I am not going to let myself be beaten to the ground by the dread of what may happen. Henrik Ibsen, Rosmersholm.
To “those about to marry,” Ibsen therefore says in effect, “Be sure you are not in love!” And to those who are in love he says, “Part!
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.
That is the only relation in life that is not subject to the law of change.
Live, work, act. Don’t sit here and brood.
MAIA. – all the glory of the world? Yes, you did. And all that glory should be mine, you said.
While I think of it, Mr. Werle, junior – don’t use that foreign word: ideals. We have the excellent native word: lies.
Most people are ennobled by the actual presence of death. But how long do you suppose this nobility will last in him?
Laughter’s all the damned thing’s fit for.
HIORDIS. Better no child, than one born in shame. DAGNY. In shame?
Time was when I was young, like you, and played Like you, the unconquerable Titan’s part; Year after year I toiled and moiled for bread, Which hardens a man’s hand, but not his heart. For northern fells my lonely home surrounded, And by my parish bounds my world was bounded.
Do think it quite incomprehensible that a young girl – when it can be done – without any one knowing – should be glad to have a peep, now and then, into a world which – which she is forbidden to know anything about?
I have skulked up there and wasted eight precious years of my life! The very day I was set free, I should have gone forth into the world – out into the steel-hard, dreamless world of reality! I should have begun at the bottom and swung myself up to the heights anew – higher than ever before – in spite of all that lay between.
FALK. I feel myself like God’s lost prodigal; I left Him for the world’s delusive charms. With mild reproof He wooed me to His arms; And when I come, He lights the vaulted hall, Prepares a banquet for the son restored, And makes His noblest creature my reward. From this time forth I’ll never leave that Light, – But stand its armed defender in the fight; Nothing shall part us, and our life shall prove A song of glory to triumphant love!
The truth is that there are two men in Ibsen – an idealist, exalted to the verge of sentimentality, and a critic, hard, inexorable, remorseless, to the verge of cynicism. What we call his “social philosophy” is a modus vivendi arrived at between them. Both agree in repudiating “marriage for love”;.
SIGURD. Man’s will can do this and that; but fate rules in the deeds that shape our lives – so has it gone with us twain.
The individual ought undoubtedly to acquiesce in subordinating himself to the community – or, to speak more accurately, to the authorities who have the care of the community’s welfare.
The White God is coming northward; him will I not meet; the old gods are strong no longer; – they sleep, they sit half shadow- high; – with them will we strive!
You possibly believe I keep the glue Of lies for Happiness’s in a broken jar?
I must stand quite alone, if I am to understand myself and everything about me.