Women and Victorian Theatre by Kerry Powell, and: Ibsen's Women by Joan Templeton (review)

BOOK REVIEWS own final version of Act Three in the New Directions edition of t976. (He is also wrong in claiming that Williams added this act at Audrey Wood's insistence .) Intellectual fashion has here warped scholarship. A valuable (if uneven) collection, then, which is encouraging as an indication of the continuing surge of interest in Tennessee Williams,[ though one could wish that it had been winnowed more strenuously by the editor. I Another valuable recent collection is: Robert A. Martin, ed. Critical Essays on Tennessee Williams (New York: G.K. Hall & Co., 1997). This contains six original essays but is primarily an anthology of reprinted pieces and, as such, not eligible for review in Modern Drama. It provides a useful counterpoint for The Cambridge Companio", however. BRIAN PARKER, TRINITY COLLEGE, UN IVERSITY OF TORONTO KERRY POWELL. Women and Victorian Theatre. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press t997. Pp. 202, illustrated. $49.95. JOAN TEMPLETON. Ibsen's Women. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 1997· Pp. 386, illustrated. $64·95· In the Preface to her exhaustive study, Ibsen's Women, Joan Templeton calls A Doll House a "quintessential feminist work because it does nothing less than destroy the notion of Woman, the female Other of history" (xv). Templeton is Professor of English and Comparative Literature at Long Island University, Brooklyn Centre, and explains that her book was inspired during her teaching of the critical commentary around Ghosts and A Doll House: she was struck by the blame levelled against the female protagonists and the determined attempt to "rescue" A Doll House from the "contamination" of feminism. Thinking through the terms and arguments used by these critical commentators , Templeton came to her own conclusions about Ibsen and his relationship with the feminism of his day and ours (xv). Her definition of the term feminist specifically addresses the notions of hierarchy and binary opposition: for Templeton. Ibsen is feminist because he questions the division of Woman into Angel and Devil; he questions the very existence of "female nature;" the socialization of sexual identity we now call gender; and the exclusiveness of the categories "masculine" and "feminine" (xvi). Extensive biographical information, presented in chronological order, is used to illustrate Ibsen's evolving relationship with the women in his life, and is combined with a comprehensive approach to the plays as a whole: as a particular characteristic or insight is introduced in one example, Templeton traces it through every instance in which it could be seen to apply. The cover of Ibsen's Women serves to illustrate these twin themes: a silhouette of his mother Book Reviews 497 represents the real women who influenced Ibsen, while a photograph of Eva Le Gallienne as Hedda Gabler represents his female characters. Templeton explains: "I have tried to identify Ibsen's models, literary and living, and to suggest how he used them" (xvii). One interesting consequence of this approach is that the reader is introduced to some remarkable women, such as Magdalene Kragh Thoresen, Ibsen's mother-in-law and one of Scandinavia's first women of letters, a popular feminist author, an "extravagant and passion- .ate woman" (43) and a colleague at the Norwegian National Theatre in Bergen. In her conclusion (Ibsen's women and Ibsen's modernism) Templeton argues that, to place "the role of women in society" on "the list of problems debated by Ibsen and his contemporaries is to ignore the centrality of the 'woman question' in the development of modem drama" (323). From the 1850S to the end of the century, "Europe was highly preoccupied with feminism 's challenge to the patriarchy" and the origins of modem European drama developed in c~njunction with this debate (324). Templeton insists that Ibsen never debated "women's role in society," for society was always the enemy for Ibsen and women were autonomous human beings needing to define themselves , not their roles. She categorizes Ibsen's plays in three ways: those that deal with unequal relations (such as A Doll House); those that feature a female-centred triangle showing women's victimization through forced marriage (such as Ghosts); and those that feature another recurring triangle, the man flanked by a strong and weak woman (as in Hedda Gabler). To contrast...