The Struggle for Existence. Ibsen's The Wild Duck (Vildanden , 1884)

Abstract

In The Wild Duck the struggle for existence is humorously referred to in the dialogue:<p> <p>FRU SØRBY. Kammerherrerne mener, at bedes man til middag, så skal man også arbejde for føden, herr Ekdal.<p><p> DEN FEDE HERRE. I et godt madhus er det en ren fornøjelse. <p><p>DEN TYNDHÅREDE. Herre gud, når det gælder kampen for tilværelsen, så – (Ibsen 2009a, 27–28)¹<p><p>Moreover, the symbolism of the wild duck is clearly influenced by Darwin, either by Darwin’s reports in Variations of Animals and Plants under Domestication (1868) about how wild ducks degenerate in captivity (Bull 1932, 23–24; Downs 1950, 148–149; Zwart 2000, 94–95), or, more probably, by the chapter on domestication and variation in On the Origin of the Species (1859), which was translated into Danish in 1872 (Aarseth 1999, 127–128, 2005, 6; Rem 2014, 163). In the literature it is underscored that in this play Ibsen foregrounds domestication as degeneration, whereas Darwin’s main point is that it leads to variation in the species (Tjønneland 1998; Zwart 2000; Aarseth 2005; Shepherd-Barr 2015; Rem 2014). What I will argue is (1) that Ibsen, or the play as a whole, does not equate domestication with degeneration, (2) that the key to the play is the total constellation of animals and birds in the loft, not just the duck, and (3) that the loft is a scenic metaphor for the struggle for existence fought within and between the two families. In this way the image of the loft, an image in which the characters in the drama are reflected, acquires much greater meaning as a metaphor than assumed thus far in the research literature. A recurring interpretation of the duck is that it is a symbolic representation of vulnerability, weakness, domestication and degeneration, inauthentic life (see for instance Høst 1967, Aarseth 1999, 2005; Tjønneland 1993, 1998, Zwart 2000; Shepherd-Barr 2015). But the image of the duck is, as I will argue, complex; the duck is domesticated, yes, but also favored due to its wildness, and is part of an overall, much more comprehensive image: Ibsen visualizes the phenomenon of domestication by furnishing the Ekdals’ urban apartment with a loft of living birds and animals. However, by including a variety of animals—not just the titular bird, injured by a hunter’s shots, favored because of its wildness and treated as a pet, but also pigeons, poultry, and rabbits that are mercilessly hunted and killed in the loft—he develops this into an image of what Darwin calls the struggle for existence between the favored and the not favored, in order to allow the cast of characters to be reflected in it. In this way, he renders the drama a moral-philosophical version of the existential struggle for existence, overlapping Nietzsche’s ideas of the favored few, the robust conscience and the master-slave morality, as well as being influenced by Darwin’s theory of selection. Considered in this way, the loft metaphor acquires validity for the cast of characters’ two families in a completely different way than as yet seen in the literature on the drama: it applies both to the weak as well as to the strong, and the metaphor itself does not exalt freedom and authenticity—what we are confronted with is a value-neutral image of existential struggle under differing prevailing conditions for the domesticated.