Ibsen’s Parental Paradigms: A Reexamination

Abstract

This article explores the parent-child relationships in Ibsen’s A Doll’s House, Ghosts and An Enemy of the People with a special focus on the destructive role of parents and children in social and human evolution. The study examines how Ibsen uses these particular relationships and what they represent in light of his views on social progress, evolution, and education. Drawing from the interactions between children and their parents in the plays under study, the work discusses the intricate weaving together of a number of different cultural and philosophical visions inherent in children’s and parent’s world, thereby highlighting the role children play in promoting cultural diversity and social justice. As this study highlights, traditional parenting breads dictatorship, tyranny, brutality and sycophancy. The study therefore discusses themes like torture, oppression, injustice, repression, religious hypocrisy, hopes deferred and marginalization within the confines of the home with the intention of showing that those who take up tasks of parenting and guardianship have the responsibility of liberating the child from these injustices. Through the use of social identity theoretical approach to literature, the work demonstrates that the constructive role of the child in social progress and human evolution is usually watered down by the destructive effect of the parent on the child’s progress.