Anarchism and Other Essays [92]
But his was a voice in the wilderness, reaching but the few. Not so with Ibsen. His BRAND, DOLL'S HOUSE, PILLARS OF SOCIETY, GHOSTS, and AN ENEMY OF THE PEOPLE have considerably undermined the old conceptions, and replaced them by a modern and real view of life. One has but to read BRAND to realize the modern conception, let us say, of religion,--religion, as an ideal to be achieved on earth; religion as a principle of human brotherhood, of solidarity, and kindness.
Ibsen, the supreme hater of all social shams, has torn the veil of hypocrisy from their faces. His greatest onslaught, however, is on the four cardinal points supporting the flimsy network of society. First, the lie upon which rests the life of today; second, the futility of sacrifice as preached by our moral codes; third, petty material consideration, which is the only god the majority worships; and fourth, the deadening influence of provincialism. These four recur as the LEITMOTIF in Ibsen's plays, but particularly in PILLARS OF SOCIETY, DOLL'S HOUSE, GHOSTS, and AN ENEMY OF THE PEOPLE.
Pillars of Society! What a tremendous indictment against the social structure that rests on rotten and decayed pillars,--pillars nicely gilded and apparently intact, yet merely hiding their true condition. And what are these pillars?
Consul Bernick, at the very height of his social and financial career, the benefactor of his town and the strongest pillar of the community, has reached the summit through the channel of lies, deception, and fraud. He has robbed his bosom friend, Johann, of his good name, and has betrayed Lona Hessel, the woman he loved, to marry her step-sister for the sake of her money. He has enriched himself by shady transactions, under cover of "the community's good," and finally even goes to the extent of endangering human life by preparing the INDIAN GIRL, a rotten and dangerous vessel, to go to sea.
But the return of Lona brings him the realization of the emptiness and meanness of his narrow life. He seeks to placate the waking conscience by the hope that he has cleared the ground for the better life of his son, of the new generation. But even this last hope soon falls to the ground, as he realizes that truth cannot be built on a lie. At the very moment when the whole town is prepared to celebrate the great benefactor of the community with banquet praise, he himself, now grown to full spiritual manhood, confesses to the assembled townspeople:
"I have no right to this homage--. . .My fellow-citizens must know me to the core. Then let everyone examine himself, and let us realize the prediction that from this event we begin a new time. The old, with its tinsel, its hypocrisy, its hollowness, its lying propriety, and its pitiful cowardice, shall lie behind us like a museum, open for instruction."
With A DOLL'S HOUSE Ibsen has paved the way for woman's emancipation. Nora awakens from her doll's role to the realization of the injustice done her by her father and her husband, Helmer Torvald.
"While I was at home with father, he used to tell me all his opinions, and I held the same opinions. If I had others I concealed them, because he would not have approved. He used to call me his doll child, and play with me as I played with my dolls. Then I came to live in your house. You settled everything according to your taste, and I got the same taste as you, or I pretended to. When I look back on it now, I seem to have been living like a beggar, from hand to mouth. I lived by performing tricks for you, Torvald, but you would have it so. You and father have done me a great wrong."
In vain Helmer uses the old philistine arguments of wifely duty and social obligations. Nora has grown out of her doll's dress into full stature of conscious womanhood. She is determined to think and judge for herself. She has realized that, before all else, she is a human being, owing the first duty to herself. She is undaunted even by the possibility of social ostracism. She has become sceptical of the justice of the law, the wisdom of the constituted.
Ibsen, the supreme hater of all social shams, has torn the veil of hypocrisy from their faces. His greatest onslaught, however, is on the four cardinal points supporting the flimsy network of society. First, the lie upon which rests the life of today; second, the futility of sacrifice as preached by our moral codes; third, petty material consideration, which is the only god the majority worships; and fourth, the deadening influence of provincialism. These four recur as the LEITMOTIF in Ibsen's plays, but particularly in PILLARS OF SOCIETY, DOLL'S HOUSE, GHOSTS, and AN ENEMY OF THE PEOPLE.
Pillars of Society! What a tremendous indictment against the social structure that rests on rotten and decayed pillars,--pillars nicely gilded and apparently intact, yet merely hiding their true condition. And what are these pillars?
Consul Bernick, at the very height of his social and financial career, the benefactor of his town and the strongest pillar of the community, has reached the summit through the channel of lies, deception, and fraud. He has robbed his bosom friend, Johann, of his good name, and has betrayed Lona Hessel, the woman he loved, to marry her step-sister for the sake of her money. He has enriched himself by shady transactions, under cover of "the community's good," and finally even goes to the extent of endangering human life by preparing the INDIAN GIRL, a rotten and dangerous vessel, to go to sea.
But the return of Lona brings him the realization of the emptiness and meanness of his narrow life. He seeks to placate the waking conscience by the hope that he has cleared the ground for the better life of his son, of the new generation. But even this last hope soon falls to the ground, as he realizes that truth cannot be built on a lie. At the very moment when the whole town is prepared to celebrate the great benefactor of the community with banquet praise, he himself, now grown to full spiritual manhood, confesses to the assembled townspeople:
"I have no right to this homage--. . .My fellow-citizens must know me to the core. Then let everyone examine himself, and let us realize the prediction that from this event we begin a new time. The old, with its tinsel, its hypocrisy, its hollowness, its lying propriety, and its pitiful cowardice, shall lie behind us like a museum, open for instruction."
With A DOLL'S HOUSE Ibsen has paved the way for woman's emancipation. Nora awakens from her doll's role to the realization of the injustice done her by her father and her husband, Helmer Torvald.
"While I was at home with father, he used to tell me all his opinions, and I held the same opinions. If I had others I concealed them, because he would not have approved. He used to call me his doll child, and play with me as I played with my dolls. Then I came to live in your house. You settled everything according to your taste, and I got the same taste as you, or I pretended to. When I look back on it now, I seem to have been living like a beggar, from hand to mouth. I lived by performing tricks for you, Torvald, but you would have it so. You and father have done me a great wrong."
In vain Helmer uses the old philistine arguments of wifely duty and social obligations. Nora has grown out of her doll's dress into full stature of conscious womanhood. She is determined to think and judge for herself. She has realized that, before all else, she is a human being, owing the first duty to herself. She is undaunted even by the possibility of social ostracism. She has become sceptical of the justice of the law, the wisdom of the constituted.