Henrik Ibsen – Realism in Drama Before 1830 literature was written about the deeds of larger than life, heroic individuals in mysterious, exotic settings. Around 1830, the harsh realities of poverty and inequality became the subjects for literature and the literary style known as Realism was born (Fiero 364). Literature of the nineteenth century described characters and situations as they were in real life. Common place topics such as the domination of women, greed, and the predicament of being lower class were written about with honesty and truthfulness (Fiero 364). The literary style of Realism was not only used to write novels such as Edith Wharton’s The Age of Innocence and Ethan Frome but also dramas. The late nineteenth-century playwright Henrik Ibsen wrote provocative dramas that dealt with topics such as insanity, venereal disease, and incest (Fiero 365). Henrik Ibsen was born in the Norwegian town of Skein in March 1828. As a child, he spent much of his time reading, painting and making puppets for a small theater he had built in a storehouse near his home (Jacobs). Due to a financial loss, Ibsen’s parents could not afford to send him to school to study medicine…show more content… He lived in Italy and Germany, during that time he wrote the verse drama Brand, and its accompanying piece, Peer Gynt ("Henrik Ibsen." Britannica Academic). Although the main characters of each play are total opposites, both plays discuss freedom of will and the far-reaching consequences of making choices. To question an individual’s integrity, personality, and ability to know one’s self, would recur throughout Ibsen’s plays (Jacobs). Peer Gynt was the last verse drama Ibsen would write. All of Ibsen’s future dramas would be written in prose. I think his decision to change his writing style would literally set the stage for the controversial dramas he would later
