THE ART OF TRANSFORMATION: ART, MARRIAGE, AND FREEDOM IN THE LADY FROM THE SEA

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".