Pillars of Society
Characters in Pillars of Society
Karsten Bernick, a consul
Mrs. Betty Bernick, his wife
Olaf, their son, aged 13
Miss Martha Bernick, the consul's sister
Johan Tönnesen, Mrs. Bernick's younger brother
Miss Lona Hessel, Mrs. Bernick's elder step-sister
Hilmar Tönnesen, Mrs. Bernick's cousin
Rörlund, a schoolteacher
Rummel, a businessman
Vigeland, a tradesman
Sandstad, a tradesman
Dina Dorf, a young girl living with the Bernicks
Krap, chief clerk
Aune, shipyard foreman
Mrs. Rummel
Mrs. Holt, the postmaster's wife
Mrs. Lynge, the doctor's wife
Miss Hilda Rummel
Miss Netta Holt
Townspeople and other residents, foreign sailors, ship's passengers, etc.
Source: The Oxford Ibsen, Volume V, Oxford University Press 1961
Summary of plot
Consul Karsten Bernick is a wealthy businessman and owner of a shipyard in a small Norwegian port. He has based his success on more or less unscrupulous business dealings, but is highly respected by his fellow citizens as a man of impeccable morals. He is married to Betty, and they have a son of thirteen, Olaf. In his youth Bernick had jilted his sweetheart Lona Hessel for the sake of her step-sister's greater inheritance. While engaged to Betty, fifteen years before the opening of the play, he had been discovered in a mistress's bedroom, an event which had dramatic consequences. In order to avoid the scandal, he let Betty's brother Johan, who was about to emigrate to the USA, take the blame. Bernick also started a rumour that Johan had stolen a sum of money. This rumour was to cover up the fact that Bernick's firm was insolvent. When the play opens, he and other leading citizens are planning to bring a railway to the town, and have secretly bought up land along the site of the railway. When Johan returns from the USA, along with his step-sister Lona, and threatens to reveal the secrets of the past, Bernick is in a difficult position, since his business plans are dependent on his reputation as an irreproachable pillar of society. Bernick allows a ship to be launched which he knows is not seaworthy, and only after the ship has sailed does he discover that his own son, who has run away from home, is onboard. Johan threatens revenge when he finds out how Bernick has misused his loyalty and made him a scapegoat in the town. He takes Dina Dorf, daughter of Bernick's former mistress, on Bernick's ship to America, where he will marry her, though he says he intends to come back. The consul believes that three of his own people will go down with the unseaworthy ship, but it turns out that the ship has not sailed after all. Under pressure and encouragement from the sweetheart of his youth, Lona Hessel, Bernick confesses his sins in a speech to all his fellow citizens, who have come to celebrate him as a pillar of society. He urges them all to judge his guilt freely and to start a new and better life without the hitherto hypocritical life-style of the small community.
Source: Merete Morken Andersen, Ibsenhåndboken, Gyldendal Norsk Forlag, 1995