The Lady from the Sea |
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| Name of Work | The Lady from the Sea | ||||||||
| Production Date | 1888 | ||||||||
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| General Notes | The impact of some plays fairly leaps from the pages, even without being able to see the play staged. Reading “The Lady from the Sea”, I did not feel that impact. Seeing it performed made a huge difference. The following is a good performance available on You Tube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7CkcB9FS52U | ||||||||
Description
A woman has married for reasons that reflect her fears, not her positive values. In doing so, she succumbed to what she saw as duties, or values imposed on her from outside, or values that were the result of her defaulting on her own responsibility to choose. As a result, her life has become meaningless. The circumstances that occur within the play bring her to face her fears and those impositions.
Theme
Theme: all of life’s values come from – and can only come from – one’s free choice. Free – of any outside coercion, or any outside attempt to make the choices for you, and free of any self-imposed motives not grounded in your own complete freedom to choose. Without that total freedom to choose, life is empty.
Emotional Sum or Sense-of-life
the glow of happiness that follows from realizing that your life is your own to create, and that only you can do that; and the realization of how much you have to gain or lose from taking that self-responsibility.
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