Parallels in A Doll's House
William L. Urban
Scholars have adequately documented what Henrik Ibsen intended A Doll's
House to be when he first sat down to write: a study of the two different
moral laws that the sexes are by nature required to follow, and the moral
conflict that follows when women are judged by masculine standards
(Meyer 1971:446). They also have established that in the course of the
writing he abandoned the concept that the play was about gender roles. It
was, instead, "the need of every individual to find out the kind of person he
or she really is and to strive to become that person" (Meyer 1971:446 and
Koht 1971:312-313).
This interpretation of the play was slow in being accepted. The gender
stereotypes that determined the role of women in the family and society as a
whole were changing already, and the awareness of that caused Ibsen's
contemporaries to see the gender motif as more basic than the search for
individual fulfillment. In short, for them the play was Nora and her
discovery that her gender role was an obstacle to her personal fulfillment.
As it happened, changes in gender roles were already occuring so swiftly
that not even Ibsen was ready for them. There was a famous incident in
Rome when a runaway wife justified her abandoning husband and children
for another man by saying that she had already done what Nora did. Ibsen
retorted, "But my Nora went alone."1 In short, though Ibsen viewed himself
as a revolutionary individualist, critics have been reluctant to look at his
play as a statement about human condition. They would rather see a social
criticism symbolized by the slamming of the door in the final act.
What Ibsen himself thought of the play may be irrelevant. He was a difficult
person to deal with, a man who loved to shock, to confound, and to get his
own way; he was controversial and contradictory; and he was as eager to
dominate his family and friends as Torvald Helmer ever ruled Nora--only
Ibsen could not always get away with it. In short, he was as likely to give an
interpretation that puzzled or shocked his listeners as he was to tell the truth;
and since he changed his ideas in the process of creation, what he said later
may not reflect his original thoughts. Also, he was willing to compromise
his theme by rewriting the ending (having Nora stay with her husband) in
order to get the production on the stage in Germany. An author is an artist,
and it may be that the author is among the worst authorities to cite as to the
significance of his work. In fact, Ibsen once argued that the audience must
be trusted more than the author to provide a plausible explanation of the
significance of a work of art, saying that "the play does not end at the fall of
the curtain in the fifth act. The true end lies beyond; the poet indicates the
direction in which we may seek; it is now up to each one of us to find his or
her own way there."2
This is all the more important because Ibsen's written comments about the
play that usually cited in program notes date prior to his having written the
play. Since he made fundamental changes in both ideas and characters in his
drafts, what he finally published was the product of evolutionary
composition. This is more apparent to those who read the play as literature
than to those who see it on the stage. Most theatre productions treat the play
as Nora, using the minor characters as foils for a leading actress; in reading
the play as literature, one has more time to see the ways Ibsen used
parallelisms to give additional insights into Nora's character.
This is an important point for those who adapt Ibsen's play for stage
productions, particularly in making it into an attack on social stereotypes,
because that which may be good theatre is not necessarily good literature.
Theater may not be interested in the fullest significance of Ibsen's ideas, but
producers should still be cautious in eliminating characters or changing their
roles in an effort to "update" Ibsen. This has a similar implication for those
who look at the play symbolically.
Symbolism and social context have been examined thoroughly, with greatest
success by George Bernard Shaw. But the symbolic approach assumes that
the author had an intent (or an unconscious inspiration), which, once
discovered, explains everything for the reader and the audience. Ibsen as a
playwright is so complex that many critics find the symbolic approach
limited.
It is rarer that critics look through the text to see how the characters support
each other. It has been noted that Ibsen's text of A Doll's House has no
wasted dialogue and that every character, every line, has a purpose (Koht
1971:319). By looking at these characters, particularly at the way their
personal histories parallel each other, we can better see what Ibsen intended
us to learn. By looking at four parallels we can see the direction we should
seek for a better understanding of the play. Afterward, we must make of it
ourselves what we can.
Nora and Kristina Linde
Both Kristina and Nora chose the men they married by an intellectual rather
than an emotional process: Kristina gave up the man she loved (Nils
Krogstad) to provide economic security for her mother and her two younger
brothers; Nora married Torvald Helmer at a time when he could have
prosecuted her father for financial activities which were wrong if not simply
illegal.3 Whether she married him out of thankfulness or to influence him
during the time of decision is not clear, but one doubts that this timing was
mere coincidence; if Nora married Torvald Helmer to save her father, we
have reason to doubt that she was ever as empty-headed a "doll" as she
claimed to be.
Neither woman knew how to convey her thoughts and feelings to the man
she loved: When Kristina broke off with Nils Krogstad, she believed she
would spare him grief by ending the relationship ruthlessly and, necessarily,
crushing the love he bore her. She was badly mistaken. In making him
believe that she had thrown him over for a richer man, she drove him into
crime. When she comes to visit Nora she has been on her own for three
years and learned how to support herself. Moreover, she has become so
aware of her own motivations and such an understanding of his that she
comes to the town with the deliberate intent of speaking with her nowwidowed lover, and she is so beyond society's concept of what a woman
should do and say in a courtship that she can begin the discussion of love
and marriage with him. The audience can see that had she attempted ten
years before to explain her motives honestly, she might have spared
Krogstad a decade of suffering and personal tragedy.
Nora, meanwhile is still so unaware of her own situation that she can remark
to Dr. Rank, her real soul-mate, "You see, there are some people that one
loves, and others that one would rather be with." She remarks that being
with Torvald Helmer was like being with her father, and by the end of the
play she knows that she does not love him, nor he her. There is no doubt that
Nora loved Torvald once--for having risked everything to save her. It was
her concern for his health that caused her to take out the original loan and
forge her father's signature. Even as the play opens, however, she can see
that physical attraction will not hold him much longer. She has begun to
dream of a silly old gentleman who will leave her a lot of money in his will.
Indeed, she almost asks Dr. Rank for the money to pay off the loan. She
finds Dr. Rank good company, sexually attractive, and most important, a
true friend to whom she can open her soul with few reservations. She can
even curse in his presence and eat candy. Kristina sees the danger that lies in
their association. Other women in Nora's situation could easily become the
doctor's mistress--Nora suggests to Kristina that some "admirer" might give
her presents--but Nora was still feeling a deep obligation to Torvald for
having saved her father, and she was, after all, his wife. Would not many
readers conclude that if Helmer were to die rather that the doctor, that Act 4
would present Nora as Mrs. Dr. Rank?
Kristina Linde was freed from her unhappy marriage by just such a
fortuitous death. Left without resources, she was forced into the world,
made to earn her own way, to become her own person. Just as the bank
offered her the opportunity for real business success, she told Nils Krogstad:
"I must work or life isn't bearable. All my life I've worked--that's been my
one great job. But now that I'm alone in the world I feel completely lost and
empty. There's no joy in working for oneself. Nils. . . let me have
something--and someone--to work for."4
At the end of the play Nora is beginning to sense the first part of the lesson
that Kristina has learned fully. Nora must go out into the world and educate
herself, which, in the context of the play, means to support herself. She has
already discovered how much fun it is to support herself. She has already
discovered how much fun it is to earn money, and she has been able to
provide better clothes for her children and buy herself the occasional sweet.
She knows she can do it, and now she must now do "My duty to myself."
Later she will probably learn that she, too, has needs that can be met best in
a husband and family. Whether that husband is Torvald Helmer or not
depends on him, whether a man can, in his own words, "redeem his
character if he freely confesses his guilt and takes his punishment," whether
he can remove the mask that he wears "even with those nearest and dearest
to him."
Torvald Helmer and Nils Krogstad
The least likeable character in the play is Torvald Helmer, who is sometimes
portrayed as a sexist pig. Such a reading is too narrow and does an injustice
to Nora and Dr. Rank, both of whom associate voluntarily with him. There
is more depth to his character if one follows the hints that he had actively
covered up for Nora's father. The first hint came when Nora told Kristina
that Torvald had given up his government post because there was no
prospect of advancement. It may be that there was no opportunity for getting
ahead because promotion was slow in the bureau, but it may have been
because his most intimate co-workers (those who would have used the
familiar Du with him) were aware of what he had done. While the
management did not prosecute him (just as Krogstad was not prosecuted),
those acquainted with the incident could prevent his advancement into an
office where his larcenous tendencies could do real harm. A second hint is
that Helmer saw Krogstad as a threat to his new post in the savings bank:
"he seems to think he has a right to be familiar with me." Did he suspect that
Krogstad knew the one awful secret that could destroy him? The third hint
follows that trail: Krogstad expected that Nora had sufficient influence to
persuade her husband not to dismiss him. Why did he believe this unless he
had some suspicion of her past influence? A further hint comes when
Helmer remarks: "I pretend we're secretly in love--engaged in secret--and
that no one dreams that there's anything between us." Why does he want
that? Is this not a reference to the conflict of interest regarding her father?
Lastly, after reading Krogstad's letter, almost immediately Nora's father
comes to mind; he exclaims, "So this is what I get for condoning his fault! I
did it for your sake, and this is how you repay me. . . . You've completely
wrecked my happiness, you've ruined my whole future. . . . I may very well
be suspected of having been involved in your crooked dealings. They may
well think that I was behind it--that I put you up to it."5
Helmer did not want to confront his own dishonesty, and in his efforts to
cover up his past, he put all the blame on Nora and her heredity. Once, long
ago, his lust for Nora was stronger than his desire for social and economic
status. That is no longer the case. She can no longer influence him, not even
by promising to do all her "little tricks." He even spends so much money on
his own clothes that Nora has to work secretly to buy the children new
clothing. Now Helmer's long work and sacrifice are beginning to pay off:
after eight years as a struggling lawyer, he has just been appointed manager
of the savings bank--a post that would not be available to anyone with the
slightest history of dishonesty.
Torvald Helmer has never been able to have a serious conversation with
Nora. Is it that he could not risk having the subject of Nora's father come to
the surface except as a rebuke for her childishness? He was only able to deal
with Nora as a doll because if he dealt with her as a person, he would first
have to come to terms with himself and his failure to live up to the moral
codes of his society and his profession. As he said at the end of Act One:
"An atmosphere of lies like that infects and poisons the whole life of a
home." He has made himself so blind to the truth that when he speaks of
Krogstad's crime and of Nora's father's weaknesses, he concludes with a
denunciation of the mother's influence. Yet neither Nora nor Krogstad's
children have a mother!
Ibsen makes clear that the fault is the father's--but when he thus blames
Helmer for the failure of the marriage, Ibsen is not condemning him for
shallow selfishness, but for an unwillingness to face the truth. Kristina can
see how Nora's failure to face the truth endangers the marriage, but she does
not know what Helmer is hiding.
Nora realizes how selfish Helmer is after he reads Krogstad's letter
promising not to reveal the loan or the forgery. When he sensed that his past
could be covered over again, Torvald exclaimed: "I'm saved." Not "You're
saved," or even "We're saved," but only "I'm saved." Nora saw that she had
been living for eight years with a stranger. She knew that Helmer did not
love her, that he was no longer willing enough to risk himself or his
reputation for her. That freed her of all obligations to him. Nora not only
had to leave to save herself as a person, but now she was morally free to go
into the world on her own; this also gave both her and Torvald the
opportunity "to be so changed that. . . our life could be a real marriage."
Torvald Helmer was dumbfounded. He did not know what she was talking
about.
How Torvald Helmer will face this is problematic. His best friend, Dr.
Rank, who early in the play knew him better than Nora did, had said that
Helmer was too sensitive to face anything ugly. This moral collapse was far
uglier than the doctor's illness. The reader must wonder if Helmer has the
courage to face the townspeople when they learn that Nora has left him,
whether he will learn accept hardship and begin to live for others. Will he,
like Nils Krogstad, live for the reputation of his children, come to terms
with himself, and strike out with a determination to make himself anew.
Will he learn that a real marriage is such a fundamental need that a man
must be willing to make the same sacrifices that woman make? He is not
now the man who can teach Nora to be a wife. Can he become that man?6
Nils Krogstad, in contrast, has come to terms with his past dishonesty. He
admits that he had made a mistake many years ago in trying to make money
through forgery (a parallel with Nora) and through unscrupulous business
activities, but he argued that he has paid for his error: until eighteen months
ago every way forward in his profession had been closed to him.7For almost
eight years he had been a loan shark and a sensational journalist. Then,
apparently right after being widowed, he took stock of himself and his
responsibilities. In order to win back as much respect in society as he could,
so that his young sons would have a chance in life, he had abandoned his
pursuit of money; moreover, someone had been willing enough to take a
chance on his reformation that they had offered him a job as clerk in the
bank. Now Helmer comes in as the new manager and fires him. Krogstad's
only chance for respectability (the parallel to Helmer) is to return to the
bank. He knows that he is, in Dr. Rank's words, "a moral invalid," a
"shipwrecked man clinging to a spar." But he can be saved--and not by the
job at the bank. Kristina is the love he thought he had lost because he was
poor. Now she can be his, if only he will remain steadfastly honest. With her
he can overcome any obstacle, even the loss of his job and his money. She is
the wife he needs, the mother for his children. He recognizes this almost
instantly, and the audience recognizes it, too: Krogstad's sudden conversion
is utterly believable. That Ibsen can have Krogstad, the loan shark and
extortionist, give away the bond for $1200 and his last hope of holding his
post at the bank, and be believable, is one of the supreme achievements in
the history of playwriting.
Nora and the Nurse
The nurse, Anna Maria, was Nora's nanny, the woman most important in her
upbringing and her closest companion. In what might pass for a
comparatively unimportant scene, Nora asks a very critical question from
the woman she trusts the most: would her children forget her if she went
away? The nurse herself had been forced to choose once between rearing
her own child in poverty and accepting work as Nora's nanny; she had
chosen to give her (illegitimate?) daughter to strangers, presumably assisting
from time to time with small gifts saved from her meager salary. The nurse
was reassuring: her daughter had not forgotten her--she had been reared as a
Christian woman and made a good marriage. Nora knows that Anna Maria
will care properly for her children should she come to make a decision that
she cannot yet even put into words. How could any woman named for the
two holiest mothers not be entrusted with children? Nora herself is a good
playmate, but she is not a good mother; she cannot be one until she grows
up; and she surely recognizes now that she is sinning against them. She will
surely corrupt them unless she leaves.
The nurse's lesson is clear: sometimes a woman must make choices between
unsatisfactory alternatives, but she can live with the consequences of her
decision. Life is not all happiness, but neither is it all despair. Things do
work out. In Nora's case, particularly, a woman can escape being trapped by
conventional responsibilities into accepting the destruction of her pride and
her personality.
The sins of one generation are visited on the next
Most audiences take the fate of Dr. Rank literally as another condemnation
of male sexual conduct. Not often is it realized that his impending death
from congenital venereal disease is necessary to the plot: it informs us that
Nora cannot be having an affair with Dr. Rank and she cannot run to him
after slamming the door.
The parallel between his fate and that of the two women is more important
that the fact of V.D. Nora and Kristina are as trapped by their fathers'
actions as he is: both fathers failed to provide for their families, so that the
daughters had to sacrifice themselves to save the situation. Both were
treated like "dolls" and left unprepared for life. Dr. Rank makes this clear:
"In one way or another there isn't a single family where some such
inexorable retribution isn't being extracted."
If Dr. Rank's father had been more honest and concerned for the future, he
could have sought treatment for his condition. But he apparently ignored his
illness and went on his way to infect his wife and his child. Kristina's
husband left her unprepared for life's dangers, too, and Helmer would not
even entrust Nora to open the mailbox. Nora's daughter was apparently
destined to suffer the same fate. The women, like Dr. Rank, became aware
of their condition very late. For Dr. Rank, like many women, it was too late
to take measures. For Nora there is still time. It is in this context that the
conversation of Kristina Linde and Nils Krogstad makes sense: Nora must
tell Helmer the truth. It is the lie that hurts, it is the lie that has such
unforeseen consequences later.8
If the truth emerges, there is likely to be a scandal. Nevertheless, the cycle
of lies and foolish sacrifices must end somewhere.9 Kristina says, "Nils,
when you've sold yourself once for the sake of others, you don't do it a
second time." Nora has already sacrificed enough for her father, her
husband, and her family. She must now be ready to do something for
herself.
Conclusion
The play is not just about Nora. The supporting characters are important in
themselves because they face the same type of problems that Nora does-especially the need to face the truth in personal relationships. Their
problems illustrate the basic theme and bring out aspects of Nora's character
that are essential to understanding her more fully. Furthermore, we can see
hints in the parallels about what the future may hold for Nora. Like Kristina
Linde, she must earn her way in the world, gathering experience for that
worthwhile life she senses is possible. Like Kristina in a few years she will
probably come to the conclusion that life cannot be lived for oneself alone.
Meanwhile, she is certain that her children will be properly cared for.
Having slammed the door, she will go to Kristina Linde for the night, then
to her father's hometown, where she will seek work. When she finds out
who she really is, when she has had some success, she will return to seek
out Helmer. She has already said, "As I am now, I'm not the wife for you."
She may yet become that woman. Perhaps Torvald Helmer will make an
equal growth in character. (Nora says that he can change if his "doll is taken
away.") If he has made the same growth that Nils Krogstad had made,
Torvald and Nora will come back together; if he has not repented and made
himself new, our new Nora would be foolish to return to A Doll's House.10
Works Cited
Brandes, Georg. 1964. Henrik Ibsen. A Critical Study. New York: Benjamin
Blom. Reprint of 1899 edition.
Clurman, Harold. 1977. Ibsen. New York: Macmillan.
Davies, H. Neville. 1982. "Not just a bang and a whimper: the
inconclusiveness of Ibsen's A Doll's House." Critical Quarterly 24:33-34.
Heiberg, Hans. 1967. Ibsen. A Portrait of the Artist. Coral Gables, Florida:
University of Miami.
Koht, Halvdan. 1971. Life of Ibsen. New York: Benjamin Blom.
Meyer, Michael. 1971. Ibsen. A Biography. Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday
and Company.
Northam, John. 1965. "Ibsen's Search for the Hero." Ibsen. A Collection of
Critical Essays. Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall.
Notes
1. Meyer (1971:470).
2. See Meyer (1971:148) for Ibsen's own views, that society is essentially
male and does not understand that there are two types of spiritual law, two
kinds of conscience. See also Koht (1971:316 and 322) and Heiberg
(1967:203-204).
3. This seems to have been overlooked by contemporary and modern critics.
Most critics see Helmer as an honest man, too concerned with propriety. See
Clurman (1977:100f, 115).
4. The best description of this subplot and love story is Davies (1982:33-34).
5. Clurman (1977:115, 117). Brandes (1964:77-78): "The man is thoroughly
honourable, scrupulously upright, thrifty, careful of his position in the eyes
of strangers and inferiors, a faithful husband, a strict and loving father, kindhearted. . . ."
6. Brandes (1964:49) says that Ibsen views Helmer as a stupid and evil man,
whose "stupidity arises solely from his self-righteous egoism."
7. Clurman (1977:115-116) presents the traditional interpretation of
Krogstad: "a soft man driven to hardness."
8. Northam (1965:103f, 108) sees Rank as the symbolic representation of
Nora's moral illness.
9. If in this play Nora and Torvald's lies undermine their marriage, in other
plays Ibsen comes to the opposite conclusion: the "life lie" is sometimes
essential. Stockmann tells the truth and is hounded out of town, Hedda
cannot face the truth and kills herself.
10. Clurman (1977:118):"We may sentimentally hope that Nora and Torvald
may sometime in the future mend their marriage, but Ibsen certainly does
not encourage it." Davies (1982:35), on the other hand, in remarking on a
wide variety of lerned guesses about Nora's fate, notes that the subplot of
Kristina and Nils provides hope for miracles in life.