Tocqueville and Ibsen

Tocqueville's Democracy in America and An Enemy of the People by Henrik Ibsen are extremely different works that rest on similar grounds. Democracy in America, an all-encompassing study of the American take on democracy originally published in 1835, is "at once the best book ever written on democracy and the best book ever written on America," as the first sentence of its introduction states (Mansfield xvii). Ibsen wrote An Enemy of the People in 1877 as part of a series of five plays that criticized the moral wrongdoings of society. This realistic play did have and still does have a heavy societal impact. The most important theme in An Enemy of the People and one of the most significant ideas developed in Democracy in America is individualism. Common topics between the two works that branch off from individualism include democracy's preference of equality over freedom and the inclination to search for material well being over the good of the society. Just as the baths in An Enemy of the People symbolically poison the people, Tocqueville advocates that individualism poisons a community.

As Americans, we use the term "individualism" with positive connotations, usually to describe a freethinker, a creative, imaginative, and inspired person. Tocqueville's definition is quite different: "Individualism is a reflective and peaceable sentiment that disposes each citizen to isolate himself from a mass of those like him and to withdraw... so that after having thus created a little society for his own use, he willingly abandons society at large to itself" (Tocqueville 482). Essentially, says Tocqueville, individualism is a state of intellectual and emotional isolation from the community that first results in a loss of camaraderie among the community in which the "devotion toward one man becomes rarer: the bond of human affections is extended and loosened," (483). This form of individualism ultimately causes each person to focus more on personal gain than the eventual good of the community.

Because the characters of Ibsen's An Enemy of the People live in a democracy, they can all be described as individualists. Even Mayor Stockman, who states that "the individual has to learn to subordinate himself to the whole - or, I should say, to those authorities charged with the common good," advocates a sort of artificial concern for the good of the community (Ibsen 127). Though Mayor Stockman, on the surface, promotes a community in which each member strives for the good of the society, this is a blatant front to cover for his own individualism. The Mayor, who has stock in the baths, has a very personal motive for not closing them, despite the eventual good it would do for the community. The townspeople, too, display traits of individualism. Though we see a town meeting in which the people come together superficially, each member of the community seems to be fighting first and foremost for some personal purpose; they are too isolated within themselves to even attempt to understand what is best for the community. The townspeople are more concerned with not losing money in the short-term than doing what will eventually benefit the society more. Furthermore, each townsperson seems so individually isolated from the community that they do not care about the brutal censorship of Thomas Stockman. Stockman has nothing to personally offer them and so they refuse to listen. At the same time, Thomas Stockman is also a proponent of individualism but in a slightly different way. Although he is connected enough to the community to understand what is best for it, he is isolated from the townspeople themselves, intellectually and emotionally, and thus, he does not know how to relate to them or communicate with them. At the end of An Enemy of the People, Stockman willingly separates himself from the society; his last line of the play is "the strongest man in the world is the one who stands the most alone," (Ibsen 222).

Another theme that Tocqueville focuses on is the fact that equality comes before freedom in a democracy. This idea is connected to individualism: each member is so isolated and concerned with himself or herself that everyone wants the same power. Tocqueville writes that although equality is immediately rewarding for the people, freedom is rewarding in the long term. According to Tocqueville, though, the people have the propensity to ignore this and for equality, the members of a democracy "have an ardent, insatiable, eternal, invincible passion; they want equality in freedom, and if they cannot get it, they still want it in slavery" (482). We see this in An Enemy of the People at the town forum. Everyone is so obsessed with the idea that people have an equal opportunity to present their views that Stockman is harshly censored. Thus, through the guise of equality, Stockman, the one true advocate for what is best for the society, has his freedoms denied.

In both Tocqueville's take on American democracy and the town in Ibsen's play, the people are consumed with a desire to find the short road to material well-being that is perhaps less beneficial in the long-term than the longer road that is more beneficial to the community in the end: "preoccupied with the sole care of making a fortune, they no longer perceive the tight bond that unites the particular fortune of each of them to the prosperity of all," (Tocqueville 515). According to Tocqueville, the logic that lies behind this is not only individualism, but also that "men change course continually for fear of missing the shortest road that would lead them to happiness" (Tocqueville 512). This truly is the fast-paced nature of the American democracy, and the community in An Enemy of the People possesses the same quality. Hovstad, Billing, and Asklaksen, the men who are in charge of the People's Courier, originally support Stockman until they realize that closing the baths, although beneficial for the town in the long-term, would cause a heavy increase in taxes and a decrease in revenue. These characters are representative of average members of a society, and as Hovstad himself states, "I'm no more self-seeking or power-hungry than most people." (Ibsen 143).

Though Ibsen and Tocqueville are based on similar grounds, their ultimate points differ slightly. While Ibsen attempts to show the extent to which an individual's beliefs are stifled by society and how an individual can be ostracized by the society he's trying to help, Tocqueville focuses on how individualism is the downfall of the community.

It is essential to understand that the baths in An Enemy of the People are poisoning its customers, just as Tocqueville states that individualism poisons the members of a democracy. Though Tocqueville describes the ways in which individualism is intrinsically stifled by other parts of a democracy, such as associations and the free press, the purpose of Ibsen's play is to expose the moral downfall of the democratic society through individualism. Thus, Ibsen presents a small community in which the only newspaper is corrupted by the very individualism it was born to combat. Realistically, Tocqueville would say, in a larger community, other newspapers would exist, as would associations that advocate different viewpoints of the conflict. Like much literature, An Enemy of the People is an exaggerated circumstance based on the tenants of reality in a democracy expressed by Tocqueville.

Works Cited

Democracy in America. Tocqueville, Alexis de. 1835. Translated, Edited, and with an
Introduction by Mansfield, Harvey C and Winthrop, Delba. University of Chicago Press, 2000.

Four Major Plays, Volume II. Ibsen, Henrik. Translated by Rolf Fjelde. Signet Classic,
1970.