Ibsen got tagged as a feminist when Nora (A Doll’s House) shut that door with a resonance that was heard around the world. Well, I guess my and subsequent generations cast him as a feminist. It wasn’t so clear to his contemporaries. I’ll show you a couple of lines from John Gabriel Borkman, which I’ve been thinking about.

In the first one, Borkman speaks to the woman he loved and left for one more helpful to his career: "You must remember that I am a man. As a woman, you were the dearest thing in the world to me. But if the worst comes to the worst, one woman can always take the place of another."

The audience groaned at that one. I have a feeling that they attributed Borkman’s opinion to Ibsen himself and not to the character he created.

lHere’s another one, Borkman speaking again, to his friend, Foldal:

Borkman. Oh, these women! They wreck and ruin life for us! Play the devil with our whole destiny--our triumphal progress.

FOLDAL. Not all of them!

BORKMAN. Indeed? Can you tell me of a single one that is good for anything?"

FOLDAL. No, that is the trouble. The few that I know are good for nothing.

BORKMAN. [With a snort of scorn.] Well then, what is the good of it? What is the good of such women existing--if you never know them?

FOLDAL. [Warmly.] Yes, John Gabriel, there is good in it, I assure you. It is such a blessed, beneficial thought that here or there in the world, somewhere, far away--the true woman exists after all.

BORKMAN. [Moving impatiently on the sofa.] Oh, do spare me that poetical nonsense.

The audience responded even more noisily to those comments. Just think about it, though, first, how far we’ve come, that we (they) react so unfavourably to those male chauvinist sentiments. After that, go through Borkman back to the person who wrote his lines. Ibsen knew what he was saying. He just had to wait for the world to catch up to him. I quoted from a script provided on Google, public domain of course. I noticed, when I looked up the plays and their chronology that An Enemy of the People is billed as a comedy. Right on, though many people, including actors, directors and critics, think it is a serious drama. it is serious, but its intent is to change thinking, not to reinforce old habits and attitudes. Dr. Stockman’s assessment of his struggle is pragmatic and rueful:

"You should never wear your best trousers when you go out to fight for freedom and truth."

You may have heard how hot it is here in Toronto. Right now it’s 95 degrees Fahrenheit on my balcony (old F. thermometer out there). Couple of hours ago it was 110, so it’s getting cooler (?). You also may have heard of, or even seen when it’s tried, frying an egg on the sidewalk when it’s hot. I’ve never seen it but I believe it. So can you believe that my brain is getting fried? I am capable of short spurts of productivity and then I sink into apathetic torpor, and that’s with AC. Yesterday was a wipe-out, although I did do some homework about Ibsen. Today I’m not sure. We’ll see how far I get.

Remember I said I had a memory of Ibsen’s play, John Gabriel Borkman, as a possibility for a crime fiction vehicle - maybe not a play but a film, certainly a novel? I didn’t see it so readily when I saw it again this week in Stratford. First, let me say that it was an excellent production; we were privileged to enjoy the work of master craftspeople playing the roles. I had some trouble with the set design: did there have to be so many newspapers piled up, and could they not have been cleared later? I didn’t mind piling up some furniture to make peaks to climb on in the last act. Such arrangements allow swifter transitions from scene to scene. Audiences must have been more patient in Ibsen’s day; they didn’t have a movie mind-set then. And while I appreciated the use of oil lamps because they worked very well for close-ups on the people carrying them, I think they were carried too long and they became (to me) cumbersome and distracting.

I must say something about Carey Perloff, the director responsible for this mesmerising production. Originally from the east, she has been since 1993 the a.d. of ACT (Actors’ Conservatory Theatre) in San Francisco and is very open to Canadian plays and performers. In her program essay she writes that she has for many years longed to direct Borkman with the master actors at Stratford and I’m grateful that she got her wish. I do not, however, entirely agree with her assessment of the play, or rather, of the protagonist.

I recognised my own assessment when I saw The Master Builder (with Ralph Fiennes) in London in January. I have a different bead on Ibsen’s men, still feeling my way to articulating it. This began with my own adaptations of An Enemy of the People (two, slightly different for two different Canadian theatres: Manitoba Theatre Centre, now Royal, and the St Lawrence Centre, now The Canadian Stage). Ibsen’s men are courageous, spoiled, indulged (by women) and desperate. Carey Perloff recognises the “moral ambiguity” that Borkman struggles with. She thinks he is "neither hero nor villain, a restless soul with a massive vision…unable to comprehend…that ambition without love is doomed to failure.” Yes, well, I think he is benighted. I checked the definition of benighted to be sure I was saying what I meant: “in a state of pitiful or contemptible intellectual or moral ignorance”. Yes, that’s what I meant. I called the master builder benighted. Dr. Stockman certainly is. And the late Captain Alving (Ghosts) left his son with more than syphilis as his legacy.

My battery is warning me that it’s going to sleep soon. Me too. I will leave my take on Ibsen’s attitude to women till tomorrow.

Stay cool.