Patterns of Structure and Character in Ibsen's Rosmersholm

Patterns of Structure and Character in Ibsen's Rosmersholm MARVIN CARLSON •• IN HENRIK IBSEN'S FINAL PLAY, When We Dead Awaken, the reader can scarcely escape an impression of careful and conscious arrangement of elements. The progression of the settings from a veranda near the fjords to the high fells, then to the mountain site of the final apotheosis, has the clear symbolic shape of a Strindberg pilgrimage drama. The main characters form complementary and contrasting patterns so consciously balanced that some critics have likened the working out of the play to the construction of a string quartet.1 Ibsen's last drama, however, merely brings to the surface a concern with the careful patterning of character and situation which can be found throughout the dramatist's work, even in the plays of his middle period, where a basically realistic approach tends to mask its importance. Taking Rosmersholm as an example, I propose to demonstrate how an awareness of the patterns beneath the surface of this play, perhaps the most complex Ibsen ever created, can guide us through much of its dynamic. From a technical point of view, the first thing that strikes one about Rosmersholm is its remarkable concentration. The action covers approximately forty-eight hours; the sole setting is Rosmersholm itself, three acts in the living room and one in Rosmer's study; and there are only six characters to develop the extremely complicated action. There is more than a hint here of the practice of classic tragedy, an impression strongly reinforced by Ibsen's use of Madame Helseth. Were we concerned only with the play's plot she would be clearly the least important of the characters, except, of course, for her closing speech, but it is obvious that she contributes significantly to deepening the drama. Little wonder, for Ibsen has entrusted her with the duties assigned in classic tragedy to a whole group of characters. Most 267 268 MARVIN CARLSON obviously, she serves as confidante to Rebekka, but she doubles as oracle (so that she more than anyone else explains to us the nature and the effects of the "curse" on the house of Rosmer), as chorus, and, in describing the catastrophe, as the traditional messenger. Madame Helseth's scenes, moreover, give us a first suggestion of the sort of patterning we can observe throughout the play. She opens and closes the play, of course (describing to us the view of the millrace from the window in both cases), but she opens and closes three of the four acts as well. Every act but the second begins with a dialogue between Madame Helseth and Rebekka and every act but the second closes in the same way until Madame Helseth, left alone at last, reports Rebekka's death. This pattern of repetition becomes more striking as we realize that these are essentially Madame Helseth's only scenes in the play. Except for these six times, she makes only three brief appearances, all strictly utilitarian - to announce Bendel in Act One, to look for Rebekka and to announce Mortensgaard in Act Two. The three acts "framed" by the Rebekka-Madame Helseth scenes have not only this structural feature in common. They are also the three which take place in the Rosmersholm living room, and Rebekka is the character who holds them together. Act Two, set in Rosmer's study, is also the only act in which Rosmer, not Rebekka, is continuously on stage. Rosmer, a victim of his tradition, needs no Madame Helseth to remind him of his white horses. His act, however, is arranged in harmony with a more complicated structural dynamic, which we may best approach by considering the relations between several of the central characters. Kroll's statement in the first act, "You are so terribly susceptible to outside influence," provides the key to Rosmer's character, and indirectly to much of the action ofRosmershoim, where influence often takes the form of unconscious repetition or echo. When the play begins, Rosmer is intellectually under the influence of Rebekka, though his inability to cross the bridge reminds her that she has still not entirely freed him from his past. Further and stronger confirmation comes when Kroll...