**Joachim Schiedermair**

Department of Finnish and Scandinavian Studies, University of Greifswald, 17487 Greifswald, Germany; joachim.schiedermair@uni-greifswald.de

Received: 7 February 2019; Accepted: 28 May 2019; Published: 3 June 2019

**Abstract:** In sociology, modernisation is often identified with secularisation. How can secularisation in the texts of modernism around 1900 be analysed? Literary history books tell us that the modernist authors were lucid analysts of their time who portrayed the process of secularisation going on around them in their dramas, novels or short stories. The article tries out a di fferent approach: By conceptualizing secularisation as a cultural narrative, the perspective on the literary material changes fundamentally. The modernist authors were involved in shaping the idea of secularisation in the first place, in propagating it and in working on its implementation. They did not react to the process of secularisation with their texts. Instead, they were involved in the creation and shaping of the interpretative category 'secularisation'. The article exemplifies this change in approach using a pivotal text of Nordic literary modernism, Ibsen's *Rosmersholm*.

**Keywords:** modernisation; secularisation; Henrik Ibsen; Rosmersholm; Sigmund Freud

## **1. What Kind of Modernity?**

One of the generally accepted notions of the Scandinavian classification of period is that modernity was introduced to Danish, Norwegian, and Swedish literature when Georg Brandes gave his first lecture in his series on 19th century European literature at the University of Copenhagen in 1871: Brandes propagated a decidedly modern literature which drew its modernity from responding to the pushes for modernisation that fundamentally changed European societies in the second half of the 19th century; he registered how industrialisation and modern monetary economics were putting mental frameworks in motion, how social boundaries were opening up, how women were breaking out of traditional roles, how Christianity was losing its status. Therefore, he called for a literary awareness that covers these four important issues: the unjust distribution of property, the social stratification, the relationship between the sexes, and the social role of religion.

The conception of modernity that nowadays informs this perception of Brandes (and the literature of the Modern Breakthrough) is based on a model of modernisation that originates from sociology (Van der Loo and van Reijen 1997): A modern society is characterised by freedom and individualism, by the participation of broad sections of society in the political decision-making process, by rationality and the facilitation of life due to the mechanisation of all areas of life. Yet, even the founding fathers of sociology, namely Émile Durkheim, Ferdinand Tönnies, Georg Simmel, and Max Weber, are aware of the paradox consequences and the strangely ambivalent state of mind this positively connoted process generates: Thus, the increasing domination of nature, for instance, opens up previously unimagined liberties, but the downside of power gained is the responsibility for the consequences which overwhelm modern man. The domination of nature by man also means the domination of man by man. By this, man himself becomes an object of science; he realises that what he previously considered to be his very own inner being, his immutable identity—in short: his soul—is of a contingent nature that can be easily manipulated. Thus, he becomes responsible for himself, for his actions, his attitudes in a manner previously unknown. But, he has lost the authority (his identity or soul) that could take on this responsibility. In this sociological sense, modernity means the dilemma of the empowerment of man with his simultaneous incapacitation. Thus, in 1897 Durkheim coined the term 'anomic suicide' (Durkheim [1897] 2006). He uses the term to describe a new, contemporary form of suicide that he sees as characteristically modern: free, flexible, and negotiable systems, such as modern societies are, complicate the emotional integration of their citizens; this lack of integration sometimes results in a final withdrawal from this system.

Recent research in literary history rereads Brandes' ideas of a modern literature in the light of this ambivalent modernity. It is claimed that Brandes had recognised this modernity in its core and thus became the trendsetter and mouthpiece of a young generation of authors in Scandinavia who saw themselves as radical, and whose most important representatives, such as August Strindberg, Victoria Benedictsson, Jens Peter Jacobsen, and Henrik Ibsen, had portrayed modernity in its ambivalence from the outset (e.g., Heitmann 2006, pp. 183–90). In the last 20 years, research has resumed Brandes' four topics and identified them as focal points of the modernisation process with all its complexity and ambivalence. In the context of Scandinavian studies, this is particularly evident in the research on Henrik Ibsen: Gender, property, and social stratification issues were re-evaluated under the new paradigm (e.g., Templeton 1997; Detering 1998; Rønning 2006; Moi 2006; Evans 2008; Heitmann 2012).

Therefore, the only aspect of Brandes' catalogue of topics that still awaits classification in the sociological paradigm of modernisation is the way in which contemporary literature dealt with the role of religion. It is surprising that it is this topic that has been left unanalysed. The decline of religion is fundamentally connected to modernisation in sociological theories: Many theorists regard the detachment from a divine supernatural father and his supertemporal order as the trigger for the processes that facilitated the development of personal responsibility, freedom, subjectivity, and rationalism. Secularisation is thus *the*interface between the sociological paradigm of modernisation and the catalogue of topics that Brandes designed for young writers around 1870. One must therefore concede that the most important epistemic topic regarding modernity around 1900 has been neglected so far by literary studies.

The literary texts of the epoch are not to blame. Again, Ibsen can serve as the most prominent example. Religion plays a crucial role in many of his dramas: In *Keiser og Galilæer* (*Emperor and Galilean*; 1873), which, throughout his life, Ibsen himself considered to be his most important drama, he explicitly negotiates Christianity and its apostasy from a historical-philosophical perspective; and his dramatic œuvre ends in *Når vi døde vågner* (*When We Dead Awaken*; 1899) with the image of a deaconess making the sign of the cross; this sign concludes a story about a sculptor who had become famous for his sculpture 'The Day of Resurrection' ('Oppstandelsens dag'). In addition, numerous representatives of religion can be found in Ibsen's character inventory, in *Catilina* (*Catiline*; 1850), *Kjærlighedens Komedie* (*Love's Comedy*; 1862), *Kongs-emnerne* (*The Pretenders*; 1864), *Brand* (*Brand*; 1866),<sup>1</sup> *Gengangere* (*Ghosts*; 1881), *Vildanden* (*The Wild Duck*; 1884) or *Rosmersholm* (*Rosmersholm*; 1886). What is true for research on Ibsen holds equally true for research on Scandinavian literature in general: So far, secularisation has been neglected when it comes to describing literary modernity around 1900.

In the following, I intend to ask how this research desideratum can be approached: How can secularisation in the texts of modernism around 1900 be analysed? Firstly, I will have to approach this question conceptually: What do we mean when we talk about secularisation? For this, I will continue with the sociological model I have just presented, but I will contradict it in one important respect. My main hypothesis is that the mentioned authors were not lucid analysts of their time who portrayed the process of secularisation going on around them in their dramas, novels, or short stories; instead, they invested their own texts in the debate about how the relationship between religion and modernity should be thought of in the first place. Therefore, I will treat secularisation neither as a historical

<sup>1</sup> The theological aspects of *Brand* are addressed in the following: Cappelørn 2010; Gervin 2010; Tjønneland 2010.

fact nor as a sociological concept but rather as a narrative scheme. In this narratological approach, literature plays an important role not only in propagating but also in shaping what sociology later termed 'secularisation'. Treating secularisation as a narrative is such a fundamentally novel approach that this article cannot provide more than a rough outline of a wide-ranging research project. This also holds true for the second part of this paper. There, I will exemplify the change in approach using a pivotal text of Nordic literary modernism, Ibsen's *Rosmersholm*. My analysis has a purely illustrative character and focuses exclusively on the way secularisation is narrated in the drama.

## **2. Secularisation in Crisis**

In general, the term 'secularisation' denotes the shift from a sacrally legitimised society to a secularly legitimised society. The conceptual cornerstones of the term already began to emerge during the Prussian *Kulturkampf* in the middle of the 19th century (Borutta 2010) and were then discussed after 1900 within sociology as a process of modernisation. Thus, 'secular' was synonymous with 'modern'. Referring to Max Weber's well-known metaphor: the process of modernisation was the 'disenchantment of the world'. Therefore, secularisation is defined as a process in which religion might still survive for a while, as a pre-modern relict within modernity, but will eventually disappear for good.

This concept had an almost unassailable plausibility for the self-perception of European societies. However, since the 2000s, the calls have increased for critical analyses of this idea of secularisation. This is based on solid arguments. Ever since the attacks of 9/11, the self-evidence of the secularisation theory has been disrupted in the public perception. The conviction that Europe and the world are on their way to a privatisation of religion has turned into an outdated utopia. As a direct reaction to the attacks in New York, Jürgen Habermas, for instance, coined the term of 'post-secular society' (Habermas 2001; Joas 2006). Furthermore, the attacks in Paris, London, Madrid, Copenhagen, Stockholm, Brussels, Berlin, etc. probably do not permit a return to former certainty either. Today, the idea of religion's decline is therefore mere opium for the people. The fear of society's Islamification, materialised in Anders Breivik's attacks in Oslo, or in the German Pegida-movement, shows the crisis of the secularisation theory at the heart of Western societies.

In academic debates, one can discern two tendencies of critique towards the secularisation theorem: On the one hand, it is said that the phase of secularisation has come to an end and that, dialectically, the 'return of the religious' (Riesebrodt 2000) or a 'desecularisation' (Berger 1999) can be registered (Graf 2004, 2014; Pollack 2003, 2009). On the other hand, it is argued that the idea of secularisation is confirmed in principle, but that it must be specified in its premises and di fferentiated locally and historically. Thus, functional di fferentiation in the modernisation process, for instance, is criticised because of its supposed or actual teleological or at least unilinear character (Joas 2012; Krech 2012; Pollack 2012). Secondly, postcolonial studies and the awareness they inspired ensured that secularisation is no longer discussed as an undisputable global process (Casanova 1994; Cady and Hurd 2010). And thirdly, historical di fferentiation is long overdue: Obviously, the theory of a unilinear secularisation process does not even hold true for Europe when looking at the historical sources (Gabriel et al. 2012; Osterhammel 2009).

## **3. Secularisation as Narrative Structure**

Faced with the concept of secularisation in crisis, literary studies open up a fundamentally new perspective by defining secularisation not as a historical process, but as a narrative structure. In recent years, Albrecht Koschorke has worked intensively on surveying and developing narratological approaches, which define man's perception of the world as being essentially structured by narrative—meaning approaches, which assume our understanding of the world as being mainly processed by narration (Koschorke 2012). In this context, Koschorke has proposed the consideration of 'secularisation' and the idea of 'religion's return' as two narrative structures of European Modernity (Koschorke 2013). He defines the term narrative structure as an abstract model, which can be regenerated in countless individual stories. Accordingly, a narrative structure can be understood as

an interpretive framework, which can incorporate individual as well as collective experience, and which conveys narrative significance to those experiences—i.e., turning them into a convincing story that can be shared. By repeating and thus concretising the abstract pattern of the narrative structure, the individual concrete stories rea ffirm the plausibility of the structure. In return, on a superior abstract level, the strengthened plausibility inspires the production of new specific individual stories. In this light, 'secularisation' appears to be one of those narrative models that consistently helped to generate and then stabilise the self-conception of Modern Europe. The fact that the plausibility of this secular self-interpretation has been weakened in the last 20 years makes secularisation recognisable as a narrative structure in the first place.

Therefore, the purpose of any narratological analysis must not be to criticise the content of the secularisation theorem in one point or another, or to correct it historically. Instead, it is above all a matter of understanding secularisation as a narrative structure and, furthermore, a matter of describing its components and variations as well as assessing which of its qualities is responsible for its success and durability. Koschorke identifies two main aspects. Firstly, secularisation as a narrative structure has proven to be successful—meaning powerful—because it manages to incorporate opposing dispositions: Secularisation can substantiate both progressive optimism and cultural pessimism. It can be celebrated for the gained freedom and individualism, for the domination of the world through its rational penetration, for the implementation of democratic equality *as well as* condemned for the metaphysical disorientation, the materialistic desolation, and for the weakening of social bonding forces that it can cause. This means that the narrative structure called secularisation was able to convince on a broad scale precisely *because* it serves seemingly opposing positions of world interpretation and thus allows dissent within mutual borders; it o ffers both its opponents and its proponents a plausible interpretation on common ground.

The second characteristic of a prolific narrative structure that was analysed by Koschorke is its ability to even incorporate facts that obviously defy the general plot (that is, the narrative about religion's decline). For example, the massive influx of people to Christian revival movements in the 19th century must not be recorded as a counter-argument, but can be seen as a reaction to the loss of transcendence and can thus even be redefined as a confirmation of religion's loss of relevance on a broader social level: Piety movements as social niches in which metaphysical deficits are compensated. The plot-pattern of the narrative structure thus includes potential alternatives that more or less ensure the general structure's immunity to challenges by empiricism.

Koschorke's first outline of a narratological approach to the phenomenon of secularisation provides a useful starting point. However, he is interested in a basic reconstruction of the narrative structure, and not in its links to literary narration; his analysis remains general and is not substantiated by the reconstruction of concrete narratives. This may be surprising because any narrative structure undoubtedly finds its own form only over the course of an evolution that takes place in specific individual narrations. The narrative structure only gradually finds its form; it develops within the medium of countless individual narrations (in fiction, on stage, in film, in everyday stories, in historiography, in journalistic texts, in political speeches ... ). Within those specific narrations, concepts, alternatives, and rejections are put to the test until one or more versions of the narrative structure are canonised in the collective consciousness. Thus, my argumentation is based on the assumption that both the academic conceptualisation within sociology *and* the fiction's testing of 'secularisation' as a narrative structure take place on the same structural level during the founding period around 1900. Both sides contribute to the configuration of the narrative structure by supporting it or by opposing it; however, not in the dependence of literature on conceptual discussion, but in the entanglement of both types of discourse. Thus, literary narrations of secularisation are not simply subsequent traces of a historical process or literary implementations of an already established theorem of secularisation. Instead, they are key players that participate in the shaping of the semantics of 'secularisation'. Accordingly, the study of the relationship between secularisation and literature should focus on the following questions:


## **4.** *Rosmersholm***'s Schizophrenic Secularism**

Henrik Ibsen's drama *Rosmersholm* from 1886 provides its audience with a grea<sup>t</sup> deal: a fierce power struggle between tactical politicians, a love triangle in which two women compete for a man, rejected sexual desire, incest, insanity, murder, visions of ghostly horses, the decline of an ancient family and, finally, a double suicide in front of the breathtaking scenery of a Norwegian waterfall. *Nordic noir avant la lettre*. The plot's main trigger is based around the atheist coming-out of a former parish priest: Johannes Rosmer, the last descendant of a venerable family which has produced o fficers, clergymen, and senior civil servants for centuries and which has essentially determined the fate of the region. This clergyman retires from the parish o ffice and turns into a freethinker by reading works from liberal authors. Therefore, it seems only natural to interpret this story about the loss of faith as a secularisation drama.

Yet, although the focus of the story is on a renegade priest, research has ye<sup>t</sup> to show any significant interest in its analytical potential with regard to secularisation.<sup>2</sup> This is also true for the most prominent reader of *Rosmersholm*. In his essay *Einige Charaktertypen aus der psychoanalytischen Arbeit* (*Some Character-Types Met with in Psycho-Analytic Work*) from 1916, Sigmund Freud detects a prefiguration of the Oedipus complex in the drama's second protagonist, Rebekka West. Surprisingly enough, Freud is not interested in an analysis of religion, which is inherent in Johannes Rosmer's apostate story, although he himself had already recognised the Oedipus complex to be the origin of all religions in *Totem und Tabu* (*Totem and Taboo*), three years before writing his essay on *Rosmersholm*. Thus, if at least the logic behind Rebekka West's behaviour is motivated by the Oedipus complex, it is obvious that the liberation from religion experienced by Johannes Rosmer might also be potentially expressed in the terminology of the Oedipal taboo of murder and incest.

Therefore, I will first—very briefly—reconstruct the sociological variant of secularisation in Ibsen's drama, which I have outlined above, and then continue Freud's analysis of *Rosmersholm*. I hope this will show that there is a second, an anthropological version of the secularisation narrative in the play, and that this second version counters the first, i.e., the sociological one. This allows Ibsen to negotiate two di fferent versions of the narrative structure 'secularisation'.

## *4.1. A Sociological Narrative of Secularisation*

*Rosmersholm* develops its plot in two main lines that coincide at one particular point in the story. The first of these plot lines is characterised by making clear references to the contemporary political situation in Norway. The drama was published in 1886, two years after parliamentarism was introduced to Norway (Tuchtenhagen 2009, pp. 108–9). Henceforth, the country was headed by a governmen<sup>t</sup> that consisted of elected politicians from the strongest party in parliament instead of by a collective of civil servants who were appointed by the king. This new political system of party competition also included the respective media that was able to form public opinion. Thus, Ibsen's drama begins with a visit from headmaster Kroll, a conservative politician, who intends to propose his friend Rosmer as an editor and writer for a newly established conservative local newspaper; as the descendant of an old and influential family, Rosmer could benefit the conservative party. The new paper is mainly supposed to represent an ideological counterbalance to the liberal newspaper '*Blinkfyret*' (Beacon).

<sup>2</sup> Analytical approaches can be found for instance in (Durbach 1977).

Even the editor of this very paper, Peder Mortensgård, appears at Rosmersholm shortly after Kroll's visit and tries to sway the head of the household.

This one aspect—parliamentarianism and the emergence of the free press as a means of political opinion making in a liberal democracy—will su ffice in order to illustrate that Ibsen outlines a social context for his plot that complies with the same logics as the context which sociologists refer to as the 'process of modernisation' 30 years later—and which suggests that European societies had developed from being traditionally stratified to modern and functionally structured social systems (Rønning 2006, pp. 209–28). Rosmer's estrangement from God and his new conviction that people should and must shape their lives by their own e fforts correspond with this social development. As Rosmer puts it: 'There is no other' power to help (Ibsen [1886] 1960, p. 244)—meaning no divine power to rely on. Accordingly, Rosmer's personal story of secularisation is embedded in the collective narrative of secularisation I outlined in chapter 1.

The second main plot line focuses on the relationship between Rosmer and his wife, Beate, and on his relationship with his wife's companion, Rebekka West. Rebekka had joined the household of the priest Johannes Rosmer long before the curtain rises—initially, in order to care for his sick wife, Beate. Rebekka had been raised as a freethinker by her adoptive father, Dr. West, but conceals this fact. Coming to Rosmersholm, she finds that Rosmer is receptive to liberal ideas. She provides him with relevant literature and paves the way for him to atheism. Rosmer believes they are kindred spirits in a platonic friendship. However, soon Rebekka would like to take the place of the lady of the house in every respect. To achieve this, she cunningly leads the childless Beate to suicide by placing one of the liberal texts read by Rosmer into Beate's hands. The text argues that marriage is only justified if descendants have been conceived. By hinting at the same time that she is pregnan<sup>t</sup> by Rosmer, Rebekka leads Beate to believe that she, Beate, has to quit the field in order to guarantee her husband's future happiness. When the curtain rises on the first act, Beate has been dead for one year. Rebekka still lives at Rosmersholm.

This stable constellation collapses when the two plot lines cross each other: Rosmer feels compelled by the political conflict between headmaster Kroll and the editor Mortensgård to admit his newly won atheism. Kroll suspects Rebekka's scheme, forcing Rebekka to confess. With the help of this confession, Kroll manages to prevent Rosmer's involvement with the liberals. Thus, the political conflict culminates in Rosmer, a sincere person interested in freedom and liberality, being checkmated by the power-seeker Kroll. The fact that Rosmer and Rebekka commit joint suicide at the end of the last act by throwing themselves down the same waterfall Beate died in is an expression of their moral breakdown according to this interpretation: Deprived of their mission in life, which was to convert other humans to be freethinkers, they choose death, brokenhearted and hopeless.

In fact, this interpretation also fits in with a particular tradition within the reception of Ibsen's work. Dr. Stockmann, for instance, the protagonist in Ibsen's *En folkefiende* (*An Enemy of the People*) from 1882, finds himself in a similar situation (e.g., Rønning 2006, p. 212): He too, is betrayed by political friends, yet, at the end of the drama, he decides to fight against all odds. Ibsen repeats this set-up in *Rosmersholm*, but in a slightly di fferent experimental arrangement, namely by using a weak character who lacks the will to resist. One reason why Stockmann persists and Rosmer perishes can be found easily within the argumentation developed so far. As a medical doctor, Stockmann is a scientist and therefore a representative of secular modernity, whereas Rosmer is a former clergyman and thus a representative of the religiously legitimised pre-modern era. His failure can be ascribed to his primal and therefore still influential bonds to Christianity.<sup>3</sup> He cannot ge<sup>t</sup> over his indirect responsibility for the death of his wife and does not dare enter an emotionally and sexually satisfying relationship with Rebekka—although such a relationship would be justified, even in the eyes of all other characters.

<sup>3</sup> Cf. for instance: "Indem Ibsen Rosmer zum *Pastor* macht [ ... ], erklärt er die christliche Askese, wie Nietzsche, zum Ressentiment aus Impotenz bzw. Ohnmacht, und verbindet sie mit Gesetzesfetischismus und Überich-Hypertrophie." (Hiebel 1990, p. 137).

Thus, the death of such a weak protagonist as Rosmer is to be understood as collateral damage in the process of secular modernity. This very short sketch must suffice to illustrate what I would like to call the sociologically motivated narration of secularisation embedded in *Rosmersholm*.
