The exploitation of Danish and Swedish wives, daughters, and servants by the men aroused the wholesouled anger of Mary Godwin, and the submis-siveness of the women excited her contempt. But her description of the hardships of female servants was hardly as graphic as that of the Swedish economists Agardh and Ljungberg, written in 1854:
The servant woman’s duty is … to wait on every member of the household; to run every one’s errands, and the language of her contract stipulates that, “she shall do all that is to be done.” She must keep the rooms in order and tend the fires, carry wood up all the stairs, cook, bake, and brew; she must make, patch, and wash everyone’s dirty clothes, often standing knee-deep in cold water; she must scrub the floors on hands and knees. She is expected to brush the men’s clothing and clean their shoes. In the country districts she is sent out upon the fields in the heat, – and in several provinces only in her underwear – to work as strenuously as the men. Furthermore, she must make the beds for the master’s family, and even for the male servants, conduct the masters to their bedrooms and there apply all her strength … to drag off their boots. Finally it became the lot of woman in Sweden to serve as odalisks at every inn and restaurant in order to attract customers. In short, woman in the North is the household beast of burden and the slave of man. We are so used to it that it does not arouse our shame.
Women of the middle classes although spared from drudgery, were even more cut off from really functional activity. They were either more intimate servants or decorative hothouse plants. If their fathers and husbands were rich enough to keep them in indolence, they might be given excellent for-malistic educations, but they were separated from the world and from life by a Chinese wall of proprieties which usually served to frustrate any desires for active self expression. The wall was built of modesty, helplessness, delicacy, gratitude, and a chastity valued the more as it approached ignorance. The supreme virtue was obedience. As far as their means permitted, the men of the lower middle classes demanded of their women the same behavior. Never so much as then was home the woman’s place; never did poets so ecstatically eulogize the “beautiful, weaker sex.” […]
If the lot of the daughter and the wife was drab, that of the unmarried woman was incredibly dreary. She was not even ornamental. Where she could perform some useful work in the house of her relatives she was able to maintain her self-respect and was often welcome. Otherwise she must become a burden, or seek refuge in some sort of foundation, or take employment as a servant. For women of the middle classes it was an almost insuperable degradation to become a servant. Refuges after the pattern of the Catholic convents – in Denmark they even continued to be called convents – were maintained by endowments, but were generally open only to members of the nobility and the bourgeoisie. The unmarried women of the common people had to shift for themselves. Agardh and Ljungberg estimated that Sweden had 270,000 of them in 1854, of whom about one fourth had given birth to illegitimate children.
Very few of our readers have any conception of the extent of the misery and the consequent temptations, to which Swedish womanhood is at present exposed.
[…]
In Norway, Camilla Collett’s book Amtmandens dötre (1855) marked the real beginning of the Norwegian feminist problem. Camilla Collett (1813– 1895), the gifted daughter of Nicolai Wergeland and sister of Henrik Wergeland, measured her girl’s wits with the best in Norway and held her own. No wonder she fretted under the conventional restraints. As early as 1833, she was clear in her own mind on the intellectual equality of woman with man, though neither her brother nor J. S. Welhaven, the man she loved, agreed. In her diary she recorded her sense of frustration.
My life passes uselessly and without importance, suffocated by the eternal question whether this is really the kind of existence to which I am destined. It awakens me suddenly at night, I arise with it in the morning, and when I put on my night-cap in the evening and contemplate what I have done the whole day since I took it off I am saddened and ask myself why I dress at all, why I do not always wear it, for that would be most appropriate to such a night-cap life:
The experiences of her youth were interwoven with happiness and grief. Though freedom marked her father’s liberal household, she could not escape the constraints of an illiberal society; she fell passionately in love with her brother’s bitter rival, Welhaven, and, already torn between conflicting loyalties, lost her lover in part, at least, because her open adoration offended his sense of feminine propriety. Later Camilla Collett married the understanding and honorable professor of jurisprudence, John Collett, whom she could respect but never fully love. Hence, when she wrote Amtmandens dötre, she drew from her own experience the devastating realism with which she indicted the tyranny of convention over Norwegian women. Love and marriage was woman’s career? Beautiful. But what woman was free to marry for love? In this and in her subsequent work the influence of George Sand is manifest. Though a bitter and disappointed woman, Camilla Collett made two important contributions to Norwegian culture: she inaugurated the woman’s movement, and she ranks as the first pioneer in literary realism. Amtmandens dötre was at first denounced as an ugly book, even by Bjørnson, both for “feminine immodesty” and for its realism. But three of Norway’s greatest literary artists have readily acknowledged their indebtedness to its authoress, namely Jonas Lie, Alexander Kielland, and Henrik Ibsen. In Ibsen’s mind it planted the seed of A Doll’s House.
Had it been left to the women to win their battles by their own pressure, nothing would have been won before 1865, for it is hardly possible to speak of a woman’s movement until the early 1870’s. But, as has been said, there were more fundamental forces at work which caused the men to begin reform before the women themselves became active. As early as 1825 the draft of the reformed Swedish legal code, due to the efforts of J. G. Richert, proposed to make women independent of guardianship at the age of twenty-five. Significandy, the two lower chambers supported it, but the nobility and the clergy successfully resisted adoption. As late as 1854, Swedish law classified unmarried women as minors along with children and the insane. Finally, in the session of 1856–58, the riksdag adopted the proposition, but only with reservations. Unmarried Danish women were made independent of guardians in 1857, Norwegian in 1863.
The adoption of equal rights in inheritance for women and men is, in each country, usually described as the true beginning of legal emancipation. It came first in Sweden (1845), then in Norway (1854), and finally also in Denmark (1857).
[…]
A famous proposal by the city physician of Copenhagen, Dr. Paul Scheel, in 1810, to combat prostitution by affording women opportunities to engage in trades and crafts was defeated by the gilds. After 1830, however, the problem became increasingly acute. On the one hand people realized that, “However much there may be conceded to the woman in thought, song, and speeches, she is denied practically everything as long as she is denied a personal life work.” On the other, here were many who felt instinctively that “… the young woman who wants to earn a living represents an active social danger. She forecasts the twilight of many ancient gods. Beyond her lies a day when even the services of the wife do not belong to the husband but to herself.” The pressure of surplus women and the triumphant course of the capitalistic motive of profit proved too strong to resist, however, especially when the growing complexity of life and increasing emigration created a demand for female labor. Hence it is not strange to find occupational freedom extended to unmarried women as part of the larger movement to establish occupational freedom. The Danish law of 1857, the Swedish of 1864, and the Norwegian ones of 1842 and 1866 established the right of the unmarried woman to earn her living in any craft or trade. But this concession only began the struggle for the economic equality of woman with man.
4.1.3 Henrik Ibsen, Speech at the Festival of the Norwegian Women’s Rights League, Christiana, 26 May 1898
Translated by Evert Sprinchorn
I am not a member of the Women’s Rights L
eague. Whatever I have written has been without any conscious thought of making propaganda. I have been more the poet and less the social philosopher than people generally seem inclined to believe. I thank you for the toast, but must disclaim the honor of having consciously worked for the women’s rights movement. I am not even quite clear as to just what this women’s rights movement really is. To me it has seemed a problem of mankind in general. And if you read my books carefully you will understand this. True enough, it is desirable to solve the woman problem, along with all the others; but that has not been the whole purpose. My task has been the description of humanity. To be sure, whenever such a description is felt to be reasonably true, the reader will read his own feelings and sentiments into the work of the poet. These are then attributed to the poet; but incorrectly so. Every reader remolds the work beautifully and neatly, each according to his own personality. Not only those who write but also those who read are poets. They are collaborators. They are often more poetical than the poet himself.
With these reservations, let me thank you for the toast you have given me. I do indeed recognize that women have an important task to perform in the particular directions this club is working along. I will express my thanks by proposing a toast to the League for Women’s Rights, wishing it progress and success.
The task always before my mind has been to advance our country and to give our people a higher standard. To achieve this, two factors are important. It is for the mothers, by strenuous and sustained labor, to awaken a conscious feeling of culture and discipline. This feeling must be awakened before it will be possible to lift the people to a higher plane. It is the women who shall solve the human problem. As mothers they shall solve it. And only in that capacity can they solve it. Here lies a great task for woman. My thanks! And success to the League for Women’s Rights!
2 IBSEN’S NATURALISTIC DRAMA
Each of Ibsen’s mature plays marks a new development. As he wrote in a tribute to Leopold Sacher-Masoch, “in these times every piece of creative writing should attempt to move the frontier markers” (1882). However, he repeatedly refers to the conceptual unity of his naturalistic plays – as in “I dare not go further than Ghosts … But Ghosts had to be written. After Nora, Mrs. Alving had to come” (Letter to Sophie Adlersparre, 24 June 1882). For Ibsen there was also an essential continuity, in the most general thematic terms, between his earlier heroic drama and his naturalistic work. Looking back on his first play, Catiline (completed in 1849), he commented: “Much that my later work concerns itself with – the conflict between one’s aims and one’s abilities, between what man purposes and what is actually possible, constituting at once both the tragedy and comedy of mankind and of the individual – is already vaguely intimated in this work” (Preface to Cataline, 1 February 1875). He had also adopted the stylistic principles associated with Naturalism while still engaged with heroic historical drama. Ibsen’s statement in writing to his English translator, Edmund Gosse, in January 1874 is often cited as programmatic for naturalistic drama:
The play is, as you must have observed, conceived in the most realistic style; the illusion I wished to produce was that of reality. I wished to produce the impression on the reader that what he was reading was something that had really happened. If I had employed verse, I should have counteracted my own intention and prevented the accomplishment of the task I had set myself. The many ordinary, insignificant characters whom I have intentionally introduced into the play would have become indistinct and indistinguishable from one another, if I had allowed them all to speak in the same rhythmical measure. We are no longer living in the days of Shakespeare. Among sculptors there is already talk of painting statues in the natural colours … I have no desire to see the Venus of Milo painted, but I would rather see the head of a negro executed in black than in white marble. Speaking generally the style must conform to the degree of ideality which pervades the representation. My new drama is no tragedy in the ancient acceptation; what I desired to depict were human beings, and therefore I would not let them talk the ‘language of the Gods’.
The play referred to is in fact Emperor and Galilean, set in ancient Rome and dealing with highly philosophical and religious issues. However, the general principles outlined are those that Ibsen followed in his subsequent plays dealing with contemporary society: the stress on modernity, the individualization of even minor characters, and the use of everyday language. At the same time, it should be noted that he emphasizes both the illusory nature of the impression of reality, and a degree of symbolism – e.g. the relative abstraction of using “natural” material (uni-colored marble) rather than detailed mimesis (representational painting). Writing to the director of Ghosts a decade later the same principles are restated. Ibsen insists that the “realism and ruthless honesty” in the “spirit and tone of the play” be rendered in the production, while the Swedish translation should make the dialogue “seem perfectly natural, and the manner of expression must differ from character to character … The effect of the play depends a great deal on making the spectator feel as if he were actually sitting, listening, and looking at events happening in real life” (Letter to August Lindberg, 1883). Responding to the “terrible uproar in the Scandinavian press” (Letter to Ludwig Passarge, 1881) Ibsen stressed the objectivity inherent in naturalistic presentation in an open letter:
They [the critics] endeavour to make me responsible for the opinions expressed by some of the characters in the play. And yet there is not in the whole book a single opinion that can be laid to account of the author … The method in itself, the technique which determined the form of the work, entirely precluded the author’s appearing in the speeches. My intention was to produce the impression in the mind of the reader that he was experiencing something real. Now nothing would more effectively prevent such an impression than the insertion of the author’s private opinions in the dialogue …
And they say that the book preaches nihilism. It does not. It preaches nothing at all. It merely points out that there is a ferment of nihilism under the surface, at home as elsewhere.
(Morgenbladet, 14 January 1882)
However, this claim to objectivity was recognized as a “cowardly” evasion by Strindberg (in a letter to Edvard Brandes, 18 January 1882) and by Brandes. Like any other dramatist, a naturalistic playwright’s opinions determine choice of subject and dramatic focus, and are expressed through structure and use of symbols.
As his letters show, Ibsen exercised control over the casting of his plays in Scandinavia (and to a lesser extent in Germany). He also advised directors on characterization and the way characters should be played, the setting and particularly the lighting, even the blocking of key scenes. So for The Wild Duck in 1884, he instructs Lindberg:
I have supposed Hjalmar will be played by Reimers. This part must definitely not be rendered with any touch of parody nor with the faintest suggestion that the actor is aware that there is anything funny about his remarks … His sentimentality is genuine, his melancholy charming in its way – not a bit of affectation …
The lighting too, has its significance; it differs from act to act and is calculated to correspond to the basic mood that characterizes each of the five acts … [in A Doll’s House too Ibsen’s lighting was keyed to the emotional tone of the action, with a gradual transition from brightness to deep darkness.] When Hedvig has shot herself, she should be placed on the couch in such a way that her feet are downstage, so that her right hand holding the pistol can hang down.
Similarly, for Ghosts in 1886 he describes the interior of a Norwegian country house to Duke Georg of Meiningen:
The living rooms of the oldest family house of this type are sometimes covered with coloured, dark wallpaper. Below the paper the walls are lined with simple wainscotting … The stoves are big and massive, generally of cast iron. The furniture is kept to the style of the First Empire; however, the colours are consistently darker.
And he also gives explicit instructions to individual actors, as
for Sofie Reimers in the 1887 production of Rosmersholm:
… carefully observe what the other persons say about Rebecca. In earlier times our actors often committed the great mistake of studying their parts in isolation and without paying sufficient attention to the character’s position in and connection with the work as a whole …
No declamation! No theatrical emphases! No pomposity at all! Give each mood credible, true to life expression. Do not ever think of this or that actress you may have seen.
Such comments display both the degree to which Ibsen’s practical experience as a theatre-director informs the writing of his plays, and the way he intended his naturalistic principles to be carried through in the staging.
But his references to Ghosts as a “book” and to “readers” of the play are a recognition that the major influence of his work came through publication, rather than stage performance. His first naturalistic play, The Pillars of Society, was published in Norway a month before its first production, and had already sold 6,000 copies, with a second printing of 4,000 copies being required within two months. In the English-speaking countries the effect was even more marked. The first play by Ibsen to reach the London stage was The Pillars of Society, given a single matinee in 1880. By 1892 five other plays had been staged in England; Ghosts and Rosmersholm (two performances each), The Lady from the Sea (three performances), Hedda Gabler (ten matinees), plus A Doll’s House (one week, but extended to 24 performances, in 1889) – though A Doll’s House had also been presented in two short-lived adaptations, Breaking a Butterfly (1884) and Nora (1885). Up to 1893 fewer than 10,000 people in England can have seen staged performances of any play by Ibsen. By contrast, as William Archer pointed out,
A Sourcebook on Naturalist Theatre Page 11