The art of transformation: art, marriage, and freedom in The lady from the sea

Toril Moi

The art of transformation: art, marriage, and freedom in The lady from the sea

Authors

Toril Moi Duke University

Keywords:

Henrik Ibsen, theatre, modernism, freedom, choice.

Abstract

The play, The Lady from the Sea, sets out to provide an answer to the question: namely, what it takes for a relationship to become a marriage. In order to follow Ibsen’s analysis of this question, however, we also need to notice that the play can be read as Ibsen’s rebuff to romantic tales of female sacrifice. The play also intertwines the story of Ellida’s achievement of freedom with an investigation of art, theatre, and music, in which the main question is how painting, sculpture, and theatre can express what some critics have called the “inner mind”.

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Original in English.

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Author Biography

Toril Moi, Duke University

Autora de vários livros, entre eles: Henrik Ibsen and the Birth of Modernism – Art, Theatre, Philosophy . Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006, Sexual/Textual Politics: Feminist Literary Theory . London and New York: Routledge, 2002, What Is a Woman? and Other Essays . Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2001, Simone de Beauvoir : The Making of an Intellectual Woman . Oxford & Cambridge, Mass.: Blackwell, 1993, Feminist Theory and Simone de Beauvoir . The Bucknell Lectures in Literary Theory. Oxford & Cambridge, Mass.: Blackwell, 1990.

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Published

2009-12-30

How to Cite

MOI, Toril. The art of transformation: art, marriage, and freedom in The lady from the sea. MATRAGA - Journal published by the Graduate Program in Letters at Rio de Janeiro State University (UERJ), Rio de Janeiro, v. 16, n. 25, 2009. Disponível em: https://www.e-publicacoes.uerj.br/matraga/article/view/27777. Acesso em: 22 may. 2025.

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Issue

Vol. 16 No. 25 (2009): Intimacy and Literature

Section

Literature Papers

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Authorization

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