Ibsen - AO5 Flashcards
Billington
'’Domestic revolution’’
Ronald Gray (Critique of melodrama)
‘Nora’s final leave taking… looks too theatrical.’
Christian/Idealist right contemporary criticism
Desire for noble, maternal Nora for audience to aspire to + Nora unrealistic 🚺 already noble and maternal
Pressure of German society
Faced by sight of her children, Nora is unable to get through the door, and faints at the threshold.
Copenhagen premiere: Brun (1879)
Protested in newspaper that any real wife in Nora’s situation would ‘throw herself into her husband’s arm’
Norwegian Paper 1880: Fredrik Peterson
Absence of reconciliation/uplifted mood’, made the play ‘ugly, distressing’, a ‘tragedy’
German journal Deutsche Runschau
Accused Ibsen of ‘loving the repulsive’
Die Gegenwart review
Considered ending ‘illogical and immoral’
Radical/secular left
‘Our own everyday life, has been placed on stage and condemned’
Radical/secular left
Only discussed attack on 👰, ignored theatrical complexity/innovation
Punch magazine (Victorian England): ‘Ibsen in Brixton’ 1891
Torvald as a cowering 🦐, enormous 👩, 2 servants haul her luggage
'’Yes, William, I’ve thought a deal about it, and I find I’m nothing but your doll and dickey-bird, so I’m going!’’
The Spectator 1891
Ibsen teaches a ‘useful lesson’; infantilising women leads to ‘distorted relations’
Criticises ‘moral vacuum’ at the end; Nora unwilling to ‘make a hero where she failed to find one’
Clement Scott, Ibsen’s English enemy
Could not comprehend how Torvald could have treated his ‘fractious restless, illogical and babyish little wife’ otherwise
- The Spectator 1891 - Idealist view
Women should ‘beware of confounding the feelings of men who look to them for nothing better than pleasant sensations and mental distractions, with the feelings of men who look to them and raise their ideal of mental and moral grace and beauty.’
George Bernard Shaw: The Quintessence of Ibsenism (1891)
Admired Ibsen’s ‘sharpshooting at the audience… we are not flattered spectators killing the idle hour with an ingenious and amusing entertainment: we are ‘‘guilty creatures sitting at a play’’.
Eleanor Marx
Nora = 🚺 w/ complex and moral adult stature
Eleanor Marx
Complained that discussion of ADH was distorted English narrowness which perceived the word ‘morality’ as like the word ‘‘virtue’’ …applied to only one special quality … sexual relations.’
Eleanor Marx + Israel Zangwill ADH parody ending
‘Please the critic of the Daily Telegraph’
Torvald realises his wife has been dangerously infected by feminism and send the kids to boarding school
