Farah Jamal
Ibsen’s The Pillars of Society: Hypocritical Morality of Society
The plays for which Henrik Ibsen, the Norwegian playwright, is well-known throughout the world are the naturalistic studies of contemporary life. He began with romantic historical verse plays and gradually took upon himself the task of exposing the makeshift morality of his contemporaries in private and public life of the society. He was never, after early years, content to contemplate the world as it is with the strange Shakespearian balance of eager affection, sympathy and non-critical detachment. His sympathies threw him headlong into criticism. He buried the poet in him and became the strong singer of the immorality of the age. Ibsen was preoccupied with the problems of personal and social morality spread over the world. The Pillars of Society (1877) initiates almost with enthusiasm the social plays which concentrate upon this theme.
The Pillars of Society, finished in 1877, cost Ibsen two years of unremitting labour and several re-writings. He laboured over The Pillars of Society from 1875 to 1877, the longest period he had devoted to any play except Emperor and Galilean. The result is a play whose thought is so profound and clear, whose craftsmanship is so natural and easy, that it puts to shame alike the emptiness of the contemporary writing and the turgidity of the serious British drama of the next two decades. The Pillars of Society is build on a fairly simple irony: that those who appear as ‘pillars of society’ are not pillars at all and those who appear as rebels or even criminals are in fact the true carriers of the spirit of truth and the spirit of freedom. It attacks respectable hypocrites and is a trumpet blast calling society to account. The title is bold advertisement of Ibsen’s serious satirical purpose. He operates it like a battering ram that pounds and pounds away at the thick wall of cant and hypocrisy with which society has surrounded itself fully.
The Pillars of Society is the history of Karsten Bernick, a ‘pillar of society’ who, in pursuance of the duty of maintaining the respectability of his father’s firm of shipbuilders, has averted a disgraceful exposure by allowing another man to bear the discredit not only of a love-affair in which he himself had been the sinner, but of a theft which was never committed at all having been merely alleged as an excuse for the firm being out of funds at a critical period. Bernick is an abject slave to the idealizings of Rorlund, a school master, about respectability, duty to society, good example, social influence, and so on. Bernick’s life has been a series of successes which have resulted mainly from his dishonest dealings.
Though Lona Hessel, Bernick’s former beloved, knows that the whole of Bernick’s work and life has its origin in lies and in the betrayal of love yet chiefly, out of her concern for his inner being she demands that he should tell the truth. Bernick towards the end of the play confesses his crimes, he reforms his self and left at the end of the play on the brink of a ‘new era.’ He thanks Lona; “Thank you, Lona –you have saved what was best in me-and for me” [ The Pillars of Society Act IV 495]. Lona admits that she wants Bernick to confess his crime because she wants that, “the hero of her youth should stand free and true” [ Act IV 495]. Lona’s determination that truth be told at all costs for the good of everyone’s soul has a touch of the fanatical. Ibsen presented a similar character more critically in Gregers Werle, in The Wild Duck. Egan quotes an unsigned comment which appeared in the Hawk (23 July 1989, 89) Hawk commented on the ending of the play :
If Consul Bernick, instead of wining and repenting, and bringing the play to a happy conclusion, had simply defied his enemies and rather patronisingly accepted the deputation with the air that it was only precisely which he deserved, The Pillars of Society, would have been a little more life like and less stage land [Qtd. Egan 131-132].
When Ibsen was writing The Pillars of Society he had an optimistic and naive faith in the liberating effect which truth would have on the life of the individual. In his letter to King Osar II of 20th September 1877, he wrote what he had intended from this play. He claimed:
“...to lead the vision and the thoughts of the public in a different direction and to show that untruth does not reside in institutions but in the individuals themselves within the community, that it is the inner life of the people, the life of the mind, which has to be purified and liberated; that is not external liberties which are to be desired but on the contrary a personal and cultural liberation, and that this can only be acquired and taken possession of by the individual himself, in that his conduct has truth as its basis and point of departure” [Qtd. Hemmer 76].
The play is a criticism on Rorlund’s wordy, narrow Norwegianism. There are three women in the play for whom Rorlund’s ideals have no fascination because they know quite well that their society is the society of hypocrites who cover themselves under the mask of morality and idealism. These three women are assigned prominent place in the play. All three of them are rebels, in fact or in spirit against the social system that would stifle their natures.
First, there is the actress’ daughter, Dina, who wants to go to America because she hears that people there are not good; for she is heartily tired of good people, since it is part of their goodness to look down on her because of her mother’s disgrace.
When Johan returns from America Dina inquires him about the state of people living there.
Dina....What I wanted to know is if people are so very, so very moral over there?
Johan: Moral?
Dina: Yes, I mean are they as proper and well-behaved as they are here? [Act II 427].
It is not only Dina, but readers also can feel the pain she is facing in society which is inhabited by the people who are so very moral and proper because such people want others to be proper and perfect at any cost.
The second free woman in the play is Aunt Maratha. She has already sacrificed her happiness and wasted her life in conforming to the Rorlund ideal of womanliness ; and she earnestly advises Dina not to commit that folly but to break her engagement with Rorlund, and elope promptly to America as she too believes that, "the skies are loftier than here - a freer air plays about your head" [ Act IV 477]. Maratha advises Dina to free herself from the tyranny of customs and ideals and this will help her in remaining true to her ownself and only then she can develop her own individuality, otherwise the morals of her own society will crush her individuality.
The third is a naturally free woman, Lona, who has shaped her fingers at the current ideals all her life; and it is her presence that at last encourages the liar, Bernick, to break with the ideals by publicly telling the truth about himself. Lona has a definite purpose in the play. She means to help Bernick to find himself again, to rediscover the person he once was when he was living in a freer and larger community in London and Paris. It was a time when he dared to be in love with Lona. When he returned home, he betrayed that love in order to ensure his own financial and social standing. Disloyalty and deceit have since served as the dubious ground on which he has based his role as public benefactor and establishment figure in the society.
Ibsen through this play intends to show how the hypocritical morality of society effects the lives of the individuals. The focus is on the individual - the liberation and the renaissance of the individual ; the focus is on Bernick, who is both pillar and product of his society - of a community of people who have been young together and have matured or gone rotten. Ibsen, like Dickens, paints society as representative of a large and varied number of social tensions. The prime objective is to strike a reformist balance between the individual and society.
The play represents the oppressiveness of small town life. Ibsen sees the play as a kind of web of small town life and writes:
"There is a significance underneath something symbolical, the liberation from all narrow conventions; a new free and beautiful life. This what the piece turns on. This matter and these interests to be illuminated from all sides" [Qtd. Ewbank 80].
The comparison between small-towm milieu and bigger communities like America is well presented in the play in order to highlight the impact of such communities on the people living there. People living in bigger communities are freer and happier than those living in small communities. The Americans are freer because they are not slave to the old, dead customs and conventions of the society. Their society is not the society of hypocrites but of natural people. Lona and Johan are the healthy, natural people whom Ibsen contrasts with the hypocritical Norwegian stay-at-home and they associate themselves with Dina who is also troubled by the hypocritical morality of the place. Johan and Dina desire to leave for the newer and freer world of America to follow their fortunes. Society cannot tolerate their happiness; Dina suffers because of her mother's past life though she was not guilty of anything on her part. Johan suffers because of the guilt of Bernick enforced on him by this ‘pillar of society’.
To the Norwegians large is practically synonymous with wicked. They profess to be shocked by the unscrupulous practices of foreign businessmen, whereas their own dealings are not honest. The projected railway is a case in point. When the original project of laying a line along the coast threatens the material interests of the town, the leading businessmen mobilize sentiment against it by making a high moral issue of keeping out undesirable elements, and they have no difficulty in quashing the plan. But the moment the railway, now built to run inland, looms as a potential source of material prosperity, the keenest business brain of the town, Bernick, shakes his whole financial existence upon exploiting the situation, knowing that he can secure the eager backing of local capital by agreeing to a division of the spoils. As for the official spokesman of morality, who has been opposing the project with professional pathos, he accomodatingly falls in line with the altered views of his patrons on being tipped off as to which way the wind is blowing.
Rorlund: But last years, Mr. Bernick-
Bernick: Last year it was quite another thing. At that time it was a question of a line along the coast.
Vigeland: Which would have been quite superfluous Mr. Rorlund, because, of course, we have our steamboat survive.
Sandstad : And would have been quite unreasonably costly-
Rummel: Yes, and would have absolutely ruined certain important interests in the town.
Bernick: The main point was that it would not have been to the advantage of the community as a whole. That is why I opposed it, with the result that the inland line was resolved upon [Act I 404].
Rorlund, the idealist in the play look down on bigger communities because the foundation of such communities have no morality beneath them, such communities are based on emptiness and rottenness. This "High Priest' or 'the Reverend' as Lona insists on calling him, is the clearest indicator that in his Victorian society, the social issues are also moral ones. Barbara Hardy has finely expressed how:
"The Victorian art of fiction is essentially a moral art. It question, the nature and purpose of moral action, and at its best shows the difficulty and complexity of giving, loving and growing out from self in an unjust, commercialized and denaturing society" [ Hardy 4].
Ibsen exposes the desire for power, influence and material gain as the mainsprings of conduct on the part of those men who are looked upon as the 'pillars of society'. A large share of the blame for the hypocritical mantle of morality with which they cover up the real trend of their actions, falls upon the traditions of smug respectability that are characteristic of small communities. The smallness and the stuffy conservatism of the Norwegian community are made to appear responsible for Bernick's crooked practices. He had abandoned Lona, his love, because the inheritance had been settled upon her half-sister.
Bernick forced Johan to take whole guilt upon his shoulders and emigrate to America in order to maintain his status in the society. By smooth manipulations he robbed Maratha of her inheritance. In how many crooked deals he has been involved one can't count. He consistently uses human beings merely as tools to promote his interests as summed up in terms of power influence and wealth. Bernick himself confesses in Act IV, " I at all events recognize now that a craving for power, influence and position has been the moving spirit of most of my actions" [Act IV 491]. For the sake of making profit he ordered 'Indian Girl' to sail despite Aune's warning that due to some technical problem the ship cannot be sailed. But Bernick said to Rorlund, "not a moment's consideration for human life, when it is a question of making a profit” [Act I 408]. He based his life upon a lie for fifteen years in order to maintain his position in the society. No impulse urges him to shake his self even for a minute and tell the truth, he could not do so because he could not sacrifice his family happiness and position, he wants to live worthily in the society he belongs to. The position he occupies in the society makes it his duty to raise himself and be as prominent as possible. Bernick is the most influential man in the society; nobody dares do otherwise than defer his will because he is looked upon as the 'pillar of society' without spot or blemish; his home is regarded as a model home and conduct as a model of conduct. He himself admitted to Lona that, " We are nothing more nor less than the tools of society" [Act IV 480]. One can't be oneself in the moralistic society that's why Olaf, son of Bernick, doesn't want to be a pillar of society because he feels that to be one is very dull. He asked his father about his future life.
Olaf: Shall I be allowed to be what I like, when I grow up?
Bernick: Yes.
Olaf: Oh, thank you! Then I won't be a pillar of society.
Bernick: No? Why not?
Olaf: No-1 think it must be so dull [Act IV 496].
Though Bernick knows the real nature of society and its destructive aspect yet, out of necessity his whole life is absorbed in his business enterprises and he derives visible happiness and contentment from the prosperous course of his affairs.
Ibsen, the truth-seeker throughout the play, gives an ideal example of moral regeneration which is also Bernick's regeneration. Bernick towards the end has the courge and the wits to deliver his ringing confession speech in the presence of the assembled multitude, and hereafter walk by the light of truth and freedom.
This new Bernick can surely be trusted to cope with the opposing forces in the society and inaugurate an era of truthfulness. He gave a trumpet call to all his fellow townsmen; " let each man seek to know himself thoroughly, too; and so let it really come to pass that to-night we begin a new era. The old era-with its affection, its hypocrisy and its emptiness, its pretence of virtue and its miserable fear of public opinion-shall be for us like a museum, open for purposes of instruction ....."[Act IV 492-493].
Bernick's confession strikes at the root of Ibsen's moral philosophy- the need of will, to put an end, once for all, to subterfuge and self- deception. Ibsen believes that inner revolution is necessary only then the individual can see eye to eye with the truth, and can move ahead with new spirit. Ibsen makes it unmistakably clear that the sinner's exposure, by outward means, is of no value. Bernick knows very well the crooked ways of society, he knows that there is no firm ground beneath his feet. But whatever he does, he does in order to conform to the morals, customs and opinions of the society, but he had no courage to oppose because society could not tolerate opposition. But finally towards the end of the play he had the courage to oppose and make others also aware of the true nature of society. He alarmed the multitude by saying, "What I charge myself with is that I have so often been weak enough to resort to deceitfulness, because I knew and feared the tendency of the community to espy unclean motives behind everything a prominent man here undertakes" [Act IV 491]. Ibsen does not want to see Bernick unmasked by force, because that would not have transformed his inner self, it would simply have been adding one more found out crook to the ranks of a hypocritical society.
Works Cited
Egan, Michael . ed. Ibsen: A Critical Heritage. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul Ltd., 1972
Ewbank, Inga-Stina. "Drama and Society in Ibsen's Pillars of the Community". Drama and Society. Ed. James Redmond. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1979.
Hardy Barbara. The Moral Art of Dickens. London: Athlone, 1970.
Hemmer, Bjorn. " Ibsen and the realistic problem drama." The Cambridge Companion to Ibsen. Ed. James Farlance. Great Britain: Cambridge University, press, 1994.
Ibsen, Henrik. The Pillars of Society. Trans. M.L. Hencken U.S.A.: Parkway Printing Co., 1908