The Wild Duck: Analysis of Setting
"The Wild Duck: Analysis of Setting" delves into the contrasting environments of two households: the affluent Werle house and the impoverished Ekdal house. The Werle house, home to the wealthy industrialist Haakon Werle, is depicted with rich decor and a greenish glow from its shaded lamps, creating an illusion of a lush natural setting. This space reflects the wealth and social status of its occupants but also symbolizes a form of imprisonment, particularly for Old Ekdal, Werle's former partner, who is confined to a locked office. In contrast, the Ekdal house presents a starkly different atmosphere, characterized by its shabby interiors and dim lighting, which underscore the family's struggles with poverty and self-deception. Old Ekdal’s garret, filled with animals and remnants of a past life, symbolizes both freedom and confinement, illustrating the family's reliance on illusion for happiness. However, the arrival of Gregers, who seeks to expose the truth, disrupts this fragile existence, leading to increasing darkness and melancholy within the Ekdal home. The interplay between light and darkness in both settings serves as a poignant commentary on the themes of truth, illusion, and the complexities of familial relationships.
The Wild Duck: Analysis of Setting
First published:Vildanden, 1884 (English translation, 1891)
First produced: 1885
Type of work: Drama
Type of plot: Social realism
Time of work: Nineteenth century
Places Discussed
Werle house
Werle house. Home of the wealthy industrialist Haakon Werle in which the play opens. Shaded lamps in its rich study cast a greenish glow, giving the illusion of a forest or seascape setting. Werle’s former partner, Old Ekdal, begs release from a locked office, symbolizing his earlier imprisonment. The dim study screens him and allows others to ignore him. A brilliant inner room and other chambers suggest depth of place and characters.
Ekdal house
Ekdal house. Shabby home of the Ekdal family in which the play’s second act is set at night. A single lamp in the set suggests Old Ekdal’s poverty, stressing the contrast with Werle’s brilliantly lighted home.
Old Ekdal spends most of his time in a garret, in which he keeps a curious assortment of animals. He pretends that the garret with its old Christmas trees is a forest like the one in which he hunted as a young man. The ambiguous attic place suggests freedom but is actually a prison to the animals. Although the family bases its life primarily on self-deception and illusion, the Ekdal home is a happy one.
When Gregers visits the house to see his friend Hjalmar Ekdal, he is appalled by its condition and vows to reveal the truth to the Ekdals. To that end, he rents a room in the house. When he smokes up the house, pours water into the stove, and makes the floor a “wet pigsty,” the disaster symbolizes the family disruption caused by Gregers’s revealing the truth. The subsequent darkness of the place symbolizes melancholy; darkness and sadness remain, despite a lighted lamp with no shade. Hedvig believes that in daylight (symbolizing truth and happiness) their place (family) will again be stable. When he threatens to leave, Gina says they need an attic place (illusion) for happiness. This attic place, however, later brings grief—not happiness. Gregers’s closing metaphor for himself uses place: He is the thirteenth place at a table and a source of unrest.
Bibliography
Caputi, Anthony, ed. Eight Modern Plays. 2d ed. New York: W. W. Norton, 1991. Dounia B. Christiani’s translation of The Wild Duck is supplemented with excerpts from Ibsen’s letters and speeches and two chapters from books by M. C. Bradbrook and Dorothea Krook. Bradbook’s contribution explains how the play works on different levels simultaneously, and Krook remarks on the subtlety of Ibsen’s theme of self-deception. Caputi’s foreword provides an excellent introduction to Ibsen and twentieth century drama.
Clurman, Harold. Ibsen. New York: Macmillan, 1977. An introductory study that provides the general reader with a good starting place for reading about Ibsen. Clurman, a renowned stage director, comments with sensitivity on the plays as both theater and literature. Includes an instructive discussion of The Wild Duck, which concludes that Gregers’ zealotry leads him to misjudge Hjalmar’s essentially mundane nature.
Fjelde, Rolf, ed. Ibsen: A Collection of Critical Essays. Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, 1965. Sixteen essays cover, among other topics, Ibsen’s conception of truth, realism, and stage craftsmanship. Robert Raphael discusses the theme of self-deception in The Wild Duck and two other Ibsen plays.
Lyons, Charles R., ed. Critical Essays on Henrik Ibsen. Boston: G. K. Hall, 1987. A thorough and useful volume of essays that collects discussions addressing the ideology, realism, and dramatic form of Ibsen’s plays. The remarks on The Wild Duck explore the play’s structure, language, and exposition.
McFarlane, James, ed. The Cambridge Companion to Ibsen. Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press, 1994. A collection of sixteen newly written essays on Ibsen’s life and work, which include discussions of Ibsen’s working methods and the stage history of the plays. A helpful source.