‘Give me the sun’

Abstract

The suggestions of a parallel between the orphanage as it is planned and Mrs Alving’s garden room as the stage directions have it, seem essential to an understanding of the way in which Ibsen constructs his drama. The construction is based on a device which can be identified in practically all of the prose plays, and which in most cases is suggested not only in the dialogue, but also in the way the stage is described. It is the contrast between the small world and the big one, or between a sphere of action which is limited, and in most cases appears artificial and inauthentic, and a sphere of action generally located elsewhere, usually in the open air outside the stage room, and may be regarded as the sphere of real life. The device is fully developed in A Doll’s House (1879), where it is indicated in the very title, and is easily observed in plays such as The Wild Duck, where the large loft room behind the sliding doors and the various animals kept there form the protected sphere corresponding to the conservatory with the plants, and Rosmersholm, where the corresponding item is the collection of portraits of vicars, officers and civil servants, dressed in uniform, hanging on the wall in the Rosmer family mansion.