Role of 'Hegemonic Masculinity' in the marital relationships of Henrik
Ibsen's The Lady from the Sea and A Doll's House
Sheelalipi Sahana
is currently pursuing her Master’s degree in Literature and Modernity at The
University of Edinburgh. She has previously obtained a Bachelor’s degree in
English (Honours) from Christ University, Bangalore.
Abstract
This article attempts to
initiate a discussion into the multi-dynamic relations that marital structures
adopt and enforce, by looking at two of European playwright Henrik Ibsen’s
works- A Doll's House and The Lady from the Sea. The central
couples in both are read as exhibiting father-daughter traits rather than ties
bound in matrimony. The men treat the women as children, lacking agency and
freedom of direction. Through the theoretical framework provided by feminist
psychoanalyst R. W. Connell, an investigation into ‘hegemonic masculinity’
provides insight into the motives that drive these men to behave in the way
that they do, and provide a basis for their assertion of power. The paper
attempts to trace the evolution of masculinity through the Middle Ages into the
Victorian era in which Ibsen wrote in order to situate this phenomenon as a
‘sign of the times’. Biological, religious and judicial aspects are studied to
form the interdisciplinary purview through which this topic needs to be
discussed as a socio-cultural and political phenomenon. Lastly, Ibsen’s own
views are read to portray the influence of current ideologies of masculinity
and influx of propaganda aiding in conceptualisation of masculine psyche. The
intermingling hierarchies of family structure reveal the gendered hegemony that
prevails today, in the form of marital and filial bonds. This study is an
attempt in that direction to legitimise it in theory.
Keywords: Hegemonic Masculinity, Henrik Ibsen, Psychoanalysis, A Doll's House, A
Lady from the Sea.
Henrik
Ibsen has been dubbed as a pioneer of Women's Rights even though he argued the
contrary, in his speech for the Norwegian Women's Rights League. However, his
statement, "To me it has seemed a problem of humanity in general" (qtd.
in Ledger 34) moved the women of 19th Century Europe to respond to the 'Women
Question' by joining the Feminist movement that was underway. In his two
seminal domestic dramas (focusing on the lives of the bourgeoisie) The Lady from the Sea and A Doll's House, he sheds light on the
manipulative dominance that the men of the household have over their supposedly
not-so-better halves with regards to social conduct and authority.
Although
this masculinity can be traced back to Biblical literature millennia back, it increased
steadfastly in the 1st and 2nd Centuries and developed in
full-force under the ascent of Industrial Revolution, sending the husbands out
to seek work and provide for the family and the wives to remain at home, creating
disparity in gender roles (Alderson 634). This upper-hand that the men
perpetually seem to have over women can be pinned under the 'Hegemonic
Masculinity' theory popularised by R. W. Connell, as a gender-based corollary
to Antonio Gramsci's 'Cultural Hegemony'1 . This accepts the
prevalent gender practices by guaranteeing male domination and female
subordination (Connell 77).
Ibsen’s
‘realist problem plays’ deal with contentious social issues such as the
oppression of women by men. One such relation has been studied- that of the
husband and wife. As evident in the plays, Torvald and Wangel treat Nora and
Ellida respectively like children, taking on the responsibilities of a
patriarchal figure. This behaviour has been linked to the theory of hegemonic
masculinity that defines the same as being the accepted superiority of the male
race by the society. Therefore, in order to understand this theory, its
historical lineage through the Middle Ages and into the Victorian Age needs to
be studied. Having lived in Norway, which was influenced by Victorian ideals,
Ibsen incorporated the current beliefs of male hegemony of men ruling all
aspects of life and contested them in his works. The reasons for the rise of
this masculinity are looked at from the biological, legal as well as religious
angles. Scholars have commented on the rise of masculinity by providing
statistical and empirical data which have been cited along with an application
of Connell’s theoretical framework.
Hegemonic
Masculinity substantiates the argument that it is the social practices (such as
restrictions on women’s property) that determine hegemony of a race with
psychological underpinnings (Oedipus complex), and such have been the practices
of human beings as history corroborates, that masculinity has dominated
femininity and continues to do so. In utilising this framework, the patriarchal
behaviour adopted by the husbands can be better understood.
This study
proposes to create a link between the behavioural patterns of husbands in
Victorian Europe towards their wives as being patriarchal, and R. W. Connell’s
theory of Hegemonic Masculinity that guarantees male domination and female
subordination through conducted societal practices. It hopes to achieve the
mentioned goal by tracing the historical evolution of male hegemony through the
Middle Ages which was backed by the Christian monarchs, and concentrating on
the Victorian Age of industrial Revolution which was the era that impacted
Ibsen’s writings and thoughts. Along with this, male hegemony is approached
through the legal perspective which enumerates the shortcomings in the judiciary
by pointing out the restrictions on women’s freedom, and the biological
perspective which provides analysis of male and female anatomies as being
respectively stronger and weaker. These provided an explanation for male
behaviour to the public at the time, making it easier for them to reinforce
said notions. Later, Ibsen's own views are taken into account to realise the
goals that these objectives have tried to meet, by showing their impact on his
works. The incorporation of hegemonic masculinity in his plays as a tool used
in marital relationships justifies the claim made that the practice was
prevalent eminently during the fin-de-siècle.
Throughout the length of the
paper, how Connell's theory has shaped the marital bonds in Ibsen's select
plays has been seen through an analysis of the same in order to argue that Ibsen's
plays portray the relationship between husband and wife as being one in which
the latter is treated like a child, enabling the men to take on the duties of a
patriarchal figure, discounting women's behaviour as juvenile.
Ibsen's Works: An Overview
In each of his plays, Ibsen has tried to bring to the
fore the concerns plaguing the Victorian bourgeois society and has succeeded on
multiple fronts. He wrote plays that would invoke the public psyche to question
constructed ideals without overtly bringing them to their notice, making him
the master of Realism. In A Doll's House
(1879), Ibsen broke the barriers of societal notions of the 'angel in the
house'2 by letting Nora assert agency and leave her family behind in
order to educate herself. Doubtless, it created an uproar in the audience on
hearing a woman say that her most sacred duty was not to her husband and
children, as her husband Torvald believes, but "to myself." (Ibsen
228)
Two aspects
with regards to male conjugal behaviour need to be looked at, in surveying
hegemonic masculinity. First, Torvald Helmer is perceived as a man who is proud
of the high position society has bestowed on his gender in being able to make
decisions not only for himself, but also his wife, which Nora confirms: "Torvald
has his pride- most men have- he'd be terribly hurt and humiliated if he
thought he owed anything to me. It'd spoil everything between us, and our
lovely happy home would never be the same again." (Ibsen 161) He believes
that the only way to assert his masculinity is by completely detaching the two
genders and not letting the 'weaker' one influence his actions as that would be
disgraceful: "suppose it were to get about that the new Manager had let
himself be influenced by his wife [...] I'm to make a laughing-stock of myself
before the whole staff" (Ibsen 188). He asserts dominance not because he
particularly wants to but because he feels he needs to, in order to not get ousted from society which through the
construct of hegemonic masculinity (discussed later), ensures male dominance
with all men benefitting in terms of acquiring absolute power even though they may
not be on the 'front-lines' (Schippers 87) advocating for it.
The above
actions lead to Torvald Helmer taking control of his wife and resultantly
diminishing her role as a separate human and authorising her as his child as
that guarantees parental guidance:
Being a man, a husband, a lawyer and an educated
member of society, gives him the right to judge what is bad or good for Nora,
forbid her certain actions and encourage others. In fact, in all these capacities,
Helmer takes upon himself, according to the bourgeois tradition, the function
of a father figure. This is significant inasmuch as Nora accepts Helmer as such
and painlessly undergoes the transition of moving from her father's house to
her husband. (Zmijewska-Emerson 113)
He treats Nora not as an
equal but an adolescent, giving her silly pet names and making her decisions,
by becoming "both your will and your conscience" (Ibsen 224). By
addressing her constantly as "scatterbrain", "little song
bird", "skylark", etc. he reduces her worth to that of an object,
which is something she points out towards the end of the play by saying that in
the eight years of their marriage, they never sat down to discuss anything as
adults do.
A lot can be inferred about the Victorian
customs through Torvald's dialogue that teems with an arrogance accompanied
with his sex, and a condescension of the other. He likes the idea of being the
'knight in shining armour' for Nora by asking her if she "wants someone to
rescue her?" (Ibsen 178). It satisfies his ego when his wife diminutively
submits to his views on any aspect and gets affronted when she does not, as, he
believes, it should come with the marital territory:
TORVALD:
Now wasn't that a good idea of mine?
NORA:
Splendid. But wasn't it nice of me to do as you said?
TORVALD
[lifting her chin]: Nice? To do what your husband says? All right, little scatterbrain, I know you didn't mean
it like that. (Ibsen 186)
Connell delineates men like
Helmer as being sly in asserting patriarchy whose dividends they draw out.
These are men who supposedly "respect their wives and mothers, are never
violent towards women, do their accustomed share of the housework, bring home
the family wage, and can easily convince themselves that feminists must be
bra-burning extremists." (Connell 79-80) This form of hegemonic
masculinity has more to do with an unprecedented claim to authority rather than
the enforcement of direct violence (77). Through Helmer's domination over Nora,
Ibsen has articulated the reasons for Nora's want to break free in search of
freedom by not being a "dukkebarn" (doll)3.
Another
such play of Ibsen's that portrays the shortcomings in the marital relationship
of a couple is The Lady from the Sea
(1888) in which Ellida Wangel expresses her helplessness when it comes to her
household as she longs for a lifestyle that she cannot have. While Nora craves
the freedom to learn and experience the world, Ellida wants the simple pleasure
of being able to make her own decisions. To her, it is not about the choices
that she makes but about being able to make them. In the past, she had no
"free will" when it came to consenting to marry Wangel, as she was
"helpless and bewildered and utterly alone. it was only natural that I
should accept- when you came and offered to provide for me for the rest of my
life." (Ibsen 304-05) She outright accuses him of buying her for the position
of a wife, making their marriage invoke the quality of a business deal. This
prior dissatisfaction looms over her and, not wanting to be put in a similar
situation again with her past lover, she asserts her agency in wanting to
choose for herself whether to go with him or not:
ELLIDA: I
must talk to him myself. I shall make my choice of my own free will.
WANGEL: You
have no choice, Ellida. I won't allow
it.
ELLIDA: No one can stop me from choosing- not you, nor
anyone else. You can forbid me to go with
him, or follow him, if that is what I choose. You can keep me here by force,
against my will. Yes, you can do that. But you cannot stop me from choosing in my
innermost heart. (Ibsen 313)
Her husband Wangel follows
the character traits of Torvald in suppressing his wife's longings by
dismissing them as a child's whims and fancies. Here too, the man perceives
Ellida not as a woman but a child that can be twisted around to meet the
requirements. When she expresses her marital discontentment, he restlessly
remarks "I should have been like a father to her. I should have guided
her." (Ibsen 298) He does not provide his wife with any choice to decide
how she wants to spend her life and instead, like Torvald, takes it upon
himself to "take the choice out of your hands, and act for you."
(Ibsen 314) However, he does eventually let her go as he believes his actions
to have been "selfish". Through this, it can be deduced that even
though Wangel perhaps does not prefer behaving in a dominant manner, societal
hegemonic structures that dictate this power play compel him to, by justifying
it as legitimate: "Even if few women and men actually embody these
characteristics in relation to each other, the symbolic relationship
established through these hierarchical complementarities provides a rationale
for social practice more generally." (Schippers 91) This excerpt which was
written in talking about Connell's hegemonic masculinity, links to the
attitudes of the husbands in the two plays. The women in both the dramas want
nothing more or less than the right to think for themselves without being
shunned for it, which is what led to the rise of Feminism, through the
unleashing of such 'New Women', and which was a culmination of the
abovementioned masculine characterisation in societies (Ledger 3). Both the
plays embody the principles of this theory that elucidate the role of societal
patriarchy in shaping masculine privilege.
Conception of Hegemonic Masculinity
R. W.
Connell extensively researched on the traits that make men who they are and
wrote a book as a compilation of the data found, proposing the 'Hegemonic
Masculinity' theory as a configuration of male actions in a societal space. In
her book Masculinities, she provides
a clinical knowledge of masculinity by looking at the psychological theories
proposed by Sigmund Freud, Father of Modern Psychology. The Oedipus Complex
proposed by Freud, of a son having sexual feelings for his mother, sits at the
heart of the driving force for men to suppress women as they face difficulties
in coming to terms with their inability to control the desire for their
mothers, putting them invariably in a position of authority over them. Thus,
they exude this anxiety towards their wives and daughters by keeping them in
check (Connell 11).
Derived
from Antonio Gramsci's "analysis of class relations, [which] refers to the
cultural dynamic by which a group claims and sustains a leading position in
social life" (Connell 77), Connell applies it to the concept of gender by
saying that a similar imbalance is created positioning the males on a higher
ground. Hegemony of one gender over the others is an ideology that caters to
the current socio-political scenarios and changes accordingly. "As
individuals, groups, and societies use masculinity and femininity as the
rationale for what to do and how to do it, and collectively do so on a
recurring basis in different institutional settings, not just gender
difference, but also the implicit relationship between genders become a
taken-for-granted feature of interpersonal relationships, culture, and social
structure." (Schippers 91) The men in the two plays have been conditioned
to act in the way that current ideological state apparatuses4 of
matrimony and family dictate. Mimi Schippers on researching on this topic, attests
to Connell's thinking of hegemonic masculinity coming about as a prevalent
practice of both men and women: "Masculinity and femininity are
configurations of meaning and not practice, but it is only by identifying how
putting these ideals into practice results in unequal power relations and
distribution of resources that we can truly know if they constitute hegemonic
femininity and hegemonic masculinity." (100) In understanding this theory,
the hand it plays in substantiating the play's character analysis becomes
evident, as it provides the necessary rationale behind it.
Historical Progression
I. Middle Ages
While
looking at masculinity and its effects, it is essential to trace the roots of
the concept through its evolution. Many of the questions regarding this
research go back to the origins of gender disparity that led to men enforcing power
and control. McNamara argues that since masculinity has indefatigably been
associated with the biological sex, men have had a dominant stance since the
myth of the Fall of Man into disobedience in the Bible when Eve tempted Adam to
fall to shame. Ever since, monarchs have viewed the female race with scepticism
and apprehension, thus adopting a doctrine that "relegated women to the
status of perpetual children" (McNamara 4) which has as already been seen,
is what the husbands of the plays also follow.
The assignment of social roles and status on the basis
of biological sex has customarily been justified as resting on the bedrock of
natural law, decreed by God and nature and therefore, beyond the reach of
historical change. This has made the gender system almost impervious to change. (McNamara 3)
Men found the need to prove
their masculinity by keeping their women in check and the only way to do that
was by applying ‘rough’ techniques such as violence. The wife learnt to submit
herself to her husband's wishes in order to restore the sanctity of marriage.
The usage of such procedures saw a rise in 1050-1150 and weathered the Crusades
but underwent changes in passing from the Middle Ages into the later periods.
II. Victorian Age
This advent
of masculinity entered its next phase during the Victorian Era in the
1700-1800s where masculinity found ground in social discourses and practices.
The Industrial Revolution enforced physical segregation of work causing the men
to seek employment in the outer sphere while the women were confined to theirs
home, tending the children, contributing to the 'separate spheres' ideology of
division of the two accepted genders5 (Alderson 635) which
dichotomises the private and public spheres for the first time. To be a
middle-class woman in Europe during that time meant a denial of the self in
order to provide for the man of the house who in turn brought in the financial
means to survive as articulated by Nora: "I wouldn't do anything that you
don't like." (Ibsen 151). As pointed out by Ann Arbor, the domestic boom
saw the man becoming the "autonomous economic agent pursuing profit"
(65) providing him with an edge.
This identification of oneself as provider, of course,
served many kinds of interests: it reinforced gender hierarchy, and, in
transforming a self-interested pursuit of profit into a demonstration of
disinterested love, it also helped to reconcile religious and secular goals and
to establish the moral and cultural authority that middle-class men [...] claim
in relation to women. (Arbor 65)
In The Lady from the Sea, Ellida vividly
expresses how Wangel having the financial means reserved for his gender,
"came out here and - and bought me" (Ibsen 304), focusing on the
helplessness of the female population regarding free will. In A Doll's
House, Nora is not expected to worry about the financial affairs as it is
assumed that she cannot be of any help, without providing her with the benefit
of the doubt, as stressed by Torvald: "Was I to keep forever involving you
in worries that you couldn't possibly help me with? (Ibsen 225).
Both the
men and women acted according to the social code prevalent in the Victorian
culture contributing to their respective behaviours. As argued in this paper
thus far about the husbands' parental instincts towards their wives, Hannah
Zmijewska-Emerson contests the notion of painting the former as being villains
as they just conform to established practices (122). Even the women, such as
Nora, are conditioned to give up their agency on constantly being taunted for
doing otherwise. Salome on noticing this, wrote:
As the sole daughter of a widower who in his carefree
ways spoiled her instead of bringing her up seriously, Nora grew older only in
age. The transformation from her care-free days as a girl to marriage meant no
more to her than a change from a small doll house to a larger one. (qtd. in
Zmijewska-Emerson 98)
This adoptive attitude of
both the men and women corroborates to Connell's hegemonic masculinity as it
exclusively states that male domination is an accepted, rationalised practice through
constant reiteration in society and that both genders are victimised by it.
Biological Grounds for Male Superiority
In looking into the history of masculinity, one must also
look at the roots of the distinction between man and woman from a standpoint
other than that mentioned in the Bible of a woman being created out of flesh
and causing the Fall of Man (as seen in the Middle Ages). Vern L. Bullough
discusses the biological reasons behind the superiority that men assert which
are archaic notions mostly gone obsolete today due to advancements in science.
The first argument is made with respect to the two genders' intellectual
capacities. Alexandrian-Jewish philosopher Philo proposed the medieval idea of
a male being superior because he represents the more rational parts of a human
body, such as the soul, whereas the female represents the less rational. These
views solidified after being incorporated into Christianity: "Thus a woman
in order to progress had to give up most aspects of the female gender, the
material, the passive world of mind and thought, and the easiest way for her to
progress was to deny her sexuality, to remain celibate." (Bullough 32)
Another reinforcement of this hegemony was with regards
to the body temperatures as emphasised by Galen. He believed that males have a
warmer body temperature allowing their sex organs to grow out of their bodies
and fully develop, whereas "the women's organs, like the eyes of a mole,
could never fully develop and only remained embryonic." (Bullough 32)
Therefore, women were bound by these beliefs to serve men and elevate them to a
status above them.
While Bullough spoke about the physiological perspectives
prevalent in the Middle Ages, David Alderson extends this to the Victorian Age
by saying that women were seen as weak due to their "nervous
instability" such as swooning at the sight of blood, or hearing of some
mishap. These were proven by the medical discourses conducted at the time
(Alderson 634). Ledger spoke about this as well, by arguing that a reviewer of The Lady from the Sea attributed
Ellida's attraction to the Stranger as a symptom of a madness which was more
clinically termed as 'hysteria' by Freud (Ledger 38). This trend during the
1800s constituted the backing for women going 'haywire' as evident in the
character of Mrs. Rochester in Charlotte Bronte's Jane Eyre. If women deviated from their assigned path, they were
considered mentally deranged. This meant that any female that did not conform
to societal notions of hegemonic masculinity by associating men with
superiority were exiled, one way or another.
Conditions in Norway
The period
covering Ibsen's works is classified as the Victorian era whose scope has
already been covered:
Although this term is directly connected to English
culture, its presence is justified by the influence of Victorian values and
life style on Western Europe, and the resultant similarities between Victorian
value patterns and the ones depicted by Ibsen. Even though it originally referred
to English society, it expanded into a term used in several other European
countries, where the indigenous attributes of the bourgeoisie were often different.
(Zmijewska-Emerson 4)
Ibsen's plays fall under the
Victorian umbrella despite his never having visited England in his lifetime.
They represent the sentiments of a people as casualties of their bourgeois
upbringing, individuals failing to understand their mutual dilemmas, fulfilling
instead the societal expectations.
James Leigh
looks at the scope for a feministic discourse in Ibsen's plays by commenting on
the impact they had on the 'Woman Question' in Norway and how following the
publication of A Doll's House, women
were accepted into universities to fulfil their educational aspirations in
1882. Ibsen makes his women speak out against men, even though "women in Norway
at the time were not really expected to think" (Leigh 129), providing a
pondering gap to the audience. This very audience expected the protagonists to
act according to the established social code, showing them their own reflection
(Zmijewska-Emerson 94) but instead, Ibsen showed a different, unexpected
reality. Writing to his contemporary, Ibsen condemned of his native country,
the "prejudice and narrow mindedness and short-sightedness and
subservience and unthinking trust in authority" (qtd. in Ledger 6). The
men found this female agency preposterous as they were brought up believing its
absence. Their only method of taming the wife was by treating her like a child,
in order to not provide them with any power whatsoever.
Law Enforcement of Male Hegemony
When it came to legislation, women were at the mercy of
men, much like every other aspect of their lives. It was only close to the turn
of the century that conditions marginally improved for married women. It was in
1870 when the Married Women's Property Act was passed, guaranteeing them the
right to keep £200 of their earnings (Bloy). Apart from this, they were not
allowed to carry out any transactions independently "because a wife can't
borrow without her husband's consent." (Ibsen 160) This timeline coincided
with Ibsen's works who brought these issues up strategically. Both Nora and
Ellida leave/threaten to leave their husbands only because it had recently been
enabled through the Matrimonial Causes Act (1857). Moreover, because of their
precarious financial conditions, the women had no other option but to depend on
their men for security as "I didn't feel I could refuse his offer" (Ibsen 157).
Ibsen spoke about women being governed by laws formulated
exclusively for men and how that led to unjust conclusions. In 1878, he wrote:
There are two kinds of moral laws, two kinds of
conscience, one for men and the
other one,
quite different, for women. They don't understand each other; but in
practical life, woman is judged by masculine law, as
though she weren't a woman but man. The
wife in the play ends by having no idea what is right and what is wrong;
natural feelings on the one hand and
belief in authority on the other lead her to utter distraction. A woman cannot
be herself in modern society. It is an exclusively male society, with laws made
by men and with prosecutors and judges who assess feminine conduct from a
masculine standpoint. (qtd. in Zmijewska-Emerson 90-1)
This blatant acknowledgement
highlights the hegemonic masculinity theory of a patriarchal structure by
concentrating on the then-current socio-political aspects of women being
treated like children that need to be handled carefully, lest they revolt
against the strict norms. So long as women are perceived as being
part-and-parcel with their husbands, male hegemony will prevail, as, like Mimi
Schippers pointed out, it is putting the meanings to practice that concretise
and legitimise them.
Ibsen's Views as Concluding Remarks
Henrik Ibsen saw himself as a forerunner for human rights
at large as opposed to only the women's causes. Yet, seeing the injustices at
the time, he exclusively incorporated the latter into most of his works as a
message to society to aspire to believe in "love, honesty, truthfulness,
forgiveness and taking the responsibility for one's actions"
(Zmijewska-Emerson 218). He confronted socially relevant stigmas and practices,
most of them invariably pertaining to women as their downtrodden position was a
culmination of the above-mentioned idealistic values not optimally reached.
Ibsen's words on women being judged from a masculine
viewpoint perfectly highlight the toll hegemonic masculinity took on the
civilians of the Victorian era as the entire society functioned through the
'male gaze'6. By this, women did not have the authority to voice
their opinions and their every move was penalised if not approved by men.
Jacques Derrida coined the portmanteu 'phallogocenticism' meaning an
understanding of social relations through a masculine standpoint which is
unanimously considered to be right. (Dely) This privilege that the men get over
various aspects links to the already-mentioned 'male gaze', and attests to
Ibsen's comments on women finding it difficult to be themselves. Thus, the
husbands take it upon themselves to carry the ‘burden’ of extending the family
and raising their wives as if they were their own children, placing them at a
higher position of power, granting them the benefits of conforming to hegemonic
masculinity.
Endnotes
[1] Theory stating the domination of a ruling class over
a diverse society.
2A concept popularised by Coventry
Patmore through his poem of the same name.
3 Word used in the original text in
Danish, meaning 'doll' in English.
4 See Althusser, “Ideology and Ideological State
Apparatuses” (1970)
5 Proposed by Aristotle, this concept
saw a distinct rise during this age.
6 Depiction of women from a masculine
point of view, as objects of pleasure.
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