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Like Moi I was raised at approximately the same time on the west coast, not
of Norway but of Denmark. In my case it was not Beauvoir but Henrik Ibsen
that enlarged my world. Being a man Ibsen could not be a concrete ideal to me
like Beauvoir could be to Moi. While Beauvoir with style, elegance and intellectual
conviction demonstrated to Moi that it was possible, even better, to
be a woman without having children, Ibsen’s plays made me able to recognise
patterns and interactions in my family leading me to the conclusion that
I should never be or become dependent like my mother. 9 To me it meant first
and foremost to get an education, to earn money of my own; with that in
place it would be no problem to live together as free subjects that, with their
individual freedom, can forge laws valid for all, as Beauvoir wrote in An Ethics
of Ambiguity: “An ethics of ambiguity will be one which will refuse to deny a
priori that separate existences can, at the same time, be bound to each other,
that their individual freedom can forge laws valid for all.” 10
A priori it should be possible; a posteriori it was not that easy. In her
letters to Nelson Ahlgren, Beauvoir explains that she cannot marry him and
move to United States. The reason was partly the pact with Sartre and partly
that in the United States most women were housewives. It became a heartbreaking
choice of intellectual partnership over love. The time had not come. The
question is whether the time will ever come. Women from all over the world
share the vision of Beauvoir that equal worth, interdependency, recognition
and freedom are, or should be, keystones in life, in relations of love and in
society. Most often they experience, like Nora, the main character in A Doll’s
House by Henrik Ibsen, that this, “the most wonderful”, did not happen.
A Doll’s House. A short abstract.
It begins in December, Christmas is approaching. Nora is coming home with a
Christmas tree and a lot of packages that have to be hidden away. While she is
eating macrons, she tiptoes to Helmer’s door, and he asks whether it is his little
bird that is singing outside his door. Look what I have bought, Nora replies,
and Helmer, who does not want to be disturbed, comments her shopping with:
“That much. Has my little birdie again wasted a lot of money?” Nora says that
Helmer’s new position allows for more generosity, to which he replies that it
will have to wait until his first wage arrives in three months’ time.
9
Ibid.
10
Simone de Beauvoir, An Ethics of Ambiguity (New York: Carol, 1976 [1948]),18.
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