Nora's Epiphany

#5. Eric Bentley, in an essay titles “Ibsen, pro, and Con”, criticizes the character Krogstad, calling him a “mere pawn of the plot”. He then adds, “When convenient to Ibsen, he is a blackmailer. When inconvenient, he is converted.” Do I disagree or agree?

Although I do think Krgostad’s change of heart in the end is rather miraculous and Krogstad is used as a simple solution to one conflict in the play, I will challenge Bentley’s statement for two reasons. Firstly, however small the refernence is, Ibsen does recognize Mrs. Linde and Krogstad’s former acquaintance in the Act I and therefore possibly alluding to a connection later in the play. Secondly, I do not think that blackmail, debt, and forgery are the main themes of the plot. Even though the majority of the play is centered around Nora’s dilemma [her debt to Krogstad, keeping it secret from her husband, and the forged IOU] and a way to fix it, I think that the change that Nora experiences throughout the play is the more central theme. With or without Krogstad’s decision to send the IOU back, I think that Nora would still have grown as a person and realized her marriage to Helmer is a sham and she has a duty to herself to be happy. For example, hypothetically if Krogstad had not sent back the IOU and remained the evil person he appeared to be throughout the play, Nora still would have had her moment of realization, her epiphany one could say. Nora realized Helmer was not the man she thought he was when he did not sacrifice his own honor to spare Nora’s when he received Krogstad’s letter explaining what Nora had done. Nora thought she had married her hero, “it never so much as crossed my mind that you [Helmer] would ever submit to the man’s [Krogstad’s] conditions … when the miracle didn’t happen it was then I realized you weren’t the man I thought you were.” Once the delusion of Helmer as her savior is shattered, Nora sees she has been living a lie. She realizes that everything she has done was under the pretense of keeping her “happy” marriage alive but underneath that lie there was nothing at all. Nora also realizes that “first and foremost [she] is an individual” and that she must “think things out for [herself] and get things clear.” I think that Nora’s epiphany is the main theme of the play and therefore this challenges Bentley’s statement because although a pawn, Krogstad is not central to the major theme of the play, and since Nora realizes the falsity of her life before the IOU is returned, Krogstad and his flighty change of heart are merely foils to continue the plot and create a resolution to one dilemma of the play, the issue of the debt and the IOU but not the main dilemma, which is resolved regardless of Krogstad but between Nora and Helmer.

Hamlet and Ophelia

I read both "Hamlet and Ophelia" by Rebecca West and "Producing Hamlet" by Jan Kott, both articles present a different opinion on the relationship of Ophelia and Hamlet. West holds the opinion that Ophelia is "not a chaste young woman ... shown by her tolerance of Hamlet's obscene conversations." West says that Ophelia is "foredoomed" by her father to be a mere pawn in the court. The affection between Hamlet and Ophelia is spurred on by Polonius's desire to gain favor with the prince; Ophelia is one of the "poor little girls who were sacrificed to family ambition in the days when the court was a cat's cradle of conspiracies." There is no true affection between Ophelia and Hamlet, Ophelia is only following her father's orders to either become Hamlet's mistress or when/if Hamlet falls out of favor then act as a spy for the King. On the other hand, Kott maintains that Hamlet truly loves Ophelia but "he has more important matters to attend to." Their love is fated to end because "in a world where murder holds sway, there is no room for love." Hamlet also knows he is perpetually being watched, when he dramatically cries "Get thee to a nunnery!" it is addressed to everyone listening not just to Ophelia. For the rest of the world, that cry confirms Hamlet's madness caused by his obsession with Ophelia and for Ophelia it proves that their love does not hold sway in such corrupt world.