Henrik Ibsen Research Paper

“The strongest man in the world is he who stands alone.” 

-- Henrik Ibsen, An Enemy of the People

Though it may sound cliche to begin with a quote, these words impeccably render an accurate

image of Henrik Ibsen with regard to his life, his personal values, and how both of these have

impacted his work. As one of the most influential playwrights of all time, it is not shocking that

he is one of the most frequently performed dramatists in the world, second only to William

Shakespeare (Kingston, “Top 5 Playwrights”). His prevalence stems from his uniqueness in that,

while his plays possess the “inevitability of a Greek tragedy in their situations”, he uses dialogue

that is realistic and not excessively dramatic-- something that many playwrights before him most

often neglected (Playbill Vault). It is chiefly for this reason that, even today, Ibsen remains

widely regarded as the “father of realism”, and theatre as we know it today would not be the

same without his influence (Shakespeare Theatre).

Born in the year 1828, Ibsen spent his early childhood in Skien, Norway, where his

family was affluent and well-known in the town’s social sphere (“The Playwright Who Changed

Theatre”). When he was around the age of seven, however, his father’s risky business venture

lead to his family’s financial downfall, and they had to sell most of their assets. Though they

were not entirely shunned from the wealthy Skien social sphere on account of this, over time,

they gradually began to inadvertently distance themselves from those with whom they were once

so connected (Ibsen Society). For instance, due to financial troubles, the family could no longer

afford to send Henrik to the school that he had hitherto attended, and thus, his parents sent him to

an academically lesser school. By the age of fifteen, he already given up on attending school

altogether and he entered the workforce, working as an apprentice pharmacist, and later an
assistant pharmacist. During this time, Henrik was often lonely, sleep-deprived, and required to

commit an arduous amount of hours to his lackluster profession, in addition to preparing for the

University of Christiania entrance exams, and dealing with more pressing personal burdens, such

as the birth of his illegitimate son whose upbringing he worked to pay for (Misha). However, in

his few moments of free time, he began to write his first play, and in 1850, Catalina (or Catiline,

in the original translation) was born.

Although Ibsen’s first play is hardly considered to be a masterpiece, it demonstrated his

natural gift for writing theatre-- likely influenced by his mother’s love for drama --and by 1852,

he was a dramatic author of the National Theatre at Bergen (Playbill Vault). For almost six years,

his responsibility there was to write and direct a new play for the company each year, however,

never having seen a professional and well-staged production, his plays, usually historical dramas,

as was the most popular dramatic form in Norway at the time, were “uniformly mediocre”,

despite his aforementioned natural gift (Ibsen Society). After being sent to tour a variety of

professional theatres around Europe, he returned with a better understanding of the art form, yet

continued to write plays that were not particularly remarkable, however, some historians argue

that this was simply because the theatre at Bergen would not have been able to keep up with any

truly remarkable work, had he produced it while he was there (Gosse). Nonetheless, this

experience taught him valuable information about the nature of Norwegian theatre, which served

as a benefit to his career in the long run because it provided him with a solid foundation of how

standard drama typically operates. Had he not been so familiar with the then-popular structure of

plays, he might not have been able to so strongly break tradition which would henceforth change

the nature of theatre forever.

Christiania where he became the New Norwegian Theatre’s artistic director (Shakespeare

Theatre). Much like when the playwright worked with the National Theatre, however, the

audiences for which his plays were performed were “unenlightened” and sought light

entertainment, as opposed to more a profound theatrical experience, so Ibsen was once again

forced to write monotonous, undistinguished plays in order to align with the ideals of provincial

Europe (Ibsen Society). Still, Henrik did not limit himself to the narrow scope these ideals, and

because of this, his position at the New Norwegian Theatre was constantly threatened.

Subsequently, the theatre went bankrupt, leaving the playwright without income, yet he

continued writing. Indeed, in this difficult period of time, he wrote Love’s Comedy (1862), a

satirical piece written in rhyming verse that comments on romantic illusions (Gosse). Though

many dramatists regard this as one of his best early works, its overarching theme of anti-idealism

was not well received by the public, nor the New Norwegian Theatre itself, and so it was not

performed when it was supposed to be in that season. The several years between 1860 and 1864

were particularly brutal for Henrik; he frequently drank, struggled with depression, and had

trouble writing (Shakespeare Theatre). Despite this, his 1863 play The Pretenders was his “first

unequivocal masterpiece”, even though it failed to bring in enough money to keep the theatre

from closing (Ibsen Society). Once the theatre closed, Ibsen left Norway and spent time abroad,

using a governmental travel grant. For 27 years, he lived primarily in Italy and Germany, and

this is the period during which he created some of his most prominent works, such as A Doll’s

House (1879), Ghosts (1881), Enemy of the People (1882), and Hedda Gabler (1891).

His transition into what is now known as contemporary theatre is best exemplified

through his play A Doll’s House, which at the time of its initial production, was viewed as
“radical” (Rustin, “Why A Doll's House is More Relevant Than Ever”). The plot of A Doll’s

House is centered around Nora Helmer, who has three children and a husband, Torvald, who

works at a bank and is presumably soon too be promoted. Nora, however, has been withholding

from her husband that years earlier, when Torvald became incredibly ill and was advised by a

doctor to move south, she secretly borrowed money from Krogstad who works at the bank with

Torvald, although in a subordinate position. In order to secure this loan, she foraged her father’s

signature, and Krogstad uses this as blackmail to maintain his position at the bank. By the end of

the play, however, though Krogstad resolves that he no longer wants to blackmail Nora, she

willfully invites Torvald to read a letter that contains the truth that she has concealed for so long.

Infuriated with Nora and all of the trouble that he believes to now be on the way, Torvald

aggressively calls his wife a liar and a hypocrite. Moments later, the contract with the foraged

signature arrives in an envelope, Torvald attempts to take back the harsh words that he said, and

Nora declares that she refuses to continue in this unhealthy marriage. With those words, she

walks out the door, and the play ends.

One of the main sources of conflict in A Doll’s House stems from a lack of money, and

Ibsen is able to efficaciously convey the reality of what it feels like to have little money because

of his own personal experience with the issue, both in his early life, and then again when the

New Norwegian Theatre at Christiania went bankrupt. Another prevalent theme in the play is

equality of the sexes and the presentation of men and women as equals, a concept that the

playwright maintained consistently in his own marriage (Smith). Ibsen wrote this play during the

first wave of European feminism, and since he often looked to the newspaper for story ideas, as

well as to keep up with contemporary issues, it is not surprising that A Doll’s House echoes

feminist themes (Blake, “Was Ibsen the First Male Feminist?”). Though Ibsen himself may not
have been a feminist in the sense in which the concept is most commonly discussed, it is quite

evident through the nature of his best works that he wanted to write plays that made people think,

rather than sit back, laugh a bit, and return indifferently to their normal, everyday lives,

completely unchanged by what they had witnessed in the theatre. Hence, engaging with the

debate of equality for women was well within his wheelhouse. Furthermore, his mother-in-law,

Magdalene Kragh Thoreson, was the leader of Norway’s feminist movement, so the notion of

men and women as equals is not so shocking a stance for him to take, even though it was

interpreted as such by a large portion of the public (The Shakespeare Theatre). Some historians

theorize that this stance also stems from his father’s risky monetary ventures-- which lead to his

family’s financial demise --and a subsequent belief that men are not as capable of leading a

household as they are given credit for (Lorentzen). However, there is little evidence to support

this claim. Additionally, this plot of this particular work is not entirely original in nature. In

reality, it largely takes inspiration from the real-life story of Laura Petersen, whom Ibsen met

eight years before writing the play (Williams, “A Doll’s House”). Laura, like Nora, had a

husband who became ill and was advised to move south where the climate is warmer, but she too

concluded to borrow money under false pretenses, foraging a check, and ultimately upsetting her

husband to the point where he demanded a divorce and to separate her from their children.

Laura’s tale, however, ends much sadder than that of Nora, as she had a nervous breakdown and

was consequently committed to a mental institution for the duration of a month. In a sense, Ibsen

used A Doll’s House to correct her narrative, but perhaps most significantly, the play suggests

that women should not be required to answer to their husbands, as Laura did, and that a good

marriage is truly defined by two individuals joining together as equals.

Gabler, the last play he wrote abroad, before traveling back to Norway. This work is composed

with a bit of a different tone than most of his other plays, having been written in the last quarter

of his life, after he had already achieved notability in the world of theatre. Although his more

modern, more realistic style of drama was scrutinized and viewed as disgraceful toward the

beginning of his career, by 1889, his style had been celebrated for over a decade, and he was

rising in popularity across a variety of social demographics (Ibsen Society). This fame, however,

perhaps started to go to his head, because he then began to develop “infatuations” with young

women of whom were fans of his work, and similarly claimed to reciprocate his feelings

(Kennedy, “Hedda Gabler: The Influence of Ibsen”). Despite these allegedly shared feelings,

Ibsen never acted on his affections in fear of public scandal, because although the playwright

was used to creating scandals at this point in his career, in the case of an affair, he would not

have any excuse to defend his disreputable actions, such as claiming to write liberally as a means

of advancing the art form or leading people to more actively think about life. Published in 1891,

Hedda Gabler encapsulates these suppressed feelings as it tells of a complicated and relatively

scandalous chain of events, all centered around the idea of self-emancipation as a result of one’s

own inability to act with regard to their personal desires. Much like A Doll’s House-- and an

large portion of Ibsen’s work, for that matter --Hedda Gabler precipitated a vast extent of public

outrage-- more, in fact, than any of his other works prior to this (Lahr, “Hedda, Get Your Gun”).

However, in spite of the public outrage, Ibsen still continued to grow increasingly more popular,

as he had before in light of each preceding literary scandal, and the play is still viewed as one of

his greatest masterpieces today (Kennedy, “Hedda Gabler: The Influence of Ibsen”).
 Henrik Ibsen’s impact on theatre today extends beyond establishing realism as a

theatrical form, which in and of itself, has helped to craft theatre into how it most commonly

appears nowadays. The impact of his work can be seen in a more direct sense through different

adaptations and revivals of his plays. For example, in 2016, an immersive off-off-Broadway

adaptation of Ibsen’s 1881 play Ghosts brought the playwright’s once-controversial story of

morality, religion, and a venereal disease to an entirely new generation of audiences (Playbill).

Set in the 1950’s, The Alving Estate was intended to engage the audience in the play, using the

altered time period as an attempt to better connect those watching to the overarching themes of

the text, which are still relevant at this day in age. A second, more-direct example of Ibsen’s

influence on theatre today is in Lucas Hnath’s 2017 play A Doll’s House, Part 2. This play takes

place fifteen years after Nora slams the door at the end of Ibsen’s original work, and it explores

what has fundamentally changed in the Helmer household, and similarly what has failed to

change over the past decade and a half, answering a variety of questions presented by the ending

of the original play (McNulty). Though it is unclear whether Ibsen would have wanted these

questions to be explicitly answered, it is vital to note that Part 2 effectively introduced a brand

new audience to his work, urging viewers to familiarize themselves with the original A Doll’s

House for context, and it is undeniable that the themes Ibsen hoped to convey have been carried

on.

To conclude, it is true that Henry Ibsen’s life has had a tremendous impact on his work,

but also incredibly significant is the impact that his work had on theatre as a whole. He not only

developed a new composition style for drama, but he also continued to write his then-scandalous

work despite all of the opposition toward it, and through this relentless effort, he formed it into

something that would change the face of theatre as we know it today. As previously stated,
Henrik Ibsen believes that “the strongest man in the world is he who stands alone”, and by

standing alone, and disregarding the unwarranted criticism of others, he established himself as

what is now known as one of the greatest playwrights of all time.