Book review: Six Plays by Henrik Ibsen

Book review: Six Plays by Henrik Ibsen

by | Jan 16, 2018 | Book reviews, Books, Theater and play reviews

“Millions of women…”

 

 

Six Plays by Henrik Ibsen

 

by Henrik Ibsen (1828-1906)

Norwegian playwright, theater director, and poet

The Modern Library, New York  1957

Translated and with introduction by Eva Le Gallienne

 

In this volume, for your delectation:

A Doll’s House

Ghosts

An Enemy of the People

Rosmersholm

Hedda Gabler

The Master Builder

 

Ibsen is OK for beach reading whenever the sun disappears and you have to scooch down in your chair with a blanket and a hoodie to keep warm.

Of course it’s possible to argue with the notion that this is a collection of Ibsen’s best—for my taste, just about any half dozen of Ibsen’s plays is worth putting in the beach bag.

My favorite in Six Plays is “A Doll’s House.” It’s Ibsen’s stark, unforgiving play about men and women, with a dreadful undercurrent of desperation. Torvald Helmer offers only bland, devastating condescension to Nora, whose despair grows ever more public as she realizes that she has drowned herself in the domestic dead end of being Torvald’s “doll-wife.”

If you ache, like me, to bash Torvald and comfort Nora as you experience the pervasive and thinly veiled brutality in the Helmer household, then you, like me, must realize how much you wish it could be unimaginable in any way…but in vain…

Nora tells her husband that she had hoped he would take the blame for her transgression, and the disdainful Torvald rebukes her: “…one doesn’t sacrifice one’s honor for love’s sake.”

Nora replies with quiet thunder: “Millions of women have done so.”

Enfin, we understand how Nora could be too hurt to cry, and too happy to remain in a doll’s house…

*   *   *   *   *   *

Book review. Copyright © Richard Carl Subber 2018 All rights reserved.

​

Book review: Ethan Frome

not being satisfied with less…

by Edith Wharton

click here

​-

In other words: Poems for your eyes and ears with 64 free verse and haiku poems,
and the rest of my poetry books are for sale on Amazon (paperback and Kindle)
and free in Kindle Unlimited, search Amazon for “Richard Carl Subber”

*   *   *   *   *   *

Follow Rick on Facebook

Thoughtful book reviews by Rick Subber

Nothing Found

Book review: Colonial America

Book review: Colonial America

by | Jan 5, 2018 | American history, Book reviews, Books, History

It didn’t start with the Pilgrims…

 

 

Book review:

Colonial America: A Very Short Introduction

 

by Alan Taylor

Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013

151 pages

 

This is another blockbuster in the A Very Short Introduction series.

No matter how much you think you know about colonial America, you’ll learn more from Taylor’s sweep of all the Atlantic horizons.

I won’t attempt the thankless task of summarizing a brief summary of the historical verities of the millions of American Indians who lived in North and South America for thousands of years, and of the Spanish, French, English, and Dutch colonists who invaded the Indians’ homelands.

For a new student of American history, Taylor’s work is a stunning, almost counter-intuitive presentation of the broad array and surprising diversity of “first contact” and subsequent colonial experiences—the Pilgrims were latecomers, they certainly weren’t the “first Americans” in any way you can imagine.

For the serious student and the historian, Colonial America offers many reminders of all the things you don’t know too well (or at all), and all the things you know about colonial America that aren’t true.

Before 1492, the indigenous populations of North America and South America comprised about 7% of the inhabitants of Earth. In 1800, the American Indians were less than 1% of global population. In the 18th century, most of the new arrivals in the Americas were African slaves, not European colonists. These are a couple of the flip sides of the colonial success stories.

*   *   *   *   *   *

It’s the tiny sound of the surf…

…listen for the sea…(my poem)

“Listen”

click here

Book review. Copyright © Richard Carl Subber 2018 All rights reserved.

​-

Writing Rainbows: Poems for Grown-Ups with 59 free verse and haiku poems,
and the rest of my poetry books are for sale on Amazon (paperback and Kindle)
and free in Kindle Unlimited, search Amazon for “Richard Carl Subber”
​

*   *   *   *   *   *

Follow Rick on Facebook

Thoughtful book reviews by Rick Subber

Nothing Found

Pin It on Pinterest