Complete Works of Henrik Ibsen (187 page)

The whole crowd: Bernick! Pillars of Society! Hurrah-hurrah-hurrah!

Lona: I congratulate you, brother-in-law.

(An expectant hush follows.)

Bernick
(speaking seriously and slowly)
: Fellow citizens — your spokesman said just now that tonight we are standing on the threshold of a new era. I hope that will prove to be the case. But before that can come to pass, we must lay fast hold of truth — truth which, till tonight, has been altogether and in all circumstances a stranger to this community of ours.
(Astonishment among the audience.)
To that end, I must begin by deprecating the praises with which you, Mr. Rorlund, according to custom on such occasions, have overwhelmed me. I do not deserve them; because, until today, my actions have by no means been disinterested. Even though I may not always have aimed at pecuniary profit, I at all events recognise now that a craving for power, influence and position has been the moving spirit of most of my actions.

Rummel
(half aloud)
: What next!

Bernick: Standing before my fellow citizens, I do not reproach myself for that; because I still think I am entitled to a place in the front rank of our capable men of affairs.

Voices: Yes, yes, yes!

Bernick: But what I charge myself with is that I have so often been weak enough to resort to deceitfulness, because I knew and feared the tendency of the community to espy unclean motives behind everything a prominent man here undertakes. And now I am coming to a point which will illustrate that.

Rummel
(uneasily)
: Hm-hm!

Bernick: There have been rumours of extensive purchases of property outside the town. These purchases have been made by me — by me alone, and by no one else.
(Murmurs are heard: “What does he say? — He? — Bernick?”)
The properties are, for the time being, in my hands. Naturally I have confided in my fellow-workers, Mr. Rummel, Mr. Vigeland and Mr. Sandstad, and we are all agreed that —

Rummel: It is not true! Prove it — prove it!

Vigeland: We are not all agreed about anything!

Sandstad: Well, really I must say — !

Bernick: That is quite true — we are not yet agreed upon the matter I was going to mention. But I confidently hope that these three gentlemen will agree with me when I announce to you that I have tonight come to the decision that these properties shall be exploited as a company of which the shares shall be offered for public subscription; any one that wishes can take shares.

Voices: Hurrah! Three cheers for Bernick!

Rummel
(in a low voice, to BERNICK)
: This is the basest treachery — !

Sandstad
(also in an undertone)
: So you have been fooling us!

Vigeland: Well, then, devil take — ! Good Lord, what am I saying?

(Cheers are heard without.)

Bernick: Silence, gentlemen. I have no right to this homage you offer me; because the decision I have just come to does not represent what was my first intention. My intention was to keep the whole thing for myself; and, even now, I am of opinion that these properties would be worked to best advantage if they remained in one man’s hands. But you are at liberty to choose. If you wish it, I am willing to administer them to the best of my abilities.

Voices: Yes, yes, yes!

Bernick: But, first of all, my fellow townsmen must know me thoroughly. And let each man seek to know himself thoroughly, too; and so let it really come to pass that tonight we begin a new era. The old era — with its affectation, its hypocrisy and its emptiness, its pretence of virtue and its miserable fear of public opinion — shall be for us like a museum, open for purposes of instruction; and to that museum we will present — shall we not, gentlemen? — the coffee service, and the goblet, and the album, and the Family Devotions printed on vellum, and handsomely bound.

Rummel: Oh, of course.

Vigeland
(muttering)
: If you have taken everything else, then —

Sandstad: By all means.

Bernick: And now for the principal reckoning I have to make with the community. Mr. Rorlund said that certain pernicious elements had left us this evening. I can add what you do not yet know. The man referred to did not go away alone; with him, to become his wife, went —

Lona
(loudly)
: Dina Dorf!

Rorlund: What?

Mrs. Bernick: What?
(Great commotion.)

Rorlund: Fled? Run away — with him! Impossible!

Bernick: To become his wife, Mr. Rorlund. And I will add more.
(In a low voice, to his wife.)
Betty, be strong to bear what is coming.
(Aloud.)
This is what I have to say: hats off to that man, for he has nobly taken another’s guilt upon his shoulders. My friends, I want to have done with falsehood; it has very nearly poisoned every fibre of my being. You shall know all. Fifteen years ago, I was the guilty man.

Mrs. Bernick
(softly and tremblingly)
: Karsten!

Martha
(similarly)
: Ah, Johan — !

Lona: Now at last you have found yourself!

(Speechless consternation among the audience.)

Bernick: Yes, friends, I was the guilty one, and he went away. The vile and lying rumours that were spread abroad afterwards, it is beyond human power to refute now; but I have no right to complain of that. For fifteen years I have climbed up the ladder of success by the help of those rumours; whether now they are to cast me down again, or not, each of you must decide in his own mind.

Rorlund: What a thunderbolt! Our leading citizen — !
(In a low voice, to BETTY.)
How sorry I am for you, Mrs. Bernick!

Hilmar: What a confession! Well, I must say — !

Bernick: But come to no decision tonight. I entreat every one to go home — to collect his thoughts — to look into his own heart. When once more you can think calmly, then it will be seen whether I have lost or won by speaking out. Goodbye! I have still much — very much — to repent of; but that concerns my own conscience only. Good night! Take away all these signs of rejoicing. We must all feel that they are out of place here.

Rorlund: That they certainly are.
(In an undertone to MRS. BERNICK.)
Run away! So then she was completely unworthy of me.
(Louder, to the Committee.)
Yes, gentlemen, after this I think we had better disperse as quietly as possible.

Hilmar: How, after this, any one is to manage to hold the Ideal’s banner high — Ugh!

(Meantime the news has been whispered from mouth to mouth. The crowd gradually disperses from the garden. RUMMEL, SANDSTAD and VIGELAND go out, arguing eagerly but in a low voice. HILMAR slinks away to the right. When silence is restored, there only remain in the room BERNICK, MRS. BERNICK, MARTHA, LONA and KRAP.)

Bernick: Betty, can you forgive me?

Mrs. Bernick
(looking at him with a smile)
: Do you know, Karsten, that you have opened out for me the happiest prospect I have had for many a year?

Bernick: How?

Mrs. Bernick: For many years, I have felt that once you were mine and that I had lost you. Now I know that you never have been mine yet; but I shall win you.

Bernick
(folding her in his arms)
: Oh, Betty, you have won me. It was through Lona that I first learned really to know you. But now let Olaf come to me.

Mrs. Bernick: Yes, you shall have him now. Mr. Krap — !
(Talks softly to KRAP in the background. He goes out by the garden door. During what follows, the illuminations and lights in the houses are gradually extinguished.)

Bernick
(in a low voice)
: Thank you, Lona — you have saved what was best in me — and for me.

Lona: Do you suppose I wanted to do anything else?

Bernick: Yes, was that so — or not? I cannot quite make you out.

Lona: Hm —

Bernick: Then it was not hatred? Not revenge? Why did you come back, then?

Lona: Old friendship does not rust.

Bernick: Lona!

Lona: When Johan told me about the lie, I swore to myself that the hero of my youth should stand free and true.

Bernick: What a wretch I am! — and how little I have deserved it of you!

Lona. Oh, if we women always looked for what we deserve, Karsten — !

(AUNE comes in with OLAF from the garden.)

Bernick
(going to meet them)
: Olaf!

Olaf: Father, I promise I will never do it again —

Bernick: Never run away?

Olaf: Yes, yes, I promise you, father.

Bernick: And I promise you, you shall never have reason to. For the future you shall be allowed to grow up, not as the heir to my life’s work, but as one who has his own life’s work before him.

Olaf: And shall I be allowed to be what I like, when I grow up?

Bernick: Yes.

Olaf. Oh, thank you! Then I won’t be a pillar of society.

Bernick: No? Why not?

Olaf: No — I think it must be so dull.

Bernick: You shall be yourself, Olaf; the rest may take care of itself — And you, Aune...

Aune: I know, Mr. Bernick; I am dismissed.

Bernick: We remain together, Aune; and forgive me.

Aune: What? The ship has not sailed tonight.

Bernick: Nor will it sail tomorrow, either. I gave you too short grace. It must be looked to more thoroughly.

Aune: It shall, Mr. Bernick — and with the new machines!

Bernick: By all means — but thoroughly and conscientiously. There are many among us who need thorough and conscientious repairs, Aune. Well, good night.

Aune: Good-night, sir — and thank you, thank you.
(Goes out.)

Mrs. Bernick: Now they are all gone.

Bernick: And we are alone. My name is not shining in letters of fire any longer; all the lights in the windows are out.

Lona: Would you wish them lit again?

Bernick: Not for anything in the world. Where have I been! You would be

horrified if you knew. I feel now as if I had come back to my right senses, after being poisoned. But I feel this that I can be young and healthy again. Oh, come nearer — come closer round me. Come, Betty! Come, Olaf, my boy! And you, Martha — it seems to me as if I had never seen you all these years.

Lona: No, I can believe that. Your community is a community of bachelor souls; you do not see women.

Bernick: That is quite true; and for that very reason — this is a bargain, Lona — you must not leave Betty and me.

Mrs. Bernick: No, Lona, you must not.

Lona: No, how could I have the heart to go away and leave you young people who are just setting up housekeeping? Am I not your foster-mother? You and I, Martha, the two old aunts — What are you looking at?

Martha: Look how the sky is clearing, and how light it is over the sea. The “Palm Tree” is going to be lucky.

Lona: It carries its good luck on board.

Bernick: And we — we have a long earnest day of work ahead of us; I most of all. But let it come; only keep close round me you true, loyal women. I have learned this too, in these last few days; it is you women that are the pillars of society.

Lona: You have learned a poor sort of wisdom, then, brother-in-law.
(Lays her hand firmly upon his shoulder.)
No, my friend; the spirit of truth and the spirit of freedom — they are the pillars of society.

Translated by William Archer

One of the most widely performed dramas in theatres across the world,
A Doll’s House
was an extremely controversial work when first published.
 
It premiered at the Royal Theatre in Copenhagen, Denmark, on 21 December 1879, having been published earlier that month. The play has been designated as a champion of women’s rights in nineteenth century literature, as it fiercely criticised the treatment of wives in a patriarchal society.
 
In a speech given to the Norwegian Association for Women’s Rights in 1898, Ibsen insisted that he “must disclaim the honour of having consciously worked for the women’s rights movement,” since he wrote “without any conscious thought of making propaganda,” his task having been “the description of humanity.”

Ibsen began conceiving the play’s content in 1878, although he did not begin its first draft until a year later, having reflected on the themes and characters in the intervening period . He outlined his conception of the play as a “modern tragedy” in a note written in Rome on 19 October, 1878. “A woman cannot be herself in modern society,” he argues, since it is “an exclusively male society, with laws made by men and with prosecutors and judges who assess feminine conduct from a masculine standpoint.” Ibsen sent a fair copy of the completed play to his publisher on 15 September, 1879 and it was first published in Copenhagen on 4 December,
1879 in
an edition of 8,000 copies that sold out within a month.

The play opens on Christmas time as Nora, Torvald’s wife, returns home, satisfied and happy with her life and surroundings. An old friend of hers, Mrs. Linde, arrives at her home seeking employment. At the same time, Torvald has just received news of his most recent job promotion and when Nora learns of her husband’s good fortune, she excitedly employs Mrs. Linde. However, as Nora continues in her role as the ordinary housewife, she becomes unhappy with her husband and his actions.

A Doll’s House
was based on the life of Laura Kieler, who was a good friend of Ibsen. Much that happened between Nora and Torvald happened to Laura and her husband, Victor, with the most important exception being the forged signature that was the basis of Nora’s loan. In real life, when Victor found out about Laura’s secret loan, he divorced her and had her committed to an asylum. Two years later, she returned to her husband and children at his urging and she went on to become a well-known Danish author, living to the age of 83. In the play, Nora left Torvald with her head held high, though facing an uncertain future given the limitations women faced in the society of the time. Ibsen wrote the play at the point when Laura Kieler had been committed to the asylum and the fate of this friend of the family troubled him deeply, perhaps also because Laura had asked him to intervene at a crucial point in the scandal, which he did not feel able or willing to do. Instead, he turned this life situation into a successful drama. Kieler eventually rebounded from the shame of the scandal and had her own successful writing career, while remaining discontented with the sole recognition as being “Ibsen’s Nora” for years afterwards.

It was felt by Ibsen’s German agent that the original ending would not play well in German theatres; therefore, for the play’s German debut, Ibsen was forced to write an alternative ending for it to be considered acceptable. In this ending, Nora is led to her children after having argued with Torvald. Seeing them, she collapses, and the curtain is brought down. Ibsen later called the ending a disgrace to the original play and referred to it as a ‘barbaric outrage’.