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Ibsen's Little Eyolf: Family Tragedy and Human Responsibility BARRY JACOBS In the late autumn of 1894 Ibsen's British publisher, William Heinemann, permitted Henry James to read the English version ofLittle Eyolfact by act, as it became available from the translator. On November 22, after reading the fIrst two acts, James wrote an ecstatic letter to the great actress Elizabeth Robins about Ibsen's "ineffable Play" that, he claimed, distinctly promised to stand "at the tiptop of his achievement." After having read the third act, however, he wrote her again to say that the play had now become "a subject of depressed reflection" for him. I Many subsequent readers - and critics - have shared James's disappointment in the last act of this play. For example, Ronald Gray, who finds a great lack of dramatic incident in the playas a whole, sees nothing in the final dialogue but orotund inflation.2 A few critics, on the other hand, see this playas one of Ibsen's subtlest masterpieces; chief among them, John Northam feels that because it presents "an action whose real source is never defined," but is instead "recreated through a range of imagery itself ambiguous and obscure," it "succeeds in expressing the inexpressible."3 The fact that responsible critical evaluations ofthis play differ so widely stems from the very ambiguities Northam lauds, especially those in the final scene, in which Alfred and Rita Allmers move abruptly from despair to something like serenity as they respond to the (literally) crying needs of the poor children in the village below and look upward - for solace - toward "the peaks," "the stars," and "the great silence." Does Ibsen expect us to believe in this abrupt double conversion, or is this another of his contrapuntal, ironic endings? We can only begin to answer this question by making a careful assessment of the leading characters. "The part - the part - is Asta," James wrote to Elizabeth Robins, because he saw that she faces the sort ofmoral dilemma that brings out the best in actresses. ' G.B. Shaw, on the other hand, was most impressed by Rita, who he said was one of the heaviest parts ever written.4 Both men were fascinated by the Rat-Wife, that most portentous of all of Ibsen's representatives of Fate, but Ibsen's Little Eyolf 60S neither was attracted to Alfred Allmers, whose neurotic fear of sex deceives no one - not even himself. The complex role of Alfred is unsympathetic - and difficult for an actor to come to grips with - because the character himself is largely unaware of his capacity for self-deception in relation to the three most important concerns in his life: his sister Asta; his crippled son, Eyolf; and his magnum opus, that great tome on human responsibility that has absorbed him for years. Alfred is almost totally taken in by his own poses; little wonder then that actors and critics have found him so elusive. In his extremely sensitive reading of the play, Northam is certainly right in demonstrating how subtly Ibsen suggests that Alfred's capacity by no means matches his aspiration and that his mission to transform Eyolf into an intellectual paragon is mere self-devotion. In the other misty areas of Alfred's life, however, I think Northam is all too willing to accept the other characters' assessments of him. For example, he believes - as Asta does - that Alfred has been deeply in love with his sister ever since the days when they lived out that bizarre domestic idyll we hear about, but that he only realizes the true nature of his feelings at the end of act two, when he learns that they are not siblings after all. The mountain lake, Northam says, symbolizes Alfred's love for Asta, which "can never be acknowledged, far less enjoyed" (p. 211). Alfred nevertheless asks her to resume their old relationship because he "cannot break loose from the strange intimacy of his adolescence and face real relationships" (p. 206). When Asta shows that she has the strength to resist the temptation to return to him, Alfred is diminished. However, as he dwindles in stature, Rita,. grows. The moral authority he loses in the last...

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