of Skien. When he was young, Henriks father went bankrupt, which was considered very disgraceful at the time. This affected young Ibsen greatly and he used it to allegorize in The Wild Duck. Henrik attained an apprenticeship for a pharmacist, but despised the job and moved to Christiana, where he intended to attend school. Instead, he became the house poet and eventually stage manager at the Norske Theatre in Bergen. He then went back to Christiana where he directed at the Mollergate Theatre until 1862. During this time he married Susannah Thoreson and wrote The Vikings in Helgeland, which popularized him as a writer in Norway. In 1864 he applied for a poets pension from the government but was refused. He became enraged at his homeland and left it, headed for Italy and Germany, though he still made known his love for his homeland. He continued to write and produced a number of plays and traveled to Egypt, among other countries. Ibsen was not pleased with the nationalism of the foreigners he traveled with. He offended many when he commented on this in a poem to a Swedish lady he knew, referring to "A herd of German wild pigs, almost tamed." It made him glad he was from a smaller, non- competative, country. He was also disgusted with the lack of religious importance in the Middle East, stating that the gods of Greece still live, and Zeus still moves in the capitol, but "Where is Horus? Where is Hathor? No trace exists, no memory." When in Rome, Ibsen began work on a play titled Et Dukkehjem. A Dolls House (in English) is a drama in which a woman (Nora), as a result of certain events, realizes how one - sided her love for her husband is. Throughout their marriage, she is viewed as an object, rather than a caring equal. She leaves her husband, and her children, in the search for individuality and freedom. At the time of its peformance, most viewers were off...
