The Master Builder
Characters in The Master Builder
Halvard Solness, master builder
Mrs. Aline Solness, his wife
Dr. Herdal, the family doctor
Knut Brovik, sometime architect, now working for Solness
Ragnar Brovik, his son, draughtsman
Kaja Fosli, his niece, a book-keeper
Hilde Wangel
Other women
People in the street
Source: The Oxford Ibsen, Volume VII, Oxford University Press 1966
Summary of plot
Halvard Solness is a master builder and self-taught architect who is married to Aline, a woman above his station. Through an ambitious career he has built himself up to be a man of power in his home town, and it is hinted that he founded his success on an incident in which his wife's childhood home burned down to the ground. Aline has never got over the loss of her childhood home and the death of her newborn twins soon after. Latterly she has also been worried about her husband's mental health, as she confides to their family doctor and friend, Dr. Herdal. Solness has three employees: Ragnar Brovik, his father Knut Brovik who as a younger man trained Solness in his work and is now an ailing, bitter old man, and Kaja Fosli, who is engaged to Ragnar but deeply and unhappily in love with Solness. When Solness finds out that Ragnar wants to set up in business on his own, he is unwilling to help Ragnar, whom he tries to get Kaja to marry, in order to keep them both in his own employment. Solness has an unexpected visit by a young woman, Hilde Wangel, whom he met ten years earlier at a ceremony to celebrate the completion of the roofing of a church tower he had built in her home town. She tells him that on that occasion he had kissed her and promised to return in ten years' time to offer her a "kingdom", which she has now come to claim.
Solness has just built a new house, with a high tower, for Aline and himself, and Hilde dares him to climb to the top of the tower, carrying the celebratory wreath, as he had done before, although he is obviously afraid of heights. As he reaches the top she waves a white shawl and calls out in triumph, but the master builder falls to his death.
Source: Merete Morken Andersen, Ibsenhåndboken, Gyldendal Norsk Forlag, 1995