection of the kiss and the pro mised "kingdom" is not what brings Solness to admit, "You are the one
I've been wanting" (p. 164). He is getting older and is suffering more and more from feelings of guilt and frustration at not having built anything meaningful. He devoted himself to his career and yet did not realize his own potential, although he felt that he had sacri ficed everything--all his domestic joy in wife and children--to that end. But he has not given up yet. Now Hilde appears with her demand, and she becomes a powerful force that drives him to scale the heights again, although the result is fatal.
The symbolic significance of Hilde--whether she is all troll, 43 part troll, a Norn, some generalized vehicle of Fate, or even an external manifestation of the longing in Solness1 soul--while fasci nating to consider, is not of great importance in the context of this study. Here she is conceived of as a catalyst to the action of the play because she urges the master builder to his final moment of glory.
Admittedly, she is very captivating on stage, both for the audience and for Solness himself, but Hilde remains the figure from the past who brings the present to crisis and denouement. I would dispute
Brian Downs' claim that Solness is "a victim" to Hilde's "uncompro mising idealism," that she imposes her command "upon the reluctant 44 will of Halvard Solness." Solness* climb to the top of the spire must be seen as an act of courage and freedom if it is to be con sidered a victory at all. I have felt it essential to examine closely Act 1 of The
Master Builder because Ibsen immediately establishes the peculiar
psychological make-up of Solness as an exceptional man--a brooding,
majestic, if egocentric figure, a man for whom "success” of an ordi
nary kind has brought only feelings of emptiness and dissatisfaction.
Solness has made a good living and earned a fine reputation as a
builder of comfortable homes, but he has not made the contribution
or achievement he felt himself destined to make. And so much, in
terms of happiness, has been missing from his life.
The burden of guilt that weighs upon Solness and his feelings
of regret at having sacrificed personal happiness to his sense of mission—the question of "greatness" introduced earlier in this paper
are further explored as Solness' past and the interpretation he place
upon it are brought to light in Act 2.
Solness, we have suggested, is a man with a special gift of mind, that is, an ability to think deeply and to analyze, a power of
imagination and a loftiness of perception of his role in the universe 45 As a young man, he had a strong sense of mission, a vision of him
self and a devotion to his work that he had to satisfy. When he be
gan by building churches, he saw himself as God's agent on earth building churches to His greater glory. Then the terrible fire
(twelve years before the time of the play) that destroyed Aline's
family home and indirectly caused the deaths of the infant twins con vinced him of his mission. In his egotism and his obsession with his calling, Solness took the fire as God's way of breaking his earthly
ties, thus freeing him completely to build God’s churches. But after 19
a time he rebelled against this: he refused to build churches any
more, turning to the building of homes--a leap to freedom, he thought 46 (hence, Holtan's characterization of him as a Promethean rebel ).
Whether as God's agent or as man's, however, he accepted that
he must do without personal happiness for the sake of his life's work.
He tells Hilde: "Everything that I have created--beautiful, secure,
and friendly--yes, and magnificent, tool—I must sit here and expiate!
Pay fo r i t . Not w ith money. But w ith human happiness . . . And n o t
only with my happiness, but with the happiness of others, too. You
see, HildeI That's the price that my success as an artist has cost me—and others. And every day of my life I have to sit here and see
that price being paid for me—day after day after day!" (p. 179;
italics are mine). The reiteration of the idea that he has imposed a
sacrifice on "others," presumably his wife, coupled with his terrible
feelings of guilt ("And for my sake she died. And I am chained to the
corpse"—p. 201), points to the basic concern of this play. In his
failure to try to rebuild his shattered personal life after the fire, his failure to reach out to Aline, his failure, in effect, to strive
for personal happiness, Solness sacrificed Aline's happiness, as well as h is own. He allow ed t h e i r m arriage to s l i p away from them u n t i l it became a bleak, loveless bond. In his willingness to live without
love for the sake of a noble purpose, a higher good, Solness sacrificed the love life of one very close to him. This, not the fire that enabled him to become a master builder, is the heavy burden of guilt that Ibsen lays upon Halvard Solness. 20
Solness continually scourges himself with responsibility for the fire that he may have willed for the sake of his great mission.
As we mentioned earlier, he wants Aline to do him the "injustice" of suspecting the nature of his relationship with Kaja. He continues the absurd business of building a "home" which, he says, will make
Aline happy, a "home" with more nurseries (like the three they have now) for the children they can never have. This is not really mad ness, but a kind of charade he has to continue if his outward world
(his sense of "duty")is to remain intact.
It is difficult to assess the deterioration of the Solness marriage because we do not really know what the marriage was like in the beginning. We can reasonably conclude that in marrying Aline, with her large ancestral home and its grounds, Solness married above himself. (He tells Hilde that he doesn't call himself an "architect" because "I've never really studied it properly. .Most of what I know
I've found out for myself"--p. 177.) In a way, the young Aline doesn't sound so different from the woman we see before us now: after the fire, she insisted on feeding the infants, although her m ilk was in fe c te d . " I t was h er du ty , she s a id ," Solness r e c a lls
(p. 176). If there was never any love between them and Solness married Aline because he thought she would help him to become a great builder, there is a sacrifice of love for the sense of mission, from the beginning. If we assume that there was once love between Solness and his wife, then the play still points to a sacrifice of love and of the love life of someone else. By so readily accepting his own loss and not pursuing love, by devoting himself solely to his own self- 21 fulfillment, Solness denied Aline*s need to give love (maternal love, in her case) and ultimately, it seems, her capacity to love at all.
This, I think, is for Ibsen the unforgivable sin.
Solness tells Hilde: "Aline had her calling in life. . . .
Yes--you see, Aline had a--a talent for building, too. . . . Not houses and towers and steeples. . . . Children, Hilde. The souls of children. So that they might grow into something noble, harmonious, and beautiful. So that they might become worthy human beings. That was where her talent lay. And it lies there, unused—and unusable; waste and barren, like the charred ruins left after a fire" (pp. 179-80).
But why didn't Solness help her? Ibsen implies that he never really tried; that was not where his future, his commitment, lay.
Solness paid the price, but he did not achieve the self- fulfillment he was seeking. Building homes has not been the glorious liberation he envisioned after he stopped designing churches. His apparent success is now meaningless to him because, he says, "people have no use for the homes they live in. They can't be happy in them.
. ... . So when all the accounts are closed, I have built nothing really" (Act 3, p. 211).
Ironically, Ibsen suggests, Solness has sacrificed the one element—love—without which no man can be complete and no life can be fulfilled. This idea goes back to Ibsen's early play Brand. There,
Brand, the preacher, with his "All or Nought" demand of commitment from everyone, sacrificed his love for his mother and the lives of his wife and his child to fulfill, he thought, his purpose on earth.
In the process of becoming superhuman, Brand lost some of his humanity. 22
And in the avalanche that overwhelmed Brand at the end, through a voice reminding him of the "deus caritatis,” Ibsen seems to be calling into question the "All or Nought" on a human level, although he may approve of it on a symbolic level (Brand is "myself, in my best moments," Ibsen had said)*
This is the paradox of greatness. "To be able to build homes for other people," Solness explains to Hilde, "I had to renounce for ever all hope of having a home of my own. I mean a home with children.
And for their father and mother." And when Hilde asks, "Was that abso lutely necessary?" Solness nods slowly: "That was the price I had to pay for this ’happiness* people talk so much about. . . . That happi- ness--hm--that happiness wasn’t to be had at a lesser price, Hilde"
(Act 2, p. 178). Ibsen seems to feel that the price may indeed be n e c e ssa ry .
Yet, for all this, The Master Builder ends on a positive note, a note of assertion, not defeat. Hilde’s demand for her "kingdom" 47 drives Solness to a final achievement before his death. In over coming his vertigo to climb the tower, Solness displays a kind of courage he has not shown for years. His "success" had been built upon the ruins of the past; there was no life in it. Now, as he stands above and beyond everything (in an illusory escape from guilt and responsibility to others), he is allowed a brief triumph, a partial fulfillment. In thus doing what has seemed the impossible 48 and proclaiming at the top his freedom to build "castles in the air," not homes or churches, Solness goes beyond Brand in directing to God what is more of a challenge than a question. Then he is dashed to 23 earth, a stunning reminder of his humanity. But it is less important that he falls to his death than that he climbed the tower. For Sol ness death is no enemy; he cannot really compromise with life, nor does Ibsen say he should—that is the problem of greatness. By granting the master builder a supreme, if unreal, moment climaxed by a horrible fall to his death--by juxtaposing triumph with utter defeat and annihi lation—Ibsen underlines his belief that for the exceptional individual, the conflict between personal fulfillment and commitment to others is paradoxical.
For Solness there is a kind of second chance, though ad mittedly it is indeed short-lived. But it shows that while Ibsen may not admire Solness, he does remain sympathetic to him in his struggle as an exceptional man. As Richard Grene concludes in his study of the last Ibsen plays, out of the failure of men such as Solness,
"there was for Ibsen the only kind of success [in the sense of self- fulfillment, self-realizationJ that counted, albeit a renewal, a 49 second chance, only.11 This "renewal," or "second chance," becomes more explicitly a "resurrection" for Arnold Rubek, the protagonist in Ibsen's last play, When We Dead Awaken.
Compared with Solness, who is a vital man until his actual death at the end of The Master Builder, Arnold Rubek, the other artist 50 we will study here ("master-carver," as Ulfhejm calls him ), is his own ghost, the mere remains of a man who once had ‘great dreams and aspirations. It is not really age that has sapped his spirit and drained life from Rubek (although he is older than Solness--"an 24 elderly, distinguished-looking man," Act 1, p. 323), but the meaning less existence he chose after he had finished his "Resurrection Day" masterpiece and his model and inspiration, Irene, had vanished be cause he seemed to have no further use for her. When success and fame failed to make him happy ("The flowers and incense that were showered on me nauseated me, made me d e sp e ra te ; made me long to fle e into the depths of the forest"--Act 2, p. 353) and he found that with out Irene he could create nothing of value, Rubek decided to seek happiness in luxurious, idleliving.("Isn't life in sunshine and beauty far more worthwhile than wasting one's years in a raw, damp cellar, wearing oneself to death wrestling with lumps of clay and blocks of stone?" he asks Maja--Act 2, p. 354.) And so he bought a mansion in the city and a spacious villa in the country and young
Maja, whom he married by "agreement," a "makeshift" arrangement, he later admits. He abandoned hope for any great achievement--for the fulfillment of the greatness he sensed in himself--and subverted his talent by sculpting busts of prominent citizens behind which he hid faces of dumb beasts, such as donkeys, oxen, swine, a mockery such as life had become to him.
Rubek, as we meet him, is a man far more miserable and more openly defeated than Solness; his sense of failure and his feelings o f guilt for not having been what he might have been deprive him of any peace. His relationship with the shallow Maja cannot hold to gether even as an "arrangement"; his curt, irritable, often sarcastic manner towards her suggests the extent of his impatience and boredom with their life together. Rubek, then, seems in every way a stage beyond Solness: he is older, more discouraged (to a point of no longer believing in what he strove for), more disgusted with the public he thinks foolish in what it sees to praise and what if fails to see ("Die world knows nothing. It understands nothing. . . .
What's the use of working oneself to death to please theml"--Act 1, p. 327), more openly blasphemous in his mocking of himself and others.
And yet, as the personal history of Rubek is laid before us, we see that he is much like Solness, only more so. "The story of Rubek thus turns out to be a variation of the story of Solness, but even more 52 sad." Through his story, I think, Ibsen makes a stronger argument for the price, the sacrifice, that greatness demands.
Like the younger Solness, Rubek in earlier years felt his own great potential and thought he must be willing to sacrifice on a personal level in order that this potential might be realized--self- fulfillment at a price. "There had to be a distance between us," he tells Irene. "To me, you were something sacred and untouchable, fit only to be adored. . . . And I was convinced that if I touched you, if
I desired you sensually, my vision would be profaned so that I would never be able to achieve what I was striving after. And I still think there is some truth in that" (Act 1, pp. 341-42). (I have underlined the last statement because it suggests that Rubek has not really changed so much in his perception of the artist's mission; rather, he comes to understand not only what he has missed in life, but the sacrifice he demanded of another.) Irene had laid herself bare to him, in the spiritual nakedness of her soul as well as the physical naked ness of her body, but Rubek was unable to respond. He was only the artist who created. As if from some exalted position, some almost g o d -lik e pose, he u s e d 'Ire n e — "thank you" and telling her that the "episode" was now over. He thought this was just the beginning for him but, ironically, without her inspiration, it proved to be the end for him artistically. Like Solness, Rubek projects an image that is part-man, part- god. Irene returns from the grave of the madhouse to remind him: "X knelt down at your feet, and served you, Arnold. But you--you-- you--! . . . You wronged my inmost being!" (Act 1, p. 341). And even now, after Rubek has wounded her so deeply—fatally, she says-- she can offer herself to him again as to a god: "I have come back to you . . . Come home to my lord and master" (Act 2, p. 359). This is a phrase Irene repeats: "My love, my lord and master!" (Act 2, p. 368) She recalls seeing a "miraculously beautiful sunrise" with Rubek: "I did as you told me. Followed you to the mountain top. And there I fell on my knees and--worshipped you. And served you. . . . Then I saw the sunrise" (Act 2, p. 367). The picture of Irene the suppliant and the revelation on the mountain top, have unmistakable religious overtones. Finally, as Irene and Rubek are about to begin their ascent of the mountain and he implores her, "Will you come with me now, my bride of grace?" Irene answers as if in a dream, "Freely and willing ly, my lord and master" (Act 3, p. 380). It is not just with Irene that Rubek seems the master in control (much as Solness was) but with Maja as well. He had pro mised her, too, that he would take her with him to the top of a high 27 mountain and show her "all the glory of the world." But for Maja he is more a paternal than a god-like figure. She does not "serve" him; as Rubek discovers, she was "not exactly made to climb mountains." When she married Rubek, Maja wanted to go abroad and "enjoy myself, always." Maja seems a child with Rubek, and she brings back the child-like qualities of Hilde Wangel (without, of course, the force or demand). Consider the way she tells Rubek how she longs to go up into the mountains: "Oh, you must let me, Rubek. I'll be so good if you do. . . . May I, Rubek? . . . Oh, thank you, thank you! May I . . .Oh, thank you, thank you! How sweet and kind you are today, Rubek!" (Act 1, p. 344). Like Solness, Rubek suffers from feelings of guilt for not having fulfilled his potential, for allowing himself to demean, even mock his greatness: "You Irene! have a shadow that torments you. And I a conscience" (Act 2, p. 359). Irene cannot do violence to Rubek, cannot even hate him any more when she sees that he, too, is dead in the sense that he is past all hope for living. This is perhaps best shown in his terrible description of the nightmarish foreground figure in the completed masterpiece, the figure that represents Rubek himself: In the foreground, beside a spring, as it might be here, there sits a man weighed down by guilt; he cannot free him self from the earth's crust. I call him remorse--remorse for a forfeited life. He sits there dipping his fingers in the rippling water, to wash them clean; and he is gnawed and tormented by the knowledge that he will never, never succeed. He will never, in all eternity, free himself, and be granted resurrection. He must stay forever in his Hell. (Act 2, p. 363.) But unlike Solness, Rubek.does not come to realize what he sacrificed 28 and rwhat sacrifice he demanded in placing his responsibility to himself above everything else until Irene returns to him and he sees what he did to her. Solness and Rubek are both inspired to assert themselves at the end because of the crucial appearance of a figure from the past, but for Rubek there is more of an awakening— there is new self-knowledge. Not until Rubek sees Irene does she become a corpse, a weight of guilt for him; Solness, on the other hand, cannot be comfortable in the same room with Aline because he feels a constant"debt" to her. Rubek's crime, what is for Ibsen "the unpardonable sin of 53 killing the love-life in a human soul," is much clearer and more brutal than is Solness'. To begin with, he twice sacrificed others in pursuit of his mission. After he had used Irene as his model, he left her "empty, soulless." Later, for very different reasons, he took Maja as a "makeshift" when he had ceased to love hiis work and thought he could use her to enjoy living. Maja was not sacrificed to any noble purpose, and she does seem to weather her experience with Rubek nicely enough to go off with her bear-hunter. But Irene was s a c rif ic e d to Rubek* s sense of m ission, to h is "A ll or Nought1* demand. Over and over, she tells him that she is dead, that he was the cause of her death: "I gave you my soul--young and alive. . . . Don't you see? That's why I died, Arnold" (Act 1, p. 345). Her description of the madness into which she fell is all in terms of death: "I was dead for many years. They came and tied me up, tied my arms together behind my back. Then they lowered me into a tomb, with iron bars across the door, and padded walls so that no one up 29 above could hear the shrieks of the dead. But now, slowly, I am beginning to rise from the dead" (Act 1, p. 340). Irene is obsessed with death—her own, her husbands', her"children's": "I should have borne children into the world. . . . Real children; not the sort that are hidden away in tombs. That should have been my calling" (Act2, p. 364). (Again, the theme of maternal love denied, as in The Master B u ild e r.) Rubek seems more clearly the exploiter of others than does Sol ness largely because Irene—and what has become of her--is so sympa thetically portrayed by Ibsen. She is, after all, a much grander figure on stage than either woman in The Master Builder. (Aline does not have the power to win us, and Hilde, for all her exuberance, is still a young, flighty creature whose real motives and behavior re main questionable.) Irene is fit to climb the mountain with Rubek at the end, and as a pair they are thrown into sharp contrast with Maja and Ulfhejm, who are content to seek life on an elemental, purely sensual level. Although Rubek is held accountable for the "death" of Irene, it is through him that Ibsen makes his strongest case for paying the price of greatness. Clearly, he says that Rubek was not wrong to have sacrificed Irene to his sense of mission. Rather, the importance of this sense of mission in the exceptional man is reaffirmed here. After he has found Irene again, Rubek tries to explain to Maja what he must do: "I can't stand this miserable life much longer. . . . I must live with someone who can make me complete--supply what's missing in me--someone who is one with me in everything I strive for" (Act 2, 3° p. 352) . He still wants to use Irene as a source for inspiration ("In here, Maja--in here I keep a small casket, with a lock that cannot be picked. In that casket, all my visions lie. But when she left me, . . . the lock of that casket snapped shut. She had the key, and she took it with her. . . . So everything in it lies unused. And the years pass--and all that wealth lies there--and X cannot touch it!”— Act 2, pp. 355-56), still clings to the idea of his fulfillment, of his special responsibility to himself as an exceptional man, specifi cally as an artist: [to MajaJ : . . . I fve come to realize that it's not within my power to find happiness in idleness and soft living. Life is not shaped like that for me and my kind. I must go on working, creating incessantly, until I die. (Act 2, p. 355.) [to IreneJ : I am an artist . . . I am not ashamed of the frailty inherent in my nature. I was born to be an artist, you understand. And I shall never be anything else. (Act 2, p. 363.) Rubek never repents for what he did to Irene in depriving her of love for the sake of his goal. He does see that what he did is in some sense a ”crime" against her, and he does feel the bitter irony of his having let Irene slip away when she was the inspiration he needed. Now, lik e S o ln ess, Rubek is allow ed a b r i e f moment o f glo ry on the h e ig h ts (th e mountain top in s te a d o f the to w e r), a moment o f victory, or at least peace before death. Then, like Brand, Rubek (with Irene) is buried by the avalanche, for the past cannot be re captured and relived, and they have "awakened" only to find that they never lived. Like Brand, Rubek dies a cold death in the snows; he is 31 struck from above, as were both Brand and Solness, But Rubek is not alone (Brand was; Solness had only the figure of Hilde waving at him from down below). He does have Irene with him, and they seem at the end two figures larger than life, rising above the Majas and the Ulfhejms of the world, As Valency observes, "Rubek accepts his destiny 54 with pride as well as resignation," That is why his moment of death seems a triumph, And we are left with the paradoxical problem of greatness,, We will never know what Rubek might have been with Irene, but we feel that his sense of commitment to himself is undiminished at the end, though he has awakened to the love he and Irene share0 The claim s o f his mission and his responsibility to Irene can be reconciled only by death--by the almost dreamlike ascent up the mountain, Ibsen suggests that men like Rubek, and like Solness, "are doomed to forfeit earthly happiness; the only kind of joy which is to be theirs is that terri ble joy found , , „ beyond the avalanche, or at the top of the tower a t the moment o f f a llin g Perhaps i t is because Rubek knows th is to be the case that he accepts his own identity and is able to em brace his fate at the end. Ibsen shows that "neither the hero nor the artist can live like other people. It is their doom to live on the brink of existence, in a world beyond life • • , their calling is 56 their heaven and their hell," Another study of such a man who belongs to the company of exceptional men is set before us in John Gabriel Borkman, the play that preceded When We Dead Awaken, 32 For several reasons, Borkman stands apart from Solness and Rubek. Most obviously, he is not an artist, but an industrialist, a would-be business magnate and financier, a builder of empires. Com pared with the ’’higher calling" of Solness and Rubek, his potential for greatness seems sullied by material crassness and his love for power maniacal: • • o I could have created millions I Think of all the mines I could have brought under my control, the shafts I could have sunk. I would have harnessed cataracts*—hewn quarries. My ships would have covered the world, linking continent to con tinent. All this I would have created alone. Unlike Solness and Rubek, Borkman never has the chance to pursue his mission; he is ”a Napoleon, maimed in his first battle'r (Act 2, p. 262). Borkman's violation of the legal, as well as the moral, code--his actual crime of embezzlement--and his years in prison may seem to make his personal history vastly different from that of either Solness or Rubek. After all, he is a "criminal" in the most ordinary sense of the word: he made illegal use of funds of depositors in his bank for the advancement of his own private in vestments. Regardless of the nobility of purpose he thought he was serving ("So that I might create a kingdom for myself, and prosperity for thousands and thousands of others"—Act 2, p. 273) and the per sonal sense of mission he felt (’’. « .1 had to do it. People don’t understand that I had to because I was myself—because I was John Gabriel Borkman—and no-one else"—Act 3, p. 281), Borkman’s crime against society is clear. But he has suffered enough punishment for this crime—punishment in terms of long physical as well as spiritual isolation, punishment in terms of personal disgrace (a striking contrast with the esteem and "success” of Solness and Rubek)—although he has never come to regret the crime itself. As Ibsen would have it, the crime against society is duly accounted for by society’s censure of John Gabriel Borkman; the debt is paid. This crime, however, is not the focus of the play. Ibsen’s real indictment of Borkman is for his much deeper "crime" against Ella Rentheim, whose love he literally sold to Hinkel for a higher position at the bank, and against his wife Gunhild, whose life and love have been wasted because of him. Granted, Borkman knowingly sacrificed Ella to his own advancement, but viewed from his extreme commitment, from his sense of a "higher calling" ("It was an absolute necessity, Ella"--Act 2, p. 271), his ,runpardonable sin of killing the love-life in a human soul" seems not unlike Rubek*s crime against Irene, though indeed more calculated and extreme because he rejected Ella for a specific prize. And Borkman’s rejection of his responsibility to Gunhild--the emptiness of their marriage—brings to mind Solness’ sacrifice of the happiness of his wife. Here again, Borkman’s case is more extreme because he "deceived" Gunhild (we have no real grounds for accusing Solness of having "deceived" Aline). In one of his rare comments on a character in his plays, Ibsen wrote: The main p o in t is th a t Mrs. Borkman loves h er husband. She is not at heart a hard or evil woman; she Was, to begin with, a loving wife, and has only become hard and evil because she has been deceived. Her husband deceived her doubly—firstly, in love, and secondly, because she had believed in his genius. . . . If Mrs. Borkman did not love her husband, she would long ago have forgiven him.-’® It is this element of deceit that sets Borkman apart from Solness and Rubek. We cannot really compare Borkman’s marriage with Rubek*s, for 34 even though Rubek may not have been entirely fair when he promised to show Maja "all the glory of the world," Rubek1s loveless marriage has not meant the sacrifice of Maja's life happiness and her capacity fo r loveo The theme of sacrificing another human being*s love life echoes through John Gabriel Borkman, as it resounded through When We Dead Awaken, and in Ella*s accusations against Borkman, "'that impulse to sacrifice, which had seemed so noble, is given its real name-- 59 murderWhereas Irene tells Rubek that she "died," that he was "guilty of leaving [jier] no future but death" (Awaken, Act 1, p. 341), Ella*s denunciation of Borkman is much stronger: "You are a murderer! You have committed the mortal sin! • • ® You have killed love in me!" (Act 2, p® 272) . She goes on: "Do you understand what that means? The Bible speaks of a mysterious sin for which there is no forgiveness® I've never understood what that meant before® Now I understand® The sin for which there is no forgiveness is to murder love in a human being" (Act 2, p. 272). Ella carries this a step further by suggesting that in betraying the woman he loved ("the thing you held most pre cious in the world"), Borkman betrayed himself: "You are guilty of double murder® The murder of your own soul, and mine" (Act 2, p® 272). Ella is a very strong figure in this play not only because, like Irene in When We Dead Awaken, she is portrayed sympathetically, but because unlike Irene's, her words are filled with passion as she confronts Borkman after so many years. As with Aline in The Master Builder and Irene in When We Dead Awaken, there is for Ella the emptiness and pain of motherhood and 35 maternal loving denied her: "You cheated me of the joy of being a mother--and of the sorrow and tears of motherhood, too. And that is perhaps the cruellest thing youfve done to me, Borkman" (Act 2, p» 274).' Again, Ella's indictment is the strongest: "From the time your image began to fade, I have lived as though under an eclipse. All these years it has become more and more difficult, until finally it became impossible for me to love any living thing. People, animals, flowers-- only this one person--" (Act 2, p. 274). The "one person,r is Borkman's son, Erhart, whom Ella thinks she has a chance to win back. But she is mistaken. And her struggle with Gunhild over Erhart is really pointless because Erhart is already lost to both of them. The struggle between Ella and Gunhild is a noble one, however, not because of Erhart (who is not a particularly impressive young man, although likeable enough), but because the two women are strong, dignified figures with a mythic, an archetypal quality. And while our sympathy for them (and what they have suffered) should make us react all the more against Borkman, in a way their grandness lends to him more greatness. Valency describes Borkman as "a titanic figure at the end of „60 life" who "easily bears the weight of the action. His name itself-- that strange combination of the down-to-earth John and the heavenly 61 Gabriel--is special. His appearance places him in age somewhere between the "oldish" Solness and the "elderly1' Rubek; the emphasis is on his being "trimly and strongly built,r and "distinguished" looking, with "finely carved profile, sharp eyes and grey-white, curling hair and beard" (Act 2, p. 255). Gunhild recalls the way people used to ,rbow and scrape" to Borkman ("the way they would to a kingfr) and call 36 him "John G abriel" " j u s t as though he was the Kingo • . . Oh, he was a great man in their eyes, was John Gabriele" And Ella reminds her, 62 "He was a great man then, Gunhild" (Act 1, p. 236)* Holtan speaks of Borkman as a "man of uncommon gifts" who, even in defeat, "towers over the rest of the characters in the play, with the possible exception 63 of Ella Rentheim." Borkman1 s son, Erhart, is pleasant, but insigni ficant in comparison with his father. One feels that Erhart will never be what his father was or could have been; there is no hint that 64 he has a touch of this "greatness." With Borkman, we are taken back to Weigand*s interpretation of an aging Ibsen*s concept of greatness as the ability to hold on to great illusions. For unlike Solness and more clearly Rubek, Borkman still believes in what he strove for; he still has a dream to sustain himc We see this in Borkman*s exchange with his friend and would-be playwright, Vilhelm Foldal, a poignant figure of a man, "bent,rr "worn-out,** feeding himself only on false hopes, groping for some shred of personal integrity. Borkman assures the miserable Foldal that not being understood is their fate as exceptional men: "That is the curse, the burden we chosen men have to bear. The masses, the mediocre millions—they do not understand us, Vilhelm" (Act 2, p» 259). And then that great longing for power takes hold on Borkman: The day I am rehabilitated—when they realise they cannot do without me—when they come up to me in this room and get down on their knees and implore me to take over control of the bank again--the new bank they have founded--but cannot run--! shall stand here [by the desk] to receive them. And throughout the land men will ask and learn what conditions John Gabriel Borkman lays down— (Act 2, p. 261.) 37 Such faith does Borkman have in himself that when Foldal seems to doubt his return to power, he is very harsh with him: "You are no poet, Vilhelm® » ® ® We are simply wasting each other*s time® You had b e tte r not come again" (Act 2, p® 266)® Borkman*s b e l i e f in himself is a large part of his strength; to Foldal*s doubts about himself ("A horrible doubt--that I have frittered away my life for the sake of an illusion"), Borkman can only respond, "If you doubt yourself, you stand on feet of clay" (Act 2, pp. 266-67)® In this respect, Borkman*s feet are firmly planted on hard ground® Part of Borkman*s strength is his vitality, his energy, his vigor to the end,^ Gunhild likens him to "a sick wolf padding in a cage up there in the great room®" Valency sees Borkman as "a heroic version of old Ekdal in The Wild DuCk," and he notes the important difference between the two men: Ekdal "has accepted defeat, and has become sodden and pathetic® • • ® Like Ekdal, he [Borkmanj has been destroyed by a man who is now wealthy and respected; but he has not made peace with his enemy. He has preserved his pride and his hope 66 to the last, and still considers himself dangerous®" At the end, the great difference between Solness and Rubek, on one hand, and Borkman, on the other, is that Borkman is not torn by conflicting claims of responsibility to himself and to those close to him. He sees self-realization clearly as his proper goal and can accept that greatness has its price® That is why he does not live to regret his sacrifice of love and happiness and the sacrifice he im posed on Ella and Gunhild® True, he has awakened to the importance of Ella's love for him, so that he now asks her to join him in his 38 search for the "way back to freedom and life and humanity." But when they have climbed high up in the forest, he claims to see the smoke from the steam ers on the fjo rd and to h ear th e humming of the machines in the factories by the river. His great dream is still very much a part of him: My kingdom! . • . Ella! Do you see those mountains far away? • • o That is my infinite and inexhaustible kingdom,, .. • • I see those veins of iron ore, stretching their twisting, branching, enticing arms towards me. . • . I love you, trea sures that crave for life, with your bright retinue of power and glory. I love you, love you, love you. (Act 4, pp. 304-05.) Ella knows that even after all his suffering and the torment she and Gunhild have endured, Borkman is no less committed to his mission. "Yes, your love is still buried down there, John," she tells Borkman. And that is why she prophesies just before Borkman1s death, "You will never ride triumphant into your cold kingdom" (Act 4, p. 305) . Perhaps it is because Borkman is not haunted by a guilty con science for the sacrifices he demanded of others (as Solness and Rubek are) that Ibsen denies him the kind of triumph both Solness and Rubek seem to experience in their moment of death. Ella's return does prompt Borkman to assert himself: after so many years of self- imposed isolation, he steps out of the house and makes the long walk up the mountain. This moment of freedom is a brief peace, not a victory. Then Borkman is gripped by the cold, by "a hand of iron," he says. Like Solness and Rubek, he dies up on the heights, but the suggestion is that he is dragged down below rather than struck from above. This may be more than the fitting end for a miner's son; it may be Ibsen's way of dealing harshly with Borkman by pulling him down further than the others at the end because of the enormity of his 68 "crime" and his failure to question his own "All or Nought" demand. It is interesting to note that viewed from the Kierkegaardian perspective (see note #45), Borkman is more of an existential hero than either Solness or Rubek, Whereas the latter two live to regret their sacrifice and others* sacrifices of love and happiness for them, Borkman remains committed to his "choice," even at the end. Finally, the history of John Gabriel Borkman, with its Kierke gaardian overtones, brings us back to the story of Brand. According to Valency, "one might say he jlbsenj struggled with Brand for thirty 69 years; but he never succeeded in shaking him off." I think Valency is right when he sees Brand in Ibsen's later plays, but he is wrong to construe this haunting figure as the spectre of "resolute idealism," For it is with the problem of greatness, not idealism, that Ibsen struggled for so long. He did not lay bare the personal histories of Solness, Borkman, and Rubek—their greatness, flawed, and their suf fering as well as the suffering they caused—simply to show that Idealism won’t work in "the real worldClearly, for most of us, 71 life is lived '’somewhere between All and Nothing," but what of the exceptional cases? They have a special responsibility to themselves 72 and their mission, and their paths lead "beyond happiness," The price of greatness may be exorbitant, but perhaps it is worth paying to be admitted into that special company. Notes This claim is supported by many critical studies of Ibsen's work. See, for example: M. C. Bradbrook, Ibsen, The Norwegian: A Revaluation (London: Chatto & Windus, 1948); Tom F. Driver, Romantic Quest and Modem Query: A History of the Modern Theatre (New York: Delacorte Press, 1970); Robert Hatch, "The Persistence of Ibsenism,” Hor, 4, No. 3(1962), 106-08; P. F. D. Tennant, Ibsen1s Dramatic Technique (1948; rpt. New York: Humanities Press, Inc., 1965). 2 Hatch, "The Persistence of Ibsenism," p. 107. 3 G. Bernard Shaw, The Quintessence of Ibsenism (New York: Brentano's, 1909). ^George Brandes, Henrik Ibsen: A Critical Study, trans. Jessie Muir and rev. William Archer (1899; rpt. New York: Benjamin Blom, Inc., 1964), pp. 1-122. ^James W. McFarlane, ed., Henrik Ibsen: A Critical Anthology (Middlesex, England: Penguin Books, Ltd., 1970), p. 169. ^Halvdan Koht, The Life of Ibsen, trans. Hanna Larsen and Ruth McMahon (New York: W. W. Norton & Co., Inc., 1931), I, 1. ^See, for example, H. L. Mencken, "The Technical Quality of the Plays," Eleven Plays of Henrik Ibsen (New York: Random House, Inc., 1935), rpt. In Discussions of Henrik Ibsen, ed. James W. McFarlane (Boston: D. C. Heath and Co., 1962), pp. 7-10; John Northam, Ibsen's Dramatic Method (London: Faber and Faber, Ltd., 1953); Tennant, Ibsen's Dramatic Technique. g See, for example, Bradbrook, Ibsen, the Norwegian; E. M. F o rs te r, "Ibsen The Romantic," Abinger Harvest (New York: Harcourt, Brace and World, Inc., 1936), rpt. in Discussions. pp. 66-69. 9 Halvdan Koht, Life of Ibsen (Oslo, Norway: H. Aschehaug6c Co., 1954). Trans, and ed. Einar Haugen and 4. E. Santaniell© (New York: Benjamin Blom, Inc., 1971). This is the first English transla tion of Koht's 1954 revised, one-volume biography of Ibsen. ^^Michael Meyer, Ibsen: A Biography (Garden City, New York; Doubleday6c Co., Inc., 1971). H"Not Women's Lib," The New Republic. Oct. 23, 1971, pp. 22-23. 40 Notes to pages 4-7 By social-political concern, we mean an attempt to c riti cally assess social and political institutions; by moral concern, we mean an attempt to critically assess the individual's moral obliga tions to himself and to others* ^D river, Romantic Quest and Modern Query, p, 161* ^Such studies include: David Grene, Reality and the Heroic Pattern: Last Plays of Ibsen. Shakespeare, and Sophocles (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1967); Orley I* Holtan, Mythic Patterns in Ibsen's Last Plays (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1970); Kenneth Muir, Last Periods of Shakespeare, Racine, Ibsen (De troit: Wayne State University Press, 1961)* ^ S e e , fo r example: The C o llected Works o f H enrik Ib se n , rev* and ed* William Archer (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1907), XI, rpt* in Henrik Ibsen: The Last Plays, trans * William Archer (New York Hill and Wang, 1959), pp.'73-77, 153-56; Bradbrook, pp. 123-47; Driver pp* 188-90; Hans Heiberg, Ibsen: A Portrait of the A rtist, trans. Joan Tate(Coral Gables, Florida: University of Miami Press, 1969), pp. 264-96* 16 Meyer, Ibsen, pp. 698-99, 746-47, 786; Muir, Last Periods, pp. 95-96. 17Hermann J* Weigand, The Modern Ibsen: A Reconsideration (1925; rpt. Freeport, New York: Libraries Press, 1970), p. 375* 18 Michael W* Kaufman, ’’Nietzsche, Georg Brandes, and Ibsen's The M aster B u ild e r, ” Comp. Drama, 6 (Fall 1972), 169-86. It should be noted that Kaufman goes on to show how Ibsen attacks some of Nietzsche's fundamental tenets and ultimately rejects as impossible the celebrated Nietzschean freedom from the past and achievement of "self-transcendence." Kaufman suggests that Ibsen has to reject Nietzsche's ideas because he jlbsenj arrives at the paradoxical con clusion that "transcendence is at once the heroic definition and the annihilation of the self." 19 The Great Gatsby (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1925), p . 2; The L ast Tycoon (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1941), p.20 20James W* McFarlane, "Revaluations of Ibsen,Ir Ibsen and the Temper of Norwegian Literature (London: Oxford University Press, 1960), rpt. in Discussions, pp. 19-27. ^^Muir, p. 91. ^This is not a conflict between freedom and responsibility, for even if he were "freed" from his commitments to others, the excep tional person would still carry a burden of responsibility to himself. He can never be really "free." Notes to pages 7-10 ^A . R. Thompson, "Ibsen as Psychoanatomist," ETJ, 3 (1951), 34-39. 24 Valency fails to make this distinction. His reference to Ibsen’s heroes' "complete devotion to duty" does not ring true to the plays, and he is led by this to an inaccurate reduction of the hero’s "complex situation" to "perhaps nothing more than the traditional con flict of love and duty, the mainstay of the seventeenth-century theatre." (He does go on to suggest that the conflict is more com plicated by Ibsen's day because "moral outlines . . . have become blurred" and the hero’s path no longer leads clearly to sacrifice, nobility, and glory. See Maurice Valency, The Flower and the Castle: An Introduction to Modem Drama (New York: G rossetk Dunlap, 1963), pp. 231-32. 25 Henrik Ibsen, "Ghosts," in Ghosts and Three Other Plays, trans. Michael Meyer (Garden City, New York: Anchor Books, 1966), Act 1, p. 151. 26 Henrik Ibsen, "The Master Builder," in When We Dead Awaken and Three Other Plays, trans. Michael Meyer (Garden City, New York: Anchor Books, I960), Act 1, p. 153; Act 2, p. 171. Subsequent cita tions from The Master Builder will appear in the text and w ill refer only to this edition of the play. (There may be slight variation in pagination or in the text in successive printings.) 27 Valency seems to draw this conclusion: "Ibsen was essen tially a poet of love” (The Flower and the Castle, p. 233). In the final analysis of this crucial question, I differ with Valency’s interpretation as presented in The Flower and the Castle. I agree with his perception of Ibsen’s world as one in which "the loss of love is an irreparable disaster," but I cannot conclude with Valency that in Ibsen's "world order, happiness is the only logically defensible goal." (At least, this Is not so for the exceptional person.) It may be, as Valency asserts, that "in a world where all else is vanity, love alone can ensure some measure of happiness," but this kind of interpretation assumes "happiness" to be the goal; whereas we are suggesting here a different goal of self- fulfillment for those specially gifted, and the striving towards this goal seems often to conflict directly with "happiness." (Quotations from Valency appear on p. 233.) 29"The four last plays of Ibsen are as sharply divided from his earlier work as the four last plays of Shakespeare" (Bradbrook, p . 125). 30 Henrik Ibsen: A Critical Anthology, p. 171. ^"L ittle Eyolf" in The Last Plays, Act 1, p. 17. ^^The Modem Ibsen, p. 360. Notes to pages 10-14 43 Valency, pp0 214-15® 34It is not difficult, however, to see Little Eyolf as part of Ibsen* s final series of plays. The familiar elements are there— guilt and recrimination, communication breakdown in marriage, problems of moral responsibility-mixed with the heavy symbolism of Ibsen's later writing (especially in the figure of the Rat Wife). But unlike the plays we are studying here, Eyolf portrays "a man with a strong sense of vocation, but no vocation." It is the death of Eyolf that forces Allmers "to look outside himself for a mission with which to justify his existence" (Valency, pp. 213-14). As the catalyst to the action of the play, the Rat Wife, un like Hilde, Ella, and Irene, is a purely symbolic force external to the real world of the play® For a further consideration of the similari ties and differences among these catalytic figures, see Richard Schech- ner, "The Unexpected Visitor in Ibsen*s Late Plays," ETJ, 14, No. 2 (May 1962), 120-27, rpt. in Ibsen: A Collection of Critical Essays, ed® Rolf Fjelde (Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, Inc., 1965), pp. 158-68. ^Valency, p. 231. 36 To determine whether this effect meets the Aristotelian criteria for "tragedy," or "tragedy" as otherwise defined, is out side the scope of this paper. There have been numerous studies of the possibilities for "tragedy" in modern drama—for example, Elder Olson, Tragedy and the Theory of Drama (Detroit: Wayne State Univer sity press, 1961)--and the question of whether Ibsen did, indeed, write "tragedies"—for example, Sverre Arestad, "Ibsen’s Concept of Tragedy," PMLA, 74 (June 1959), 285-97, and Valency’s discussion of Ibsen’s heroes (pp. 118-237). ^Meyer, p. 274. ^Because Ibsen was so withdrawn and isolated a figure, the curiosity of his public remained unsatisfied until after his death, when his friend Georg Brandes published letters of Ibsen (1889-90) to a young girl named Emilie Bardach. From this correspondence and diary e x tra c ts th a t Em ilie l a t e r made a v a ila b le , Ib s e n 's summer o f 1889 a t Gossensass and his relationship with the young girl he met there could be developed into a fascinating story. Ibsen's interest in Emilie Bar dach, and his subsequent acquaintance with Helene Raff, Hildur Ander sen, and Rosa Fitingoff, suggested a definite link with the special bond between Halvard Solness and Hilde Wangel in The Master Builder (Meyer, Introduction to The Master Builder, pp. 111-29). 39Holtan's application of the mythic pattern of the dying king to Solness works nicely because it pivots on the familiar chal lenge to the old king or god that is made by the new. I do not, how ever subscribe to a mythic interpretation of the whole play, with Hilde regarded as a Norn who presides over Solness* death. I believe a largely psychological approach to the play is less limiting and more justifiable. Notes to pages 15-18 This is emphasized when Hilde is later given one of the three unused nurseries as her room0 "You must have heaps of chil dren," she says. "No," answers Solness, "We have no children. But now you can be the child here for a while" (Act 1, p, 153), 41 Jens Arup and James W« McFarlane, trans,, James W. McFar lane, ed,, The Oxford Ibsen, VII (London: Oxford University Press, 1966), 21. # A As direct evidence of this, we have the following exchange: H ild e , "What do you want from me?" Solness. "Your youth, Hilde." Hilde smiles, "Youth, which you are so frightened of?” Solness nods slowly. "And which, in my heart, I long for." (Act 2, p. 187.) 43 Solness* talk to Hilde about his "helpers" and "servers" raises for us the matter of Ibsen*s concern with trolls, a concern that reaches as far back as Peer Gynt. On this subject, Meyer ob serves: "Trolls, properly understood, are not mere goblins but, as Professor Francis Bull has written: 'the evil forces of Nature . . . embodying and symbolizing those powers of evil, hidden in the soul of man, which may at times suppress his conscious will and dominate his actions. . . . By ever pandering to his evil instincts and desires they have come to be really his rulers--mysterious powers that make him afraid of himself.'" Thus, Meyer sees in Peer Gynt a struggle between "man's deeper self and his animal, or troll, self . • ." (pp. 272-73). Perhaps the crisis through which Solness passes to his death can be approached as his struggle with the troll within, Hilde bringing out his "troll self" or being, indeed, his "troll self" externalized. 44 Brian W. Downs, Ibsen: The Intellectual Background (Cam bridge: The University Press, 1946), pp. 91-92. ^The sense of mission with which Ibsen is so concerned in The Master Builder (as he is in Brand) inevitably brings to mind the work of the Scandinavian philosopher, S^ren Kierkegaard. The Spanish exis tentialist Miguel Unamuno goes so far as to assert that "'a thing we can be sure of is that underlying Ibsen's drama is the theology of Kierkegaard. . . Brand, Ibsen's Brand, is his [Kierkegaard' sj reflec tion in dramatic art, and as long as Brand endures Kierkegaard will endure. "* (The quotation from Unamuno was translated by Stuart Gross in Perplexities and Paradoxes [New York: Philosophical Library, 1945} p. 51, and appears in Forrest Wood's article, "Kierkegaardian Light on Ib s e n 's Brand," P erso n . , 51 [1970} , 393-400.) According to Meyer, when Ibsen was asked about K ierk eg aard 's influence on his writing, he "replied testily that he had 'read little of Kierkegaard and understood less*" (p. 176). But, as Meyer goes on to show, "Kierkegaard's ideas were everywhere in the air around Ibsen during the latter*s formative years and, bored and puzzled as he may Notes to pages 18-31 A have been by Kierkegaard*s philosophical processes, he must have found many of his own half-formed thoughts crystallized there"0 177)o (p While we cannot disregard the possiblity of Kierkegaard1s in fluence on Ibsen, a further investigation of the matter is not feasible here nor is it essential to this study. It is interesting to note, however, as Valency points out (pp. 127-29), that Ibsen1s heroes are not really existential heroes and it would be a mistake to think of Ibsen as a Kierkegaardian. We see this in Brand, who destroys himself in the process of realizing himself and in Solness, who lives to doubt the choice he has made and to regret what he has missed in life (which repudiates the existential notion of choice--see StfSren Kierkegaard, Either-Or, A Fragment of Life, trans. D» L. Swenson |Princeton, 1944-J .) 46 Holtan, Mythic Patterns, pp. 109-10. 47 The impact of the ending of the play, however, rests with Hilde, for it is ,through her eyes that we must see the final moments and experience first Solness1 climb, then his terrible fall. When she proclaims, "But he got right to the top! And I heard harps in the airl . . . My--my master builder!" (Act 3, p. 216), we sense the triumph of Solness* last minutes. The ending is effective because we have come to accept Hilde and can, therefore, believe in and accept what we see through her eyes. This may explain why Ibsen gave her such a prominent role in the play. 48 Building "castles in the air . . . on a true foundation" (Act 3, p. 204) certainly seems a contradictory notion, but it has definite meaning and associations within the context of the play. It suggests again achieving the impossible, working on the grand design of a noble structure that rises far above everything and everyone, yet is somehow firmly rooted in reality. 49 Grene, Reality and the Heroic Pattern, p. 27. “^H en rik Ib sen , "When We Dead Awaken," in When We Dead Awaken and Three Other Plays, Act 1, p. 334. Subsequent citations from When We Dead Awaken will appear in the text and will refer only to this edition of the play. 51 I think one has to be careful here not to misconstrue or be little the choice Rubek made. He did not really come out of the "raw, damp cellar" for material interests; the conflict within him goes deep, as evidenced by the following revelation to Maja: ". . . it suddenly occurred to me that all this talk about the task of the artist and the vocation of the artist was empty, hollow, and meaningless" (Act 2, p. 354). ^^Valency, p. 226. "^Thompson, "Ibsen as Psychoanatomist.,r ^Valency, p. 234. Notes to pages 31-37 Holtan, p. 171. ^^Valency, p. 234. ^Henrik Ibsen, "John Gabriel Borkman," in When We Dead Awaken and Three Other Plays, Act 2, p. 262. Subsequent citations from John Gabriel Borkman will appear in the text and will refer only to this edition of the play. 58 Meyer, Introduction to John Gabriel Borkman, p. 223. 59Bradbrook, Ibsen, the Norwegian, p. 125. ^Valency, p. 220. ^M eyer comments on Ib s e n 's choice o f Borkman's name: "He told his doctor, Edvard Bull, that he decided on this last combina tion because the English name John would suggest big business, while that of Gabriel, the archangel, would signify power and glory" (Intro duction to John Gabriel Borkman, p. 222). ^A ll of this is particularly effective because it is said long before Borkman appears on the stage (not until Act 2). Here Ibsen uses to the full the technique of the hero1s grand entrance, and carries it even further than he did in The Master Builder. All of Actl is about Borkman, but he is not there. This suggests how importantly he figures in the lives of those on stagehand, at the same time, his absence heightens the dramatic effect of his appearance in Act 2. 63 Holtan, p. 136. ^Therefore, I cannot agree that "Borkman’s mistaken choice is contrasted to that of his son Erhart" because Erhart chooses love. (See Jules Zentner, "Ibsen's protagonists--Their Personal and Social Responsibilities," Contemporary Approaches to Ibsen, ed. Alex Bolck- mans, et.al [Oslo: Universitetsforlaget, 1966Jr”"p« 67.) The fact that Erhart and Fanny Wilton take little Frida Foldal along with them so that, according to Mrs. Wilton, "when Erhart is tired of me, and I of him, it will be good for both of us that he should have someone to fall back on, poor boy" (Act 2, p. 292), gives a sardonic tone to the romantic departure. 65 Following Borkman, Rubek seems a "shadow" of a man. As James Joyce points out, "Borkman is alive, actively, energetically, restlessly alive, all through the play to the end, when he dies; whereas Arnold Rubek is dead, almost hopelessly dead, until the end, when he comes to life" (R. Ellmann and E. Mason, ed., The Critical Essays of James Joyce [London: Faber and Faber, 1959j, rp t. as " When We Dead Awaken" in D isc u ssio n s, pp. 60-6 5 ). Valency, p. 220. jllotes to pages 38-39 47 ^Borkman’s strange way of regarding the buried resources of the earth as "spirits" that "serve" him is like Solness* talk of having "helpers" and "servers 0,r This likeness suggests a kind of mad ness, if you will, or obsession, that is shared by these two men# 6ft Holtan seems tothink this is the case (p« 147). ^ V a le n cy , p. 135 o 70Ibid., p. 134o 7^ Ib id 0, p0 234» 72 Loc« c ito BIBLIOGRAPHY Arestad, Sverre. "Ibsen's Concept of Tragedy .Ir PMLA, 74 (June 1959), 285-97. Bradbrook, M. C. 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Weigand, Hermann J. The Modern Ibsen: A Reconsideration, 1925; rpt. Freeport, New York: Libraries Press, 1970. Williams, Raymond. Drama from Ibsen to Brecht. New York Oxford University Press, 1969, pp. 25-111. Wood, Forrest. "Kierkegaardian Light on Ibsen's Brand."Persono, 51 (1970), 393-400. VITA Janet Rose Fuchs Born in New York, New York, September 25, 1941„ Graduated from Forest Hills High School, Forest H ills, New York, June 1958. AoB», Vassar College, June1962« Teacher, Roslindale High School, Boston, Massachusetts, 1962-63; The Girls'Latin School, Boston, Massachusetts, 1963-68o Mo A. candidate, The College of William and Mary, 1970-73, with a concentration in English. 52