Ibsen AO5 Flashcards
Mona Caird (love and possession)
- ‘common respectable marriage’ was ‘the most hypocritical form of women-purchase.’
- Victorian marriage is ‘a vexatious failure’ ‘the economical independence of woman is the first condition of free marriage.’
Henrik Ibsen
ADH is ‘really a domestic family drama, dealing with contemporary problems in regard to marriage.’
Contemporary Radical Writers (love and possession)
Contemporary radical writers: Helmers relationship is transactional and economic
Toril Moi play (freedom)
‘a play that asks what it will take for two modern individuals to build a relationship based on freedom, equality or love.’
Toril Moi melodrama
“a moment of high melodrama”
Alisa Solomon
Tarantella is ‘not a concession to the old effect-hunting, but an appropriation of it”
Toril Moi hero/ine (disappointment)
N+T “starring in various idealistic scenarios of female sacrifice and male rescue”
Breaking A Butterfly
- By Henry Arthur Jones and Henry Herman
- Torvald forgives and shields Nora’s forgery, becoming the hero that Ibsen’s Nora did not get
- The Times: allowed ‘happiness to be restored to the troubled home.’
German Ending
- Actress Hedwig Niemann-Raabe refused to perform ending as she would never leave her own children
- Ibsen forced to write alternative ending to avoid pirating
- Torvald forces Nora into nursey, where she sinks to floor overcome with maternal guilt.
- Ibsen: ‘barbaric act of violence’ against the play
Erik Vullum (Selfishness and Vanity)
Nora’s departure was “unnatural” and”artificial”
William Archer (conflicts arising from misunderstanding)
The misunderstanding of Nora’s character, of husbands to wives, and to people in society, is a major theme in the play
Unesco’s Memory of the World Register (Freedom)
Nora is ‘a symbol throughout the world, for women fighting for liberation and equality’
Hans Neuenfel, 1972 (conflict arising from misunderstanding)
- The characters moved like puppets without strings, turning to the audience rather than to one another as if it was a waste of time trying to gain understanding within the marriage.
Lateran (Morality)
“A walking encyclopedia of bourgeois virtues” (Torvald’s Virtues)
Colay (Morality)
“Ranks illness is a product of his morally corrupt father”
Oswald Crawford (Selfishness and Vanity)
- Nora is ‘unprincipled’ ‘false’ ‘greedy’ ‘lies without compunction’
Egen, 1972 (The Outsider)
Krogstad ‘cynical social pariah’
Emma Goldman (Truth)
Nora ‘is surely not aware of the true character of her idol’ [torvald]
Copenhagen review of ADH (Truth)
Ibsen ‘wanted to show where thoughtlessness and lack of truthfulness can lead an otherwise charming human being’ (NORA)
Brian Johnson (The Outsider)
[Christine is] the world’s insulted and injured who have lived through the ‘sorrow’ that Nora wants her world to be “free of”
Strindberg
Ibsen ‘the promoter of the equality mania’
Gail Finney
‘virtually inventing the emancipated women’
‘allies him with feminist thinkers’
Max Beerbohm
‘The New Woman sprang fully armed from Ibsen’s brain’
Emma Goldman
‘there is nothing more degrading than to live with a stranger’
