Ella Rentheim Monologue from John Gabriel Borkman

From John Gabriel Borkman by Henrik Ibsen

female · anguished · 1:21 min

Erhart--your son, Borkman. (BORKMAN: Has he really been so close to your heart?) Why else should I have taken him to me, and kept him as long as ever I could? Why? (BORKMAN: I thought it was out of pity, like all the rest that you did.) (In strong inward emotion.) Pity! Ha, ha! I have never known pity, since you deserted me. I was incapable of feeling it. If a poor starved child came into my kitchen, shivering, and crying, and begging for a morsel of food, I let the servants look to it. I never felt any desire to take the child to myself, to warm it at my own hearth, to have the pleasure of seeing it eat and be satisfied. And yet I was not like that when I was young; that I remember clearly! It is you that have created an empty, barren desert within me--and without me too!

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