An Enemy of the People could have been subtitled A medic against the majority. A damning indictment of bourgeois complacency, it was partly a response to criticism of Ibsen’s 1881 play Ghosts, which had scandalised contemporaries with its portrayal of a case of congenital syphilis in a well to do family. The furious reaction of both the conservative and liberal press to Ghosts was to Ibsen evidence of moral hypocrisy latent in late 19th century society. It provoked him into writing An Enemy of the People, which dramatises the unthinking reaction of the masses when confronted with uncomfortable medical truths.
Set in a town on the southern coast of Norway, the play opposes the courage of a local doctor with the spinelessness of those who surround him. Dr Tomas Stockmann is medical officer of the town’s recently opened baths and a prominent figure in the community. The baths were something of a family project, devised and overseen by Stockmann and his brother Peter, the town mayor and chief of police. As summer approaches, many visitors are expected, drawn to the town by the healing properties of the baths. But the prosperity this is set to bring is imperilled when Stockmann reveals to his brother and a local newspaper editor that he has carried out research showing the baths to be “a sink of disease . . . a tremendous health risk.” He explains how he has made “the most conscientious investigation possible,” fuelled by concerns over the high number of water borne conditions found in visitors to the baths, and has found the water to be contaminated by decomposing organic matter and vast quantities of bacteria.
Stockmann is initially encouraged to make this information public and prepares a report for the local press, confident that his conclusions will be accepted by the local townspeople. When, however, it becomes clear that the problem cannot be easily overcome without large public expenditure, Stockmann’s findings meet with widespread opposition. Increasingly disaffected, Stockmann launches a fierce attack on the systems and authorities that control decision making in the town: “the swamp where the whole of our public life lies rotting.” Shunned by the local newspaper and unwilling to change his stance in return for a peaceful outcome, he attempts to deliver his findings at a public meeting, which turns into a riot as the townspeople group together and refuse to hear him, denouncing him as “an enemy of the people.”
Ibsen’s antipathy to contemporary morality speaks through almost all of his plays. It found a particular target in the hypocrisy of the time towards uncomfortable medical truths. Ibsen himself seems to have felt something of Stockmann’s isolation, as is articulated at the end of play: “The strongest man in the world is the man who stands most alone.”
By Henrik Ibsen
First published 1882