A Doll's House And
Pillars of Society
(2 Plays)
The Pillars of Society is an 1877 play written by Norwegian playwright Henrik Ibsen.
Ibsen had great trouble with the writing of this play which came before the series of masterpieces which made him famous throughout the world. The ending is the most criticised feature, since Bernick is clearly guilty of attempted murder but gets off unscathed, but successfully illustrates that the rich and powerful are often selfish and corrupt.
Karsten Bernick is the dominant businessman in a small coastal town in Norway, with interests in shipping and shipbuilding in a long-established family firm. Now he is planning his most ambitious project yet, backing a railway which will connect the town to the main line and open a fertile valley which he has been secretly buying up.
A Doll's House is a three-act play in prose by Henrik Ibsen.
The play is significant for its critical attitude toward 19th-century marriage norms. It aroused great controversy at the time, as it concludes with the protagonist, Nora, leaving her husband and children because she wants to discover herself. Ibsen was inspired by the belief that "a woman cannot be herself in modern society," 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." Its ideas can also be seen as having a wider application: Michael Meyer argued that the play's theme is not women's rights, but rather "the need of every individual to find out the kind of person he or she really is and to strive to become that person." In a speech given to the Norwegian Association for Women's Rights in 1898, Ibsen insisted that he "must disclaim the honor 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.
Pillars of Society
(2 Plays)
The Pillars of Society is an 1877 play written by Norwegian playwright Henrik Ibsen.
Ibsen had great trouble with the writing of this play which came before the series of masterpieces which made him famous throughout the world. The ending is the most criticised feature, since Bernick is clearly guilty of attempted murder but gets off unscathed, but successfully illustrates that the rich and powerful are often selfish and corrupt.
Karsten Bernick is the dominant businessman in a small coastal town in Norway, with interests in shipping and shipbuilding in a long-established family firm. Now he is planning his most ambitious project yet, backing a railway which will connect the town to the main line and open a fertile valley which he has been secretly buying up.
A Doll's House is a three-act play in prose by Henrik Ibsen.
The play is significant for its critical attitude toward 19th-century marriage norms. It aroused great controversy at the time, as it concludes with the protagonist, Nora, leaving her husband and children because she wants to discover herself. Ibsen was inspired by the belief that "a woman cannot be herself in modern society," 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." Its ideas can also be seen as having a wider application: Michael Meyer argued that the play's theme is not women's rights, but rather "the need of every individual to find out the kind of person he or she really is and to strive to become that person." In a speech given to the Norwegian Association for Women's Rights in 1898, Ibsen insisted that he "must disclaim the honor 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.
