Ibsen And Realism

Ibsen and Realism

The four dramas Ibsen published in the years 1877-82, Pillars of Society, A Doll`s House, Ghosts and An Enemy of the People are characterised as realistic contemporary dramas or problem dramas.

In the main there are four aspects of these plays that justify such a description:

1. They make problems in society the subject of debate.

2. They have a socio-critical perspective.

3. The action is in a contemporary setting.

4. They present everyday people and situations.

Problems under debate

The Danish literary critic Georg Brandes (1842-1927) was the great pioneer of the breakthrough of realism in the Nordic countries. In 1871 he gave a series of lectures at the University of Copenhagen under the title "Main Currents in the Literature of the 19th Century" (published in book form in six volumes 1872-90). In this work Brandes puts forward the following manifesto for a new form of literature that is to be socio-critical and realistic:

That literature in our days is alive shows itself in the fact that it puts problems under debate. Thus for example George Sand puts under debate the relationship between the two sexes, Byron and Feuerbach religion, Proudhon and Stuart Mill property, and Turgenev, Spielhagen and Emile Augier conditions in society. That literature does not put anything under debate is equivalent to its being in the process of losing all significance.

The representatives of socio-critical realism in Norway, Ibsen, Bjшrnson, Lie, Garborg, Kielland and Skram, were inspired by Brandes (photo). In the four dramas by Ibsen mentioned above we encounter again several of the social problems that Brandes uses as examples in the quotation. The relationship between the sexes is the subject of debate in A Doll`s House and Ghosts. Problematic features of prevailing conditions in society are debated in Pillars of Society and An Enemy of the People (social morality, tyranny of the majority, commercial considerations versus general social considerations, environmental considerations etc.).

Socio-critical perspective

In his realistic dramas Ibsen was merciless in his quest to uncover negative sides of society, hypocrisy and dissimulation, use of force, and manipulative behaviour, and he made untiring demands for truthfulness and freedom. Truth, emancipation, self-realisation and personal freedom are key terms. In Pillars of Society Lona Hessel has the last word and concludes by saying that "the spirit of truth and the spirit of freedom - they are the pillars of society" In Ghosts Ibsen shines a critical light on the pillars that support bourgeois society, marriage and Christianity, and he takes up typical taboos, incest, venereal disease and euthanasia. This made him and those who shared his ideas into controversial figures in their own time. Their works created violent controversies or absolute furore. With hindsight one can see what enormous importance some of these works have had for different social movements. There is hardly a literary work that has meant so much to women`s liberation in practically all cultures all over the world as A Doll`s House.

Contemporary perspective

The action in all of the dramas that Ibsen wrote from and including Pillars of Society is set in contemporary society (hence the designation contemporary dramas). The representatives of realistic