stylistic:tone
Myths and reassessment

Ibsen scholar Ellen Rees notes that historical and biographical research into Ibsen’s life in the 21st century has been marked by a "revolution" that has debunked numerous myths previously taken for granted. Older Ibsen historiography has often claimed that Knud Ibsen experienced financial ruin and became an alcoholic tyrant, that the family lost contact with the elite it had belonged to, and that this had a strong influence on Henrik Ibsen's biography and work. Newer Ibsen scholarship—in particular Jon Nygaard 's book on Ibsen's wider social milieu and ancestry and Jørgen Haave 's book The Ibsen Family (Familien Ibsen)—has refuted such claims, and Haave has pointed out that older biographical works have uncritically repeated numerous unfounded myths about both of Ibsen's parents, and about the playwright's childhood and background in general.

Haave points out that Knud Ibsen's economic problems in the 1830s were mainly the result of the difficult times and something the Ibsen family had in common with most members of the bourgeoisie; Haave further argues that Henrik Ibsen had a happy and comfortable childhood as a member of the upper class, even after the family moved to Venstøp, and that they were able to maintain their lifestyle and patrician identity with the help of their extended family and accumulated cultural capital. Contrary to the incorrect claims that Ibsen had been born in a small or remote town, Haave points out that Skien had been Eastern Norway's leading commercial city for centuries, and a centre of seafaring, timber exports, and early industrialization that had made Norway the developed and prosperous part of Denmark–Norway.

Rees characterizes Ibsen's family as upper class rather than middle class, and part of "the closest thing Norway had to an aristocracy, albeit one that lost most of its power during his lifetime." Ibsen scholar Jon Nygaard stated that Ibsen has an "exceptional upper-class background" and is a result of Norway being a wealthy country for a very long time. Haave points out that virtually all of Ibsen's ancestors had been wealthy burghers and higher government officials, and members of the local and regional elites in the areas they lived, often of continental European ancestry. He argues that "the Ibsen family belonged to an elite that distanced itself strongly from the common farmer population, and considered itself part of an educated European culture" and that "it was this patrician class that formed his cultural identity and upbringing." Haave points to many examples of both Henrik Ibsen and other members of his family having a condescending attitude towards common Norwegian farmers, viewing them as "some sort of primitive indigenous population," and being very conscious of their own identity as members of the sophisticated upper class. Haave points out that Ibsen's most immediate family—Knud, Marichen and Henrik's siblings—disintegrated financially and socially in the 1850s, but that it happened after Henrik had left home, at a time when he was establishing himself as a successful man of theatre, while his extended family, such as his uncles Henrik Johan Paus, Christian Cornelius Paus and Christopher Blom Paus, were firmly established in Skien's elite as lawyers, government officials and wealthy shipowners. Haave argues that the story of the Ibsen family is the story of the slow collapse of a patrician merchant family amid the emergence of a new democratic society in the 19th century, and that Henrik Ibsen, like others of his class, had to find new opportunities to maintain his social position. Nygaard summarized the revolution in the understanding of Ibsen's childhood and background as all the popular notions about Ibsen being wrong.