HENRIK IBSEN: THE AUTHOR AND HIS TIMES
On a chilly April day in 1864, Henrik Ibsen arrived at the docks in
the Norwegian capital of Oslo (then called Christiania). The young
man was a failure. The theater he'd run had closed, and none of his
own plays were successful. He had a wife and a young son to support,
but all his possessions had been auctioned off two years before to
pay his debts. He'd applied for a grant from his native country,
Norway, but was turned down.
Disillusioned by his country and society, Ibsen, together with his
wife and son, boarded a ship and left Norway, figuratively slamming
the door behind him.
Fifteen years later, a similarly disillusioned Nora Helmer would
slam the door on stage at the end of A Doll's House, helping to
change the course of modern drama.
Ibsen had become disillusioned very early. In 1836, when he was
eight years old, his wealthy parents went bankrupt. They were forced
to move from town to a small farm. All of their old friends deserted
them, and they lived for years in social disgrace. Although young
Henrik appeared quiet and withdrawn, his deep, bitter anger at
society would occasionally escape in the scathing caricatures he
would draw or in tirades against young playmates. His sole happiness
seemed to come from reading books and putting on puppet plays.
Ibsen didn't like his own family any more than he liked the "proper"
society that shunned them. His domineering father was an alcoholic,
while his quiet mother found comfort in religion. This blend of
overbearing husband and submissive wife makes repeated appearances
in his plays, most notably in Brand, in A Doll's House, and in
Ghosts, After he left his parents' home at sixteen in 1844, he never
went back, even years later when he got word that his mother was
dying.
Hoping eventually to study medicine, Ibsen became a druggist's
apprentice in Grimstad, a small Norwegian village. But he still felt
like an outsider, a feeling that would dog him all his life and find
expression in many of his plays. (It didn't help his social standing
when he fathered an illegitimate son by a servant girl ten years
older than he. Some feel that it was this unwanted child that
reappears in many of his plays as a lost or murdered child. In A
Doll's House, the nursemaid gives away her illegitimate child.) But
Ibsen found he wasn't alone in his contempt for those who controlled
society. He became friends with a boisterous group of young artists
who specialized in political satire.
By 1848, a spirit of political unrest was sweeping Europe.
