Absent from Oneself

By T. E. Kalem

THE LADY FROM THE SEA

by HENRIK IBSEN

At a time when women were perceived as gentle suppliant chattels, Ibsen was probing the feminine psyche in depth. Ellida (Vanessa Redgrave) is an Ibsen heroine who finds herself. She owes much to a husband, Wangel, who is patient, wise and totally generous, precisely those qualities that Nora's husband, in A Doll's House, lacked. Ellida is tormentedly neurotic. She is the doctor's second wife, and she married him for financial security, not love.

The spectral lover in her mind's eye is a man known only as the Stranger (Richard Lynch), a romantic seafarer.

The sea itself obsesses her. Ibsen uses it as a symbol, a cauldron of suppressed desires, a deep well of the unconscious. The Stranger appears and demands that she go away with him. Ellida pleads with the doctor to release her from their marriage vows. In anguish of spirit, Wangel does so, and that one act exorcises the past. As a woman "of her own free will," Ellida chooses to stay with him.

The Lady from the Sea is not one of Ibsen's strongest dramas, but it is psychologically compelling. As Ellida, Vanessa Redgrave illuminates the repressed sexuality, the abstracted inability to relate to others, the state of being "absent from oneself." Pat Hingle has never done more sensitive work than in portraying an unbelievably decent man.

The play shows once again that Ibsen was the central character in all his plays. What he argues again and again is that one must find, salvage or create one's own being before there can be wholeness of self.

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