The Lady from the Sea by Henrik Ibsen

First produced:Fruen fra havet, 1889; first published, 1888 (English translation, 1890)

Type of work: Drama

Type of plot: Psychological realism

Time of plot: Nineteenth century

Locale: A small town in northern Norway

Principal characters

• Doctor Wangel, a physician
• Ellida, his second wife
• Boletta and Hilda, his daughters by his first marriage
• Arnholm, a schoolmaster
• Lyngstrand, a sculptor
• A Stranger,

The Story:

There is no real affection between Ellida Wangel and her two stepdaughters, Boletta and Hilda. Ellida married their father, Doctor Wangel, several years before, soon after the death of his first wife. She met him in the seacoast town that was her home, which she loved because it was near the sea. In fact, the sea had always dominated her life, and she feels stifled in her new home, which is surrounded by mountains.

Arnholm, Boletta’s former tutor, pays a visit to the Wangel home. He had known and loved Ellida before her marriage to Doctor Wangel, but she had refused his suit because she was already betrothed to another. As the two old friends talk, a traveling sculptor, Lyngstrand, stops to tell them of a group he hopes to model. Lyngstrand has been at sea, where he met a sailor who told him a strange story. The sailor had married a woman who had promised to wait for him, but three years earlier he had read that his wife had married another man. The sailor told Lyngstrand that his wife was still his, that he would have her even though she had broken her vows.

This strange tale moves Ellida, seems even to frighten her. She is moody after hearing it, which makes her husband think she is unhappy because she is away from the sea. He offers to move his family to the seashore so that Ellida can regain her peace of mind, but Ellida knows that a move will not bring her happiness, whereas it certainly would make him and the girls unhappy to leave their home. She tells him the real cause of her misery. Some years before, she had come under the spell of a sailor whose ship was in port for only a few days. He, too, loved the sea and seemed to be part of it. Indeed, he and Ellida seemed to be animals or birds of the sea, so closely did they identify themselves with the vast waters. When the sailor murdered his captain, he was forced to flee. Before he left, he took a ring from his hand and one from hers, joined them together, and threw them into the sea. He told her that this act joined them in marriage and that she was to wait for him. At the time, she seemed to have no will of her own and to be completely under his spell. Later, she regained her senses and wrote to tell him that she did not consider the joining of the rings a lasting bond. He ignored her letters, however, and continued to tell her that he would come back to her.

Ellida tells her husband that she had forgotten the sailor until three years ago, when she was carrying the doctor’s child. Then, suddenly, the sailor seemed very close to her. Her child, who lived only a few months, was born—or so she believed—with the eyes of the sailor. She has felt such guilt that from that time on she has not lived with her husband as his wife. The anguish she has suffered is affecting her mind, and she fears that she will go mad. She loves her husband, but she is drawn to the man of the sea whom she has not seen in ten years.

Doctor Wangel tries to comfort his wife, but he is also worried about her sanity. One day, a stranger appears in their garden. He is the sailor, come to claim Ellida. He tells her that he has come to hold her to the vow she had taken years before. Ellida says that she could never leave her husband, but the stranger will not listen. The doctor tells the man that he will never allow his wife to leave him and that the stranger cannot force her to go against her will. The stranger responds that he would never force her but that she will come to him of her own free will. Those words, “of her own free will,” seem to fascinate Ellida. She repeats them over and over and gains strength from them. The stranger leaves, saying that he will return for her answer the next night; if she refuses to join him then, she will never see him again.

Ellida begs her husband to save her from the stranger. He tries to persuade her that her mind has been conditioned by Lyngstrand’s story of the sailor and his unfaithful wife, and he also reminds her that the sailor does not even look as she had remembered him. Ellida will not be comforted, however. She concludes that there is only one way she can make the right decision and save her sanity: The doctor must release her from her marriage vows, not by divorce but verbally. Then she will be free to choose between her husband and the stranger. She says that she has never been free, for first she was under the will of the stranger and then she has been under the will of her husband.

The doctor refuses her request because he thinks he must save her from the stranger and from herself. He feels that the stranger exerts an evil influence over her, and he wants to save her from disaster. He promises her, however, that after the stranger leaves, he will release her from her vow to him and give her the freedom she wishes.

The next night, the stranger comes again as promised, and Ellida and her husband meet him in the garden. When the stranger asks Ellida to come with him of her own free will, the doctor orders the stranger to leave the country or be exposed as a murderer. The stranger shows them a pistol and says that he will use it to take his own life rather than give up his freedom.

Ellida again tells her husband that he must release her from her marriage vows; although he can keep her body tied down, he cannot fetter her soul and her desires. Seeing that she is right and that his refusal will drive his wife out of her mind, the doctor tells her that he will release her from her commitment to him. When she sees that he loves her enough to put her happiness above his own, she turns to the stranger, who is pleading with her to leave with him on the ship standing offshore, and tells him that now she can never go with him. The stranger, realizing that there is something between these two that is stronger than his will, leaves them, promising never to return.

Ellida assures her husband that her mind is whole once more and that she will never again long for the stranger or the sea. The unknown no longer has any power over her, for at last she has made a decision of her own free will. Because she has been free to choose or reject the stranger, his fascination is gone. Now she can go with her husband and live with him again as his wife. She knows too that she can now win the affection of his daughters and come to think of them as her own. Ellida will never again feel like the wild, eager birds of the sea. In binding herself forever to the land, she will find freedom.

Bibliography

Binding, Paul. With Vine-Leaves in His Hair: The Role of the Artist in Ibsen’s Plays. Norwich, England: Norvik Press, 2006. Examines the character of the artist-rebel in The Lady from the Sea and four other Ibsen plays. Demonstrates how this character represents the tensions of society at the time Ibsen was writing.

Durbach, Errol.“Ibsen the Romantic”: Analogues of Paradise in the Later Plays. Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1982. Argues that the marriage depicted in The Lady from the Sea is a positive counterpart to the marriages Ibsen portrays in Et dukkehjem (pr., pb. 1879; A Doll’s House, 1880) and Hedda Gabler (pb. 1890; English translation, 1891).

Haugen, Einar. Ibsen’s Drama: Author to Audience. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1979. Provides a superb general introduction to Ibsen’s works and their place in European cultural history. Includes discussion of The Lady from the Sea.

Holtan, Orley I. Mythic Patterns in Ibsen’s Last Plays. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1970. Presents a thorough discussion of the psychological, philosophical, and mythic aspects of The Lady from the Sea, arguing that the play should be regarded from the perspective of myth or allegory.

Jacobsen, Per Schelde, and Barbara Fass Leavy. Ibsen’s Forsaken Merman: Folklore in the Late Plays. New York: New York University Press, 1988. Discussion of Ibsen’s use of folklore motifs addresses the similarities between Ellida Wangel and such mythological creatures as mermaids and seal maidens.

McFarlane, James, ed. The Cambridge Companion to Ibsen. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1994. Collection of essays addresses a wide variety of topics, such as Ibsen’s dramatic apprenticeship; his historical dramas, comedies, and realistic problem dramas; and his working methods. Includes discussion of The Lady from the Sea.

Moi, Toril.“The Art of Transformation: Art, Marriage, and Freedom in The Lady from the Sea.” In Henrik Ibsen and the Birth of Modernism: Art, Theater, Philosophy. New York: Oxford University Press, 2006. Refutes the traditional definition of Ibsen as a realistic and naturalistic playwright and describes him as an early modernist.

Robinson, Michael, ed. Turning the Century: Centennial Essays on Ibsen. Norwich, England: Norvik Press, 2006. Collection of essays published in the journal Scandinavica from the 1960’s to the early twenty-first century. Includes discussions of Ibsen’s style, his language, and the reception of his plays in England. One essay analyzes The Lady from the Sea.

Templeton, Joan. Ibsen’s Women. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1997. Examines the women characters in Ibsen’s plays and their relationships to the women in the playwright’s life and career. Chapter 8 includes an analysis of The Lady from the Sea.

Weigand, Herman J. The Modern Ibsen: A Reconsideration. 1925. Reprint. Salem, N.H.: Ayer, 1984. Provides an excellent introduction to Ibsen’s later plays. Contains a good discussion of The Lady from the Sea that praises the subtlety of the psychological portrayal of the main character.