Little Eyolf
Characters in Little Eyolf
Alfred Allmers, land owner, man of letters, occasional teacher
Mrs. Rita Allmers, his wife
Eyolf, their son, aged 9
Miss Asta Allmers, Alfred's younger half-sister
Borghejm, an engineer
The rat wife
Source: The Oxford Ibsen, Volume VIII, Oxford University Press 1977
Summary of plot
The play takes place in the course of a day and a half at the home of Rita and Alfred Allmers, near the fjord and some distance from the nearest town. They have a partly paralyzed son of nine, Eyolf. The boy's handicap is the result of a fall in babyhood, when he fell off a table after being left unattended while his parents were totally absorbed in making love. After this accident Alfred Allmers seems to have withdrawn from Rita both sexually and emotionally, and buried himself in his work on "human responsibility", which he considers his vocation and the great work of his life. Rita feels rejected by her husband, and this results in outbursts of violent jealousy of both her son and Alfred's stepsister Asta, to whom he is strongly attached. The plot develops after Alfred's return from the mountains, where he has decided to give up his work on the treatise, and devote himself entirely to Eyolf's happiness and progress. An old woman, known as "the Rat-woman", arrives at the house and asks whether there is anything "gnawing" there. She offers to lure the rats with her to the fjord so that they drown, but no-one in the house thinks there is anything gnawing there and needing to be disposed of. But little Eyolf is fascinated by the sinister Rat-woman and follows her down to the water, where he drowns. The boy's death triggers off crises among those who are left behind. We realize that Alfred is in love with Asta, who in turn has discovered from some old letters left by her mother that Alfred and she are not related at all. She leaves with Borgheim, an engineer who wants to marry her.
After heart-searchings, Rita and Alfred decide to stay together in spite of everything, and to start a new life devoted to caring for the poor children of the district. A social conscience will emerge from their feelings of guilt, their sorrow and the void left by the loss of Eyolf.
Source: Merete Morken Andersen, Ibsenhåndboken, Gyldendal Norsk Forlag, 1995