Do3 - Brand

[Mandryka]

I'm not sure I agree with that. Everything we know about Ibsen's own opinions, and the circumstances leading up to the writing of An Enemy of the People suggests that Ibsen had a lot of sympathy for the strong views expressed by Dr Stockmann, even if he may have exaggerated them for effect. The loathing of party and majority opinion which Dr Stockmann expresses in the play were sentiments shared by Ibsen - Liberalism he considered to be the enemy of freedom.

A number of circumstances may well have conspired to prompt Ibsen to write a play in which these views are given a powerful spokesman. His own play Ghosts had been given a bad reception by the press in 1881. Some real-life incidents reported to Ibsen - an anecdote about a spa doctor who had been persecuted by his fellow-townsmen for reporting a local case of cholera, and an incident in which a chemist called Thaulow was prevented at a public meeting from reading his indictment of the management of the Christiana Steam Kitchens - provided the kernel of the plot for An Enemy. And the central character, Dr Stockmann, may in personality at least have been drawn from Ibsen's great friend Bjørnstjerne Bjørnson. In the play, several of Ibsen's bêtes noires, a mayor, a newpaper editor, a (drunken) journalist and a newspaper printer are made the butt of Dr Stockmann's scorn as they turn against him (and I don't think it can possibly be argued that we are supposed to admire or sympathise with any of these characters).

Dr Stockmann's views in the play are extreme, and would have been so even at the time it was first performed, but I don't think they are presented like that to make him appear a fool but to rile the critics and the audience that had turned on his earlier play.

But Ibsen is careful to also depict Stockmann as unworldly and politically naive. I don't doubt that he identified with at least part of what Stockmann says, but he retained his characteristic scepticism to the end, when we see the good doctor effectively martyring his own family on the altar of his own principles. As a lecturer friend of mine once remarked, 'I don't think I'd buy shares in Dr. Stockmann.....'

[aeolium]

But Ibsen is careful to also depict Stockmann as unworldly and politically naive.

And almost comically impetuous and, you could also say, entirely true to himself. But I don't think those are qualities which Ibsen looked down on, or indeed wished to be looked down on. He contrasts them favourably with the calculation and manipulation shown by Aslaksen and Hovstad, and the Doctor's brother Peter.

the end, when we see the good doctor effectively martyring his own family on the altar of his own principles.

But did he? His family all support him, and in the end he is helped out by Captain Horster. I think his is a different case from other obsessive idealists such as Brand or Gregers Werle in The Wild Duck in that Ibsen is less ambivalent about him - and ultimately shows that Dr Stockmann has no other alternative which is not fatally compromising (such as renouncing his research about the poison at the Baths, or agreeing to Morten Kiil's suggestion).

As a lecturer friend of mine once remarked, 'I don't think I'd buy shares in Dr. Stockmann.....'

Then your friend probably would have agreed to Morten Kiil's suggestion and kept those shares....

[Must finish listening to Brand again - this is getting rather OT]