Ibsen’s Evangelical Detective: Evidence and Proof in The Wild Duck

Abstract

ABSTRACT: The forensic language in The Wild Duck—its emphasis on the search for “proof” and “evidence” in uncovering a number of putative crimes and misdemeanours—relates the play to the Detective Fiction genre of the late nineteenth-century. The argument of the paper suggests that Ibsen calls in question the basic premises of the genre (the need, for example, to uncover truth and trace evil to its source thereby restoring a chaotic world to a form of Edenic order) and subverts the most fundamental expectations of the crime fiction reader. Gregers Werle acts on the assumption that the investigator can redeem a fallen humanity by uncovering incontrovertible fact and revealing undisclosed motives; but his deeply subjective, evangelical methods disorient the world even further, leaving the audience with the sense that the uncertainties of existence make such “detection” both irrelevant and dangerous.