6 - Ibsen and feminism

Summary

The question of Ibsen's relationship to feminism, whether one is referring specifically to the turn-of-the-century women's movement or more generally to feminism as an ideology, has been a vexed one. The view supporting Ibsen as feminist can be seen to lie along a spectrum of attitudes with Ibsen as quasi-socialist at one end and Ibsen as humanist at the other. Proponents of the first stance might point to an amateur performance of A Doll's House (1879; dates following plays refer to publication) in 1886 in a Bloomsbury drawing room in which all the participants were not only associated with the feminist cause but had achieved or would achieve prominence in the British socialist movement: Eleanor Marx, the daughter of Karl, in the role of Nora; her common-law husband Edward Aveling, who played Helmer; William Morris's daughter May, portraying Mrs Linde; and, as Krogstad, none other than Bernard Shaw. Together with Aveling, Eleanor Marx (who learned Norwegian to enable her to translate Ibsen) also produced The Lady from the Sea (1888) in London in 1891. Looking at Ibsen's advocates in terms of political groups, one may safely claim that his strongest supporters were found in socialist circles.