This is the first comprehensive study of the women in Ibsen's plays and their relationship to the women in the life and career of the playwright. Through close critical readings of the Ibsen texts, as well as the examination of such primary sources as letters and personal papers, Joan Templeton discovers how the important figures in his life (his family, wife, and the actresses themselves) influenced and informed the powerful and inspiring characters he created. Templeton also explores the importance of the early plays and their impact on the later works, and establishes some general patterns in Ibsen's general representation of women.

Table of Contents

List of illustrations; Preface; List of abbreviations; Note on translations; 1. Roots; 2. The seminal women of the early career; 3. Love and marriage; 4. Love and the kingdom; 5. The poetry of feminism; 6. Mrs Alving's ghosts; 7. A new woman and three housewives; 8. Taming wild women; 9. The deviant woman as hero: Hedda Gabler; 10. The glories and dangers of the rejuvenating feminine; 11. Women who live for love; 12. The revolt of the muse: when we dead awaken; In conclusion: Ibsen's women and Ibsen's modernism; Notes; Select bibliography; Index.

Author Biography

Joan Templeton is Professor of English and Comparative Literature at Long Island University, Brooklyn Center, New York. Templeton is a noted Ibsen scholar and has also published widely on other modern dramatists. She has coedited an anthology of feminist comparative criticism Reconfigured Spheres: Feminist Explorations of Literary Space (University of Massachusetts Press, 1994), taught extensively in France, and edits Ibsen: News and Comment, the journal of the Ibsen Society of America.