Play Day: A Doll’s House by Henrik Ibsen

       

     

      A Doll’s House, written in 1879 is Ibsen’s best known and perhaps most controversial play. Written at a time when women’s liberation was an unheard of concept, its radical final act scandalized the conservative society of the time.  Ibsen based the premise of the play on the life of writer Laura Kieler.

       The play opens on Christmas Eve at the Helmer household where all of the action takes place.  We meet Nora, a vivacious and seemingly frivolous woman. Her husband Torvald patronises her and treats her like a child which she seems to enjoy. She adores her children who are taken care of by her own former Nanny. Then there is Dr Rank, an ailing friend of the Helmers who secretly desires Nora.  Unexpectedly, Nora’s old friend Kristine Linde drops in. There is a general atmosphere of gaiety and well being. This calm is shattered by the arrival of Krogstad. I hesitate to call him the play’s antagonist, but initially he does seem so. Nora’s cheeriness turns brittle and starts to crack.  Her life is hardly the dream she’s made it out to be. Her not-too-distant past and its secrets are closing in on her and her entire world seems likely to crumble. The reckoning when it does arrive, leaves her unbroken but wiser. She finally sees her life, her husband and herself clearly.  The final act is unexpected and powerful. But I’ll leave you to discover that for yourself.

      Every character in the play is so richly textured that you can never really pigeon-hole any of them.  Even Torvald who at the start seems like a petty stock figure, reveals a hidden depth in the finale. I’d read a review which called this a feminist play, and certainly there is a strong message of female empowerment here, but I wouldn’t label it as that. Ibsen himself stated that he had meant A Doll’s House to be about self-realisation, irrespective of gender. I think it makes an impact whichever way you look at it.

      Apparently, when A Doll’s House was set to be produced in Germany, it was felt that the original ending would be unpalatable to the audiences and Ibsen was forced to write an alternative ending. He is said to have termed this a “barbaric outrage” but wrote it anyway because he didn’t want it to be rewritten by someone else. The alternative ending is not exactly a cop out, just vague enough to not rock the boat too much.

      Towards the end of the play Nora tells her husband that she has a moral duty to herself as a human being before she can fulfil her responsibilities as a wife and a mother. Today, over a century later, we still struggle to find ourselves amidst all the roles we must play. A Doll’s House is as relevant today as it was in 1879.

Image http://www.globetheatrelive.com

The Rose and The Yew Tree – Mary Westmacott

 I should state right off the bat that I’m no Romantic fiction snob. I’ll lap up a Mills and Boons sap fest as readily as I would savor a Jane Austen (Although I haven’t been able to bring myself to read the Twilight books yet. What can I say; vampires just don’t do it for me.) Perhaps you will feel differently about the Rose and the Yew tree if your standards are higher than mine. It will still be fairly easy on the sensibilities.

          Mary Westmacott is Agatha Christie’s literary alter ego. She adopted this pseudonym to write non crime novels that wouldn’t be burdened by her formidable reputation.  While I grant that The Rose… is a completely different genre, it has many elements that are what may be termed the essence of Agatha Christie. The impeccable character sketches for one. You feel quite sure that you’d know these people anywhere. There is also that strange edginess that springs up when u least expect it. Even when everyone is acting true to form, there is an undercurrent of something that is faintly unsettling.

          All the above mentioned qualities make her mystery novels such a phenomenon. However I find that in a Romantic novel, or rather a “crimes of the heart” novel, the constant atmosphere of menace and foreboding works against it. I don’t mean that there is anything wrong with a thread of suspense running through the entire book, but I felt the Ending did not justify it. This is really the only thing I have to say against the novel and even this is really just nit picking.

          Overall the book has some memorable characters, some interesting insights and a peep into the political attitudes of that era (how accurate it is, I couldn't say). It is nowhere as great as any of her mystery novels, but in saying that I only negate the very reason Agatha Christie used a pseudonym in the first place. Judged on its own merit, without the mystery queen’s enormous shadow hovering over it, The Rose and the Yew Tree is an engaging and interesting, if not memorable book.

2 ½ Pillars Of Wisdom - A book review

“The English were very difficult to read; half the things they said were not meant to be taken seriously, but it was impossible, if u were German, to detect which half this was”. Many such hilarious ‘words of wisdom’ are to be found in Alexander McCall Smith’s 2 1/2 Pillars of Wisdom. His best known series, “the No 1 Ladies Detective Agency” has many snatches of gentle humor strewn in with the suspense and the softened vignettes of Botswana. However, the 2 ½ pillars… is perhaps the first time the author dives head first into funny land.  And what a dive it is.

      2 ½ … is a trilogy comprised of Portuguese Irregular Verbs, The Finer Points of Sausage Dogs and The Villa of Reduced Circumstances. The novels are about an “unnaturally tall” German professor called Moritz-Maria von Igelfeld. The blurb on the book suggests that he is a bit of Frasier Crane with a dash of Inspector Clausseau thrown in.  Pompous and gauche he may be, but von Igelfeld is also so much more. Gentle and introspective, he is acutely conscious of being fair and truthful always.  He, along with his friend, fellow philologist Prinzel, constitutes 2 pillars of wisdom while the clearly inferior Unterholzer (von Igelfeld’s nemesis) is the 1/2.

             Our hero himself (the author of such esteemed literature as Portuguese Irregular Verbs deserves to be called one) is not really funny. Far from it. He is actually the stereotypical German character who finds jokes perplexing and frivolity revolting. In fact these books are filled with stereotypes of every kind. The holy man from India, the patriarch from Rome, the guerilla revolutionaries from South America and many more. Yet, it is impossible to take offence at any of this because it’s written with such an obvious lack of malice.

        To be honest, this was not one of those books that gripped me from the very first page. It was some time before I could feel any involvement in the protagonist and his world. But then, I had felt something of the sort when I read my first Blandings castle novel.  By the time I was 15 -20 pages in, I was hooked. The Blandings castle analogy is particularly apt because 21/2 pillars does remind me of Wodehouse’s gentle wit and the sublime world he created for us in his books. A world that no longer exists, perhaps never did anywhere in the real world. While I confess I know little about the world of academia, I suspect that von Igelfeld’s idyllic world too exists only in the mind of its creator and is all the more beautiful for it.

          

          The past week has been a tiring and rather lackluster one for me and I’ve enjoyed escaping into the world of Romance Philology every chance I got. Warm and mellow yet enthralling. This isn’t laugh a minute standup comedy, but I guarantee the smile will never leave your face while your nose is buried in 2 ½ pillars of wisdom.