CONTRASTING PATTERNS OF WORK IN HENRICK IBSEN’S A DOLL’S HOUSE AND ANTON CHEKHOV’S THE CHERRY ORCHARD
By
Ginikachi C. Uzoma
Abstract
Literature presents work in varying instances, which appear in two concise groupings: one, that literature is work itself; and two, that literature is a representation of work. The second is realised in Aristotle’s assertion that poetry (literature) is a representation of ‘men doing things.’ Interestingly, since the classics, literature (especially drama and prose) has not deviated from this endeavour. Giving particular attention to the works of Henrik Ibsen and Anton Chekhov as belonging to 20th Century modernist writing, there is relatively no harm in arriving at a general notion as regards the mode of representation of work that takes place in the plays of modernist writers, irrespective of the contrasting patterns in which they appear; that the movement of work in the play enables the weaving of the play as a probable construct. But there is no room, in this essay, for accounting for the representation of work in the entire works of Ibsen and Chekhov, hence two of their works—Ibsen’s A Doll’s House and Chekhov’s The Cherry Orchard—having not been read in the light of this kind of representation, are therefore selected for this purpose.
Keywords: Work, Eris, Chekhov, Ibsen, the I-instinct
Introduction
As much as literature depends most especially on the re-enactment of thought, in varying patterns, which grows over time in the capacity of what then becomes a myth, the question then becomes of what actually is re-enacted. In Aristotle’s opinion, what is re-enacted—or in his own word, ‘represented’—is ‘men in action’ so that ‘the name of “drama” is given to such poems as representing action’ (The Poetics 5,6). Since ‘action’ takes place in several forms which, captured over time, result in an archetypal stance equally known as ‘myth’ or ‘mythic sequence,’ it behoves us also to consider Derrida’s account of literature (or art) as ‘meaning rethought as form’ (Writing and Difference 4). ‘Meaning’ here is in terms of the containment of the text which, when cogitated upon in the thought process, yields itself to one or other certain ‘form.’ It is this ‘one or other certain form,’ which appears when the critic has carried out the business of rethinking meaning in the ‘self-subsisting’ object (‘Call of Being’ 3), that creates for the text what Ukwueze calls ‘a wholesome self-insufficiency’ (‘Humour of Mechanical Inelasticity’ 124) since the text, for him, ‘as a self-sufficient object [] requires no external reference for its validation; but on the other hand, its self-insufficiency lies in the fact that it has no conclusive meaning within itself.’ Then taken to be one chain of event, Derrida’s ‘meaning rethought as form’ becomes another way of conceiving ‘work’ as a literary concept. In this reading, therefore, I assert that ‘work,’ which occurs as ‘action’ by its acquirement of ‘meaning’ in different pliable forms, attains in both texts—A Doll’s House and The Cherry Orchard—the status of myth. These pliable forms are what is known as structural pattern which underscores the movement of action in the texts. This, however, is not in any way an attempt to undermine other readings of the texts that are already existing, but to show that the reading of the texts can also take the present bearing.
‘Work’ as a Mobile Figure
In Chekhov’s The Cherry Orchard, work is a very essential figure, making itself known through the characters of Lopakhin, Lyubov Andreevna and Simeonov-Pishchik whose contrasting characters interact to create meanings for ‘work’; and the characters of Trofimov and Firs whose related attributes are striking. And because ‘work,’ which is here understood as ‘action,’ entails ‘persons acting and doing’ (The Poetics 6), such characters as Anya, Varya, Dunyasha and Gaev are also key to the exposition of the meaning of work.
The representation of work in this play, as well as in A Doll’s House, is mostly through discourse. In The Cherry Orchard, only the servants play their ‘work’ roles, since work is also realised as duty or profession whose presence, given prominence in society, results in a 'dynamic interplay of class structure' (Ekeh 165). And they happily attend to their work. Dunyasha wants to combine her work with the search for love, and then marriage. In the first act of the play, she gets overjoyed with Yepikhodov’s proposal, but then complains to Lopakhin:
It’s just that whenever he starts to talk, I can’t understand a word he’s saying. I mean, it all sounds so sweet and sincere, only it just doesn’t make sense. (Act I)
In Act II, it is no longer Yepikhodov but Yasha that she finds herself falling ‘madly in love with.’ The striking thing about her character is that her attitude to work does not waver the way her attitude to love does. This buttresses the point that the play’s emphasis is strongly placed on work rather than luxury, which is why the characters of Lopakhin and Lyubov Andreevna are contrasted to indicate the necessity of activeness in work. Lopakhin, who has descended from a peasantry linage, rises to the status of a landowner and above Madam Lyubov, who used to be a member of the upper-class (or aristocrat). This overturning, which seems to be the modern version of the classics’ ‘peripeteia’ (The Poetics 11), is the result of Lopakhin’s dedication to work, an attribute that is lacking in Madam Lyubov. The latter is simply nonchalant to work, having considered it something below her status and out of the range of the things she is meant to do, regarding her social class. Although she does not make any verbal admittance to this consideration, it is rather evidenced in her manner of carelessness with money, to the point that even in her lack and state of debt she still considers giving a virtue instead of working to raise money for the repayment of her own debts, unaware that she is gradually participating in the 'phenomenon of losing things' (Freud 13). We read:
PISHCHIK: (Follows her.) Yes, time for bed … Ach, this gout of mine … I’ll stay the night with you … Lyubov Andreevna, lovely lady, tomorrow morning, if only you would … two hundred and forty rubbles …
GAEV: He never gives up.
PISHCHIK: Two hundred and forty rubbles … to pay the interest on the mortgage.
LYUBOV ANDREEVNA: But I don’t have any money, really, my sweet, I don’t.
PISHCHIK: I’ll pay you back, charming lady … Such a small amount …
LYUBOV ANDREEVNA: Oh, all right, Leonid will give it to you … Give it to him, Leonid.
GAEV: I should give it to him? Don’t hold your pockets open.
LYUBOV ANDREEVNA: Give it to him, what else can we do … He needs it … He’ll pay back. (Act I)
In this same example is depicted also the irrationality of Simeonov-Pishchik whose nonchalant approach to work has led to nothing but extravagance. He borrows money to pay up his debt, an exercise that still leaves him a debtor of the same amount. In doing this, he is only struggling to maintain status quo; there is neither forward nor backward movement. He is just stagnant and therefore a step away from Lyubov Andreevna who does not even take seriously her knowledge of the fact that the cherry orchard, which has been a heritage of her linage and which now is in her custody, is about to be sold out as a means of recovering her debts. She is instead bent on holding on tenaciously to the past, hoping that by doing so the heritage will not be taken from her:
LOPAKHIN: I’d like to tell you some good news, if I may, some cheerful news, all right? (Looks at his watch.) I’ve got to go, there’s no time to talk … so, very briefly then. As you already know, your cherry orchard is being sold to pay off the debts, the auction date has been set for the twenty-second of August […]
[…]
LYUBOV ANDREEVNA: […] If there is one thing in the entire province that’s of interest, that’s remarkable, even, why it’s our own cherry orchard.
But something else is happening here. Thought and memory are at play, calling forth a 'moment of forgetting and [a] moment of restoring' (The Conflict 288). These two moments are rather moments of irony: that Lyubov Andreevna is moving towards the point of exchange where she is forced to 'restor[e]' her status by 'forgetting' the cherry orchard.
Lopakhin’s understanding of the pertinence of ‘time’ to ‘work’ gives him an edge over Madam Lyubov who gives her time to relaxation. Through her preference of relaxation over work, she fashions out a bait for the poverty that eventually crawls up to her. She realises the encroachment of this poverty, but at a very late hour of her existence. Upon this awareness, she laments:
O my sins, my sins … I’ve always thrown money around, uncontrollably, like a madwoman, and I married a man, and I married a man who did nothing but keep us in debt. (Act II)
And to work her way through, she tries to talk Lopakhin into marrying Varya her adopted daughter, owing to Lopakhin’s newly attained status as a wealthy fellow. But Lopakhin refuses to be distracted by either love or marriage. He has his mind still on his goal of taking over the possession of the cherry orchard.
Seen from the characters discussed above, it is obvious that ‘work’ is not only measured in monetary terms. Whatever one does—whether in deed or in word—is captured as a form of work. For example, it is only through their discussions that the works of such characters as Lopakhin, Lyubov Andreevna and Simeonov-Pishchik are ascertained; it has already been observed that it is only the servants that perform the work they are known for in the text. Firs is a servant who has aged in his duty as a servant. But irrespective of his age, he still attends to his work in a gay manner, just like Dunyasha. And Firs’s eternal service is also akin to Trofimov’s eternal scholarship. He, Trofimov, gaily admits this:
And I shall be an eternal student, so it seems. (Act I)
Their happiness is with particular regard to their individual work. Firs, Yasha and Dunyasha’s work is to be servants; Trofimov’s to be a student; Yepikhodov’s to be a clerk. And their understanding of their positions and what each position entails fills them with fulfilling joys and produces in them a sense of direction. Lopakhin also understands his journey from a peasant to an aristocrat. He keeps his head forward, never allowing anything to distract him. But Lyubov Andreevna, who fails to understand that her work is to preserve the cherry orchard and pass it on to the next generation in her linage, loses a sense of direction and thus pursues the life of luxury. Anya and Gaev do not do any vivid work. Their work is only what they can do with their tongue. They only talk. And Varya, by virtue of her status as an adopted child, becomes influenced by the lackadaisical attitude of the members of this family into which she has been adopted. So that in this way, it is simply obvious that the issue with the Ranevskayas is the pride of luxury which may be equated with the Pandora instinct.
Work, Eris and the ‘I’ Instinct
Aside the reading of the text as portraying the quest for authenticity, Ibsen’s A Doll’s House is also imbued with the thematic density of ‘work.’ But comparing the text’s concept of work with that of The Cherry Orchard, a contrast of pattern is arrived at in that while the latter’s focus is strictly on materiality, the former is concerned rather with the immaterial. The immaterial aspect of work here is defined by the characters’ pursuit of personality status: Helmer is as much concerned with the maintenance or retainment of his social stand as Nora is (though toward the end of the text) with the realisation of her human worth, the self.
Just as the practicality of work in The Cherry Orchard is limited to the servant-characters, so is A Doll’s House portrayed in no different way. It is only in the capacity of Ellen and Anna as servants that work is seen in the text as a practical endeavour. But work as a feature of character development is only a matter of discourse as regards other characters in the text. We learn, for instance, of Helmer’s banking occupation through the discussions among characters. In Nora’s conversation with Mrs Linden, we learn that ‘Torvald left the Government service’ (Act 1) upon the event of his marriage. This information is part of the awareness that enlivens the text on the premise of work. Rather than insinuating that Helmer is lax, what follows his leaving the government service unveils his attitude of dedication to work as also seen in Lopakhin of The Cherry Orchard. However, the difference between both characters is that while the latter’s ambition for work is connected with changing the status quo of his peasantry linage, the former’s is connected with the preservation of his self-worth. And this preservation of self-worth is connected with his ambition ‘to make more money’:
NORA: […] You know, of course, that Torvald left the Government service when we were married. He had little chance of promotion, and of course he required to make more money. But in the first year after our marriage, he overworked himself terribly. He had to undertake all sorts of extra work, and to slave early and late. He couldn’t stand it, and fell dangerously ill. Then the doctors declared he must go to the South.
It becomes assertive, then, that Helmer’s (Torvald’s) attitude to work is forged in tenacity. But this is at the surface level. Deep, beneath this level, is the realisation of the I-instinct. Helmer’s identification with work is superlative to his identification with Nora, his wife; he places his self-reputation first before Nora’s personality. This is observed through his actions and inactions at the moment of his recognition of Nora’s long-kept secret concerning the role she had played to save him from dying of the ‘dangerously ill’ state Nora mentions above. Nora had (though unknowingly) implicated her dying father by signing a document in his name three days after his demise in order to save Helmer’s life. But logically, Helmer is also implicated in the deed. When Helmer finds out what Nora had done, he gets anxious not about Nora’s feelings which might be punctured in the process but about his own reputation which is at stake. Conceptualising his frustration, he thus laments to Nora:
HELMER: You have destroyed my whole happiness. You have ruined my future. Oh, it’s frightful to think of! I am in the power of a scoundrel; he can do whatever he pleases with me, demand whatever he chooses; he can domineer over me as much as he likes, and I must submit. And all this disaster and ruin is brought upon me by an unprincipled woman! (Act 3)
Helmer has built thick walls around himself, which has structurally barricaded Nora from identifying with him as marriage partners. The presence of these thick walls has been preordained by his approach to his work which he envisions as the pillar of his self-worth. In one of the arguments that ensues between him and Nora, he makes it clear that his reputation must come first before anything else, Nora’s status as a wife included in the anything else:
HELMER: My little Nora, between your father and me there is all the difference in the world. Your father was not altogether unimpeachable. I am; and I hope to remain so.
NORA: Oh, no one knows what wicked men may hit upon. We could live so quietly and happily now, in our cosy, peaceful home, you and I and the children, Torvald! That’s why I beg and implore you-
HELMER: And it is just by pleading his cause that you make it impossible for me to keep him. It’s already known at the Bank that I intend to dismiss Krogstad. If it were now reported that the new manager let himself be turned round his wife’s little finger-
NORA: What then?
HELMER: Oh, nothing, so long as a wilful woman can have her way! I am to make myself a laughing-stock to the whole staff, and set people saying that I am open to all sorts of outside influence? Take my word for it, I should soon feel the consequences. (Act 2)
Helmer attaches more importance to public judgement than he does his wife’s view of him. This is because to him Nora is merely a doll in his hands and therefore not to be taken any more seriously than his work which he evaluates with public gaze. And Nora, on her own part, will soon dispense with her work of taking care of her husband and children in order to understand what actually is the work she is destined to do. But this does not crop up until she fully understands that her work in her home is neither embraced nor appreciated by Helmer who has been the motivation for her work but whose work-related words have '[driven her] to despair' (Freud 5). In this way, ‘work’ functions in the image of Eris to hasten the appearance of strife and discord between the two maritally-bonded partners so that what eventually emerges—when Nora has to distance herself at the end of the text to fully see the true nature of ‘work’—is both the expurgation of the self on the side of Helmer and the realisation of the self on the side of Nora. This awareness therefore results in the fostering and grounding of an eternal wall of separation.
The way work exhibits itself in Helmer’s home does not exclude the visiting characters to the Helmer’s. Krogstad is as much interested in his own self-worth as Helmer is. He is ready to do anything to get back on his feet. And he does not care what happens to Helmer’s home as long as his personal interest gets satisfied:
KROGSTAD: [Controlling himself.] Listen to me, Mrs Helmer. If need be, I shall fight as though for my life to keep my little place in the Bank. (Act 1)
Hence, work, for Krogstad, is nothing less to life. If he does not retain his position in the Bank, he concludes that he is as good as dead. In order, therefore, to stay out of the bounds of death and remain alive, he has to fight with any available weapon to retain his work position. Now, the wall arises again, still sprouting from the quest for the self, but here, in a different sense. Krogstad sees Helmer’s home as a wall trying to separate him from the self he has built for himself over time. And so he must fight this wall with any weapon necessarily available to pull it down. He must either pull it down or get the help of a ladder to rise beyond its barriers. This strife is a debris of his broken self which he is trying to amend. Thus, he closes off every channel of reasoning, and replies to Nora’s ‘What do you demand then?’:
I will tell you. I want to regain my footing in the world. I want to rise; and your husband shall help me do it. (Act 2)
His decisive tone is a dangerous one which forebodes danger for the Helmer’s.
Mrs Linden is another visiting character who is as indifferent to the status of Helmer’s home as Krogstad. But unlike Krogstad, she does not aim at fighting this home. Her only concern is to keep her hands busy, thereby keeping her mind off her past ordeal. This way, she differs from Lyubov Andreevna of The Cherry Orchard who holds her ugly past tenaciously at the expense of work and would not let it go. But also, like Krogstad, Mrs Linden sees work as a means of moving on even though she also differs from Krogstad who wishes to carry his children along in this struggle of moving on. Mrs Linden’s happiness now is this:
[…] The last three years have been one long struggle for me. But now it is over, Nora. My poor mother no longer needs me; she is at rest. And the boys are in business, and can look after themselves. (Act 1)
And so Mrs Linden can be happy now with any job, no matter how menial it is. To her, Helmer’s home is a refuge that will provide her shelter from worry. And this ‘shelter from worry’ is in terms of what she defines work to be:
NORA: How free your life must feel!
MRS LINDEN: No, Nora; only inexpressibly empty. No one to live for! [Stands up restlessly.] That is why I could not bear to stay any longer in that out-of-the-way corner. Here it must be easier to find something to take up- to occupy one’s thoughts. If I could only get some settled employment- some office work. (Act 1)
Herein is depicted Mrs Linden’s attitude to work, which is in some way connected to Krogstad’s, and yet not too far from Dr Rank’s.
Dr Rank is a stealthy hypocrite. From the beginning of the text, he is presented as noble, possessing the quality of a good friend. He visits Helmer not in the capacity of a medical doctor but as a long-time friend. But behind his visit lies the ‘I’ instinct that connects the other characters with the spirit of Eris in their thinking about work. Rank’s unworthiness comes out in the open when Nora wants to confide her secret to him. Nora has already made it obvious that she is in trouble. So, he takes hold of her plight as an avenue to penetrate the realm of her emotion:
NORA: And if I were to ask you for- ? No-
RANK: For what?
NORA: For a great proof of your friendship.
RANK: Yes- yes?
NORA: I mean- for a very, very great service-
[…]
RANK: Who would gladly give his life for you?
NORA: [Sadly.] Oh!
RANK: I have sworn it that you shall know it before I go. I shall never find a better opportunity. Yes, Nora, now I told you; and now you know that you can trust me as you can no one else.
[…]
NORA: [In the doorway.] Ellen, bring the lamp. [Crosses to the stove.] Oh dear, Doctor Rank, that was too bad of you.
RANK: [Rising.] That I have loved you as deeply as any one else? Was that too bad of me?
NORA: No, but that you should have told me so. It was so unnecessary-
[…]
RANK: Well, at any rate, you know now that I am at your service, body and soul. And now, go on. (Act 2)
This profession of love is what will of necessity interweave with Hemla’s show of less commitment to Nora’s feminine ego—both interpreted as betrayal—to bring about Nora’s expatriation from her home in order to fully grasp her own essence. The grasping of the essence of the self here is worked out through the presence of the spirit of Eris invited by the prevalent ‘I’ instinct so that the end is in the nature of what, in Aristotle, is grasped as ‘catharsis.’
Conclusion
‘Work’ is a unifying event, a mobile figure that works in different individuals but in a correlated manner to bring about the necessity that is preordained in nature to take pre-eminence over and around man. We have seen from both Chekhov’s The Cherry Orchard and Ibsen’s A Doll’s House the nature of ‘work’ in contrasting patterns. The eventuality of ‘work’ in both texts assumes a similar appearance—that is, expatriation. And whereas the mobility of ‘work’ as a figure in The Cherry Orchard results in the upward movement of the peasant, Lopakhin, and the downward movement of the aristocrat, Lyubov Andreevna; the ‘I’ instinct associated with work in A Doll’s House is an invitation to the spirit of Eris which results in the eventual breakage of Helmer’s home.
The mythic movement of ‘work’ in both texts is propelled by the ‘I’ instinct which operates in The Cherry Orchard in the form of a mobile figure, and in A Doll’s House in the likeness of Eris, the mythic goddess of discord.
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