I began this play at the wrong time. For some reason I thought it was a good idea to unwind with an Ibsen play and a cocktail after twelve hours driving, in the middle of a relocation halfway across the country. I couldn’t get into the play at the time. I think I set my expectations too high and would have done my weary mind better by watching some mindless television. After settling in to our new city, I joined a reading group, deciding to revisit Tolstoy’s War & Peace. Having gotten ahead of the pace of the group, I decided to come back to Ibsen, who until then was collecting dust on my desk. Every so often I would look at the old book and whisper in my head that I would come back to it, and, indeed, I kept my promise. And I am very glad that I did (as much as I am enjoying my second run with War & Peace).
Pillars of Society came at a time (in 1877) before Ibsen’s most famous works had emerged and before he cemented his reputation as the “father of realism.” In many ways this play is still seeped in the traditions of theatre as they had existed up to this point. The characters lack the depth that his later characters would contain and the ending is a bit far-fetched, with the main character (Mr. Bernick) experiencing a Scrooge-like epiphany and, with a little coaxing, laying bare the many lies that helped him establish his reputation as a moral “pillar of society.” In part because it came before Ibsen’s really great dramas, and because this play was still very much part of the old theatrical tradition, it has been largely ignored (in comparison to his other works) by critics and the public. But it is still a damn fine play.
Structurally, the play was a bit of an oddball, at least for me. Ibsen was already toying with the conventions of theatre in this sense, experimenting with three and four act plays, whereas the five act structure had hitherto been the norm. I have read (and seen) mostly five act plays, followed by three act plays. I’ve even seen some one and two act plays on rare occasions, but I cannot recall any other four act plays. Though I am certain they must exist, they are to me like platypuses, these odd creations that I know are real (I’ve read about them and have seen pictures of them – though this means little in the age of Photoshop), but which I have never seen, at least to my recollection.
Now in terms of characters, while the characters lack the depth and complexity of those found in Ibsen’s later classics, they are not one-dimensional. It is reported that Ibsen spent more time writing this play (about two years) than he did any of his other works, and he obviously put much thought and care into his characters’ development, and particularly the female characters who provide the real momentum for the play. As in Hedda Gabler, which would come approximately 13 years after this one, it is the female characters who drive the action in the play. They are the ones with moral consciences in this play, the ones who are the real “pillars of society,” as Mr. Bernick concludes. In other later plays like Gabler and A Doll’s House women still drive the action, but they are drawn with more complexity, more detail than the ones found in this play. In a lot of ways Ibsen was an early feminist and it shows clearly here, particularly in the character of Dina Dorf, who wants to get away from people who are “So proper and so moral” and who wants to establish herself and “make something of [her] life,” rather than just being supported by a man.
The main character in this play, Karsten Bernick, is a hypocrite and a scoundrel, a man who has erected his unwavering reputation in the community on a foundation of lies. He is in the realm of literature/drama somewhere between Molière’s Tartuffe and Sinclair Lewis’ Elmer Gantry. He is a man who justifies his coarse actions based on the conventional ethics of the day (drawing on deontology, with his talk about duty and obligations to the community, and utilitarianism; in terms of the ethics of the play alone, many fascinating articles could be written). Bernick is, above all, a bourgeois man, who acts in his own egoistic interests, concerned with how much profit is made and with his own reputation in the community. He is perhaps more concerned with his reputation, for how he is perceived in the community allows him to make selfish decisions that others view as noble. If the same actions Mr. Bernick carries out were carried out by a man of ill repute, he would be burned at the stake. But by cloaking himself in a façade of good intentions, Bernick can get away with a good deal of self-interested and cold-hearted misdeeds.
Even when Bernick confesses to the public his wrongs, his intentions are doubtful. It is unlikely that he ever would have laid bare the truth if not coerced to do so. And it is perhaps disappointing to audiences that though his lies led to fifteen long years of pain and exile for others, Bernick comes out at the end smelling like a rose. His reputation is perhaps a bit blemished, but they are scars that will heal, and the healing has already begun before the play’s end.
As in other plays, here too Ibsen incorporates a bit of symbolism, but not as richly as he does in his later, best-known works. Notably in this play is the symbolism of the curtains and the open window – the belief that society’s figureheads should live behind walls of glass. But when public image does not live up to society’s high expectations, the figures retreat behind their curtains, like Charles Foster Kane walling himself up behind the walls of Xanadu in Orson Welles’ classic, Citizen Kane.
Oftentimes, the works of artists are criticized – sometimes in comparison to what they did earlier, sometimes compared to their later output, other times on their own face (without any point of comparison). Ibsen’s Pillar’s of Society was a well-received play in its time, but drama changed so quickly in so short a time, with Ibsen’s modernism leading the way (his next play was A Doll’s House!), that it was soon eclipsed and viewed as old-fashioned. But the dialogue is so rich, the themes (particularly ethically) are so fascinating and the characters (if not with so many layers as his later ones) are relatively well-developed. This play sadly is hidden by the massive dark shadows cast by Ibsen’s later plays, and (in comparison) rightly so. Pillars of Society is no Doll’s House, but is still a damn fine play, in terms of subject very relevant in its own times (dealing with the ethics of industry and technology and of the hypocrisy of high-profile citizens) and still fresh today in terms of themes, if not necessarily in terms of style.
Whereas many of Ibsen’s other classics give us glimpses into home lives that are based on deception, the harmony based on the lies is shattered in each (A Doll’s House, The Wild Duck, Hedda Gabler, The Master Builder). Modern critics view this as more realistic. Here, in this play, the exposure of the illusion may jar many, but it doesn’t disrupt so forcefully the way things were; the lie surfaces, but life (by and large) continues on. It is, in a sense, a “Hollywood ending” (and a bit far-fetched but not entirely unbelievable), but the ending still leaves us questioning. What happens next? What were Bernick’s underlying motives in “coming clean”? What does this say about him and the other characters in this play?
Ibsen said that “A dramatist’s business is not to answer questions, but merely to ask them.” And here, as in so many of his other plays – plays that were more stylistically innovative and sophisticated – he succeeds marvelously in doing just that. He asks us a great many important questions, not just about his characters but about the society we live in, about us. But he doesn’t lead us to a conclusion that is absolute. He leads us down a road that forks in many directions and the answers to these burning questions that he asks are up to the audience members (or readers) to determine for themselves.