Ibsen and Darwin: A Reading of The Wild Duck

The question of the possible influence of Darwin’s scientific ideas on Ibsen’s plays, on The Wild Duck in particular, has been addressed more than once in Ibsen scholarship, and yet the answers produced so far are hardly exhaustive. The subject deserves attention by anyone interested in Ibsen as a mediator of modernity, since the works of Darwin, and particularly his most famous book, On the Origin of Species (1859), although controversial at first, came to acquire a central position in the modernization of European intellectual life at roughly the same time as the Norwegian playwright became famous in Europe for his works.