Ibsen and Degeneration

Henrik Ibsen's plays were written at a critical juncture in late nineteenth-century European culture. By reading these three plays from a fresh perspective, Ibsen and Degeneration sheds new light on some of Ibsen's most enduring contributions to world drama.

Henrik Ibsen's plays were written at a critical juncture in late-19th-century European culture. Appearing at a time when notions of evolution and heredity were commonplace themes in literature and the arts, Ibsenian drama highlights the creative potential offered by contemporary evolutionary thought. In his plays, Ibsen explores variations on the theme of degeneration, imagining how families can become affected by ill-health or other forms of "weakness" that lead to the extinction of the family line. Ibsen and Degeneration looks at the recurrence of ideas of degeneration in three of Ibsen's plays: In Ghosts, it is the motif of syphilis, highly shocking to Ibsen's contemporaries, which serves as an allegory of degeneration. In Rosmersholm, degeneration is reconfigured as an overcultivation that eventually makes a family unfit for life. In Hedda Gabler, meanwhile, Hedda, having been for all practical purposes raised as a man, has come to think of herself as one, a circumstance which informs her final decision to end her life - her final degeneration. By reading these three plays from a fresh perspective, Ibsen and Degeneration sheds new light on some of Ibsen's most enduring contributions to world drama.

The Open Access version of this book, available at http://www.taylorfrancis.com, has been made available under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives (CC-BY-NC-ND) 4.0 license.

Autorentext

Henrik Johnsson is Professor of Nordic Literature at Østfold University College, Norway. He holds a PhD in the history of literature from Stockholm University. He is the author of two monographs on the oeuvre of August Strindberg Strindberg and Horror: Horror Motifs and the Theme of Identity in the Works of August Strindberg (2009) and The Infinite Coherence: August Strindberg's Occult Science (2015). He is coeditor with Tessel M. Bauduin of the anthology The Occult in Modernist Art, Literature, and Cinema (2018). His current research explores the intersection of horror and desire in Nordic Gothic fiction.

Inhalt

Introduction

Morel and the rise of degeneration discourse

Marriage, family, and incest

Disease, diathesis, and syphilis

Energetic economy and the fixed fund of energy theory

What does Ibsen do with degeneration discourse?

A note on the form and scope of the book

Chapter 1. The Rot of the Bourgeois Body: Ghosts (1881)

Ibsen's commentary on Ghosts

The raising of bourgeois children

Class, health, and sex

Bourgeois patriarchy and Helene's independence

Alving's decline and fall

Osvald's energetic inheritance

Regine and regeneration

Chapter 2. The Fall of the Old Order: Rosmersholm (1886)

Hvide heste and its relationship to Rosmersholm

Rosmer, Kroll, and the fall of the old order

Marriage as the scene of threats to the social fabric

Strength and weakness of will

Brendel and the forces of entropy

The useless deaths of Rosmer and Rebekka

Chapter 3. Dominance and Deviance: Hedda Gabler (1890)

August Strindberg's For Payment as intertext

Degeneration in Ibsen's notes to Hedda Gabler

The question of Hedda's sexuality

Tesman as failed patriarch

Hedda's need for domination

Løvborg's loss of manhood

Sexual competition and exclusivity

Hedda's wasteful death

4. Conclusion