The Lady from the Sea

About

Ibsen's 1888 play follows Ellida Wangel, a doctor's wife who is obsessed by the sea and haunted by a former lover — a sailor who appears and claims her. The play is unusual in Ibsen's canon for its relatively hopeful resolution: when her husband gives Ellida absolute freedom to choose, the compulsion lifts. Its exploration of the psychology of freedom — that freedom is meaningless unless it is real, and only when it is real can it be exercised without coercion — gives it a philosophical weight its more realistic surface somewhat conceals. The play has attracted feminist readings as a study of what genuine autonomy requires.