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41 pages 1 hour read

Henrik Ibsen

An Enemy of the People

Fiction | Play | Adult | Published in 1882

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Background

Authorial Context: Henrik Johan Ibsen

Henrik Johan Ibsen was born in Skien, Norway, in 1828 and grew up in a wealthy, socially connected family of ship owners and tradespeople. A common myth states that his family became destitute due to his stepfather’s drinking habits, and that this decline heavily influenced the moral standpoint in his later writings. Modern scholarship has revealed this to be largely untrue; although the family did experience periods of relative financial hardship as Norwegian society moved toward social democracy and away from a system of rule by a small elite group, they remained affluent and well respected throughout Ibsen’s life. After quitting school at age 15, Ibsen began writing plays while working in a pharmacy.

Ibsen often expressed disillusionment with Norwegian society. He struggled financially while working as a theater director throughout the 1850s and saw his native culture as stagnant. He eventually entered self-exile in Italy in 1862, visiting Norway only a handful of times during the next 27 years. He staged several plays to little acclaim throughout his young adulthood, finally finding success with Brand in 1865. After Peer Gynt was similarly successful two years later, Ibsen began to move away from writing plays based on Norwegian folklore and mythology, instead producing realist works with overt political and social messages. His most realistic works are his most widely admired, particularly for his ability to use everyday situations and people as symbols for larger themes.

Ibsen is often called “the father of realism” and was very influential within the theater world during the late 19th century. His work continued to transform the theater landscape throughout the late 19th and 20th centuries and was a major inspiration to later realist writers such as Arthur Miller, Oscar Wilde, and James Joyce. Ibsen’s work continues to be popular worldwide, and his plays are staged more frequently than those of any other playwright except Shakespeare. In a sign of Ibsen’s enduring influence, director Steven Spielberg famously described his classic film Jaws as “Moby-Dick meets An Enemy of the People.” As Roy Scheider’s Martin Brody attempts to warn the people of Amity Island about the killer shark, he encounters the same kind of obstinate resistance from short-sighted town leaders as Thomas Stockmann meets in Ibsen’s play.

Some of Ibsen’s most popular plays include Peer Gynt (1867), which blends elements of realist drama with a Romantic-period Norwegian fairytale; A Doll’s House (1879), which follows the story of a housewife trying to reach self-actualization in a patriarchal society; and Hedda Gabler (1891), in which the troubled titular character, the daughter of a wealthy general, attempts (unsuccessfully) to navigate her new life as the wife of a man she does not love. Ibsen’s plays are often dramatic tragedies, and can typically be viewed as symbolic of social issues that he felt were pressing within Norwegian and larger European society. His earlier works like Peer Gynt often included surreal, fantasy elements, while his later works were more starkly realistic. Many of Ibsen’s plays brought little-discussed societal ills into sharp focus, and as a result they were often met with a mix of praise and controversy.

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