A few final thoughts on Ibsen

After reading and discussing several Henrik Ibsen plays, I have come to appreciate the importance of details in his work. The guns that appear in the scene description at the beginning of Hedda Gabler, the rocks that Dr. Stockmann saves in An Enemy of the People, and the white shawl worn by Mrs. Solness at the end of The Master Builder all have significance to the symbolism and meaning that Ibsen is attempting to portray. It is not enough to read Ibsen by cutting straight to the gist and skipping over the details, as the details themselves are as important as the overarching conclusions that readers may draw from his work. In this way, those who read Henrik Ibsen must take a scientific approach to his plays, much like Ibsen himself took a scientific approach to developing his characters. The scientist is always concerned with the details, the bits and pieces of information that may lead to a great discovery or a new theory. If one simply concentrates on the big picture, he/she will in all likelihood overlook the very elements that together comprise the essence of the subject in question. To modify a common adage, it is not enough to simply understand the forest, as the concept of forest is meaningless without an awareness of the individual trees. So it is with Ibsen’s plays as well – we must not neglect the little things, as the specific details add up to yield an understanding that would be lacking in their absence.

The particulars in Ibsen’s plays are also vital to readers’ comprehension of the themes because Ibsen draws heavily from mythology and from other works of literature. These literary allusions are not laid out on the table for readers, but are instead deftly placed within scene descriptions or quick conversations between characters. For example, the differences in Ibsen’s descriptions of Hedda and Mrs. Elvsted’s hair near the beginning of Hedda Gabler serves as the first clue to these characters’ inner qualities. Hedda is described as having hair that is “an attractive medium-brown but not particularly full,” (page 296) while Mrs. Elvsted’s hair is “remarkably light, almost a white gold and exceptionally rich and full,” (page 300). The differing hair qualities of these two women serves as a representation of their lives and personalities, as Mrs. Elvsted is fertile in the sense that she can produce ideas and cultivate them with action while Hedda is sterile in that she is limited to passive inaction and lives vicariously through the experiences of others. Later on, readers discover that Hedda is envious of Mrs. Elvsted’s hair and even threatens to burn Mrs. Elvsted’s hair off, which further emphasizes the symbolic difference between these two characters. In this way, Ibsen is portraying hair as a symbol of strength, which alludes to the biblical story of Sampson. This important literary connection and metaphorical significance would be lost to readers who did not give serious consideration to scene descriptions when these two characters entered the play. This example serves as further evidence that those who take the approach of the scientist and who critically analyze the details get the most out of Ibsen’s plays. With Ibsen’s own affinity to the scientific approach, it’s hard to believe these rewards for the close reader were anything but intentional.