A Doll’s House
Henrik Ibsen
(1828-1906)
Introduction
●
A Doll’s House premiered on December 21, 1879
in Copenhagen, Denmark.
●
Two weeks before the production, A Doll’s
House was printed in book form and sold 8,000
copies within two weeks.
●
A Doll’s House was a hit in Scandinavian
countries, but it would not be produced in
other parts of Europe until two years after
its premiere.
●
A Doll’s House opened in London in 1889 after
a ban against its production had been lifted.
It opened in New York in 1894.
●
The play was adapted for film several times.
The two most famous were both released in
1972. One directed by Joseph Losey, starring
Jane Fonda, David Warner, and Trevor Howard,
and the other directed by Patrick Garland,
starring Claire Bloom, Anthony Hopkins, and
Controversy
●
When it was first staged, A Doll’s House was
controversial, even scandalous, as it questioned the
conventional roles of the husband and wife in the sacred
institution of marriage, arguing, it seemed, for the
liberation of women.
●
Many saw Nora’s act of leaving her family as a selfish
abandonment of her duties as wife and mother.
●
Others argued that her embarkation on a journey of
self-discovery would not only make her a more
independent and stronger individual but also a better
mother.
●
Ibsen said that he was arguing not for women’s rights
but for justice for all humanity.
●
For the play’s German debut, Ibsen was forced to write
an alternative ending, one in which Nora looks at her
The Author – Henrik Ibsen
● Henrik Ibsen was born in Skien, Norway,
a small town, in 1828.
● His childhood was not easy.
The family
became
impoverished when he was six and the
family business
failed. His father became depressed
and alcoholic.
Eventually, his mother left his
father.
● As a teenager, he worked as an
apprentice to an apothecary and
considered studying medicine. Instead,
he decided to devote himself to writing
and working in the theater.
• By his early twenties, Ibsen earned a living by writing and directing
plays in various Norwegian cities. He became the director of the
Norwegian Theatre in Bergen, Norway’s second largest city.
Ibsen continued…
● In 1858, he became the
creative director at the
National Theater in
Christiania (later, renamed
Oslo). He married a year
later.
● He once told a friend that to
understand him one needed to
understand the severe northern
Norwegian landscape, in which
the winters left people
isolated and inclined to
introspection and perhaps
brooding. Many thought Ibsen
cold and aloof.
Henrik Ibsen´s home in Norway
• In 1864, Ibsen left Norway for virtually a twenty-seven year exile.
However, all his plays would be set in Norway.
Ibsen continued…
● He once commented, “Never have I seen my homeland so
fully, so clearly, and at such close range, as I did in
my absence when I was far away from it.”
● Ibsen returned permanently to Norway 1891, where he was
celebrated as a national treasure, honored by
theater-goers, scholars, and royalty. He had been the
first Norwegian author to gain widespread acclaim
outside his native country.
● Ibsen’s health deteriorated after a series of strokes in
1900. He died in 1906, leaving a profound mark on the
world theater.
“After Shakespeare,
without hesitation, I put
Ibsen first.”
Luigi Pirandello
Ibsen’s as Dramatist
Title page in the manuscript
of When We Dead Awaken
●
While his reputation might have
waned over the years, Ibsen’s
achievement is still widely
acclaimed. His plays continue to be
performed, read, celebrated, and
discussed.
●
Ibsen was a prolific playwright who
wrote histories (Emperor and
Galilean, 1873, e.g.), verse dramas
(Peer Gynt, 1867), experimental
dramas (The Master Builder, 1892),
philosophical dramas (When We Dead
Awaken, 1899), and more.
●
tle page in the manuscript of
he Master Builder
●
However, he is best known for his
plays of social commentary and
psychological realism, like A Doll’s
House, Ghosts (1881), An Enemy of
the People (1882), The Wild Duck
(1894), and Hedda Gabler (1890),
among others.
Through these and other plays, his
influence on the development of the
modern theater cannot be
Title page in the
manuscript of Ghosts
Title page in the manuscript
of Hedda Gabler
Realism in the theatre
● The movement toward Realism in the theater began in
Europe in the second half of the nineteenth century
through playwrights like Ibsen, August Strindberg, and
George Bernard Shaw. A Doll’s House played a significant
role in the movement. Realism reached America later,
finding its fullest expression in Eugene O’Neill.
● Realism began as a reaction to the excessively
contrived, sentimental, and didactic melodramas that
dominated drama in nineteenth-century Europe and
America.
● Realists take a mimetic approach to theater, striving to
create the illusion of everyday life on stage, with the
audience’s eavesdropping on a slice of life.
Realism in the theatre
● Realists prefer contemporary settings.
● In a direct response to melodrama, realists strive to
create complex characters, to make internal conflict as
dramatic as external conflict.
● They prefer the open ending, which does not resolve all
the play’s questions and sometimes leaves in doubt the
future of the protagonist. The resolution or denouement
is generally short in realistic dramas and virtually
non-existent sometimes. Do we know, for instance, what
happens to Nora once she leaves her home?
Well-Made Play
● While Ibsen’s use of realist techniques and his frank
discussion of social issues were innovative, he drew his
form for A Doll’s House and other plays from the
nineteenth-century “well-made” play.
● The well-made play is a carefully crafted work, neat in
structure and obviously contrived in its numerous plot
twists and turns.
● The emphasis is on plot not character development. The
first act of a well-made play introduces the problem;
the second act complicates it, and the third resolves
it.
Well-Made Play continued…
● The characters tend to be types, the overly concerned
parent, the straying child, the corrupt businessman.
Characters are uncomplicated and easily identified as
hero and villain, good guy and bad guy.
● The well-made play relies on standard devices:
exposition conveyed through gossipy servants, plot
complications from lost or forged documents, and
resolutions from the entrance of an absent family member
or the recovery of letters and documents.
● The most famous author of well-made plays was Eugène
Scribe (1791-1861) who wrote hundreds of plays, several
of which Ibsen directed.
Ibsen as Individualist
● While his politics and
radicalism were indefinite,
Ibsen was a staunch advocate
for individual freedoms and
rights. “I think that all of
us have nothing other or better
to do than in spirit and
sincerity to realize ourselves.
That, to my mind, is the real
liberalism.”
● He once said that the state “is
the curse of the individual.”
Ibsen and Writing Plays
● “Always I proceed from the
individual; the stage-setting, the
dramatic ensemble, all that comes
naturally and causes me no worry,
once I feel sure of the individual
in every aspect of his humanity. I
must penetrate to the last wrinkle
of his soul.”
● Ibsen made at least three major
drafts of his plays. In the
first, he said that he knew the
characters like people on a
railway journey; in the second, he
knew them as one knows someone
Henrik Ibsen paa Verdens-Theatret : 1898
Caricature by Alfred Schmidt in Hver 8. Dag.
Marriage in A Doll’s House
●
A Doll’s House raises many questions about the
institution of marriage, questions which many
nineteenth-century audiences found disturbing.
●
In the opening scene, Torvald treats his wife as a
child, addressing her with nauseating pet names,
forbidding her sweets, and educating her, so he thinks,
with moralistic platitudes: “No debt, no borrowing.
There can be no freedom or beauty about a home life that
depends on borrowing and debt.”
●
Soon afterwards, we see that Nora is not as submissive
as Helmer thinks or as we first thought: She lies to him
about eating candy and she keeps secrets. What does
this suggest about Nora?
●
What is your impression of the Helmer marriage after Act
One?
●
Does your impression change as the play proceeds?
or why not?
Why
Nora Helmer
● At first, Nora appears to be a conventional,
nineteenth-century middle-class housewife. She cares
for her children and buys them gender conventional
Christmas presents, supervises the running of the
home, and accepts her husband’s authority. Willingly
subservient to her husband, she accepts his seemingly
demeaning pet names for her.
● Soon, however, we realize that Nora holds secrets,
that she lies to her husband, and that she is capable
of manipulating him. Nora commits minor acts of
subversion that foreshadow her much larger rebellion
at the end of the play.
● In Act One, we discover that Nora is capable of great
courage, sacrifice, responsibility, and decisiveness.
She saved her husband’s life through forgery, using
the money for a necessary trip to the warmer climates
of Italy. She has worked diligently to repay the
Nora continued …
• After Torvald’s response to her forgery,
Nora transforms. No longer a flighty,
submissive housewife or a panicky
suicidal criminal, she becomes coldly
rational, perceptive, defiant, and, perhaps
most importantly, autonomous.
● Shaped by first her father and then her husband, Nora has
developed according to their image and precepts, which follow
social convention. Nora has been more of a doll or a puppet
than an individual.
●
Nora realizes that she must venture on a journey of
self-discovery. To be a good mother, she must first
establish her own identity and individuality.
●
Nora’s decision to leave represents a triumph of the
individual over social convention and a personal past.
●
Do you consider Nora’s action at the end to be brave?
Necessary? Selfish? Cruel?
Does Nora return to her family?
● Ibsen was asked several times.
“Certainly, she does.”
Once, he said,
● But, on another occasion, he responded, “How
do I know? It is possible that she returns to
her husband and children, but also possible
that she becomes an artiste in a traveling
circus.”
● The play, of course, keeps the ending open.
We cannot say with any certainty what the
future holds for Nora or her family.
Torvald Helmer
● Torvald is not an attractive character.
He is domineering,
egocentric, condescending, arrogant, and thrifty. He may be
successful at work, but he is also moralistic, explosive, and
status-conscious.
● Torvald does not change by the end of the play, but he does
seem capable of changing in the near future. He understands
that Nora has just left him, a possibility he could not have
imagined until it occurred.
● Nora’s leaving has jolted Torvald and could lead to his
transformation. Significantly, he repeats her phrase (“the
most wonderful thing of all”) for his closing words,
suggesting that he has not ignored what she has said and that
he will consider her words seriously. This holds out the
possibility of change.
NORA
Through the forgery, Ibsen raises a
question with social implication: Why
couldn’t Nora or a woman in her position
secure a legal loan?
Similarly, why does Nora not have a key
to the family’s mailbox?
Secondary Characters
●Most of the secondary characters are
functional. Krogstad, for instance, is the agent
of the necessary conflict between Nora and
Torvald.
●He has committed the same crime as Nora and
has lived the kind of humiliation exposure will
bring her. He becomes transformed by love,
perhaps suggesting a possibility for Torvald’s
and Nora’s transformations if their love for one
another is genuine.
•Mrs. Linde’s functions are also clear:
─ She brings out plot concerning Nora’s efforts to save her
husband’s life.
─ As an independent woman who has struggled to survive,
she serves as a foil and model for Nora.
─ She is responsible for the climax of the play and the
surfacing of the truth as she stops Krogstad from retrieving his
letter.
─ She points out the theme concerning the need for honesty
and openness in marriage: “… they must have a complete
understanding between them, which is impossible with all this
concealment and falsehood going on.”
Themes
● The two major themes of A Doll’s House
might be stated as,
1. The restraints imposed on
individual development and
self-fulfillment by society’s
conventions.
2. The effects on individual
development of our pasts (including
the influence of parents, upbringing,
and genetic inheritance).
Symbols continued …
● Black Crosses: Rank uses two crosses
to announce his death. One, however,
symbolizes the death of an old Nora.
The cross might also tie in with the
theme of human liberation, as
individuals all beaal influences or
crosses that sometimes need to be
lifted before liberation into
individuality.
● Tarantella: a frantic dance, which
Nora dances “as if [her] life depended
on it.” It is a parting gift for her
husband, for whom she plans on
committing suicide, rather than let him
assume the blame for her criminal act.
With its ferocious energy, Nora’s
tarantella reflects her agitated state
of mind.
The Influence of the Past on the Present
● Ibsen works out different facets of this theme through his
characters. Dr. Rank, for instance, has his life cut short
as he pays for the sins of his father. Rank inherited
venereal disease from his father – yes, an impossibility,
but in Ibsen’s time many thought the disease could be
inherited.
● Nora’s father encouraged her to remain a “little person,”
passing her from his home to her husband’s. More
importantly perhaps, she has “inherited” her father’s “want
of principle,” as Torvald calls it: “No religion, no
morality, no sense of duty.” Of course, her and her
father’s “want of principle” might not be so corrupt. We do
not know her father’s motivation, but Nora’s forgery saved
Torvald’s life.
● The poor health of Mrs. Linde’s mother forced the daughter
into an undesirable marriage that redirected her life. In
addition, because of years spent caring for her mother, Mrs.
Linde has developed a desperate need to be needed, a need to
take care of others.
The Past continued …
● Krogstad is aware of how his reputation affects his children:
“My sons are growing up; for their sake I must try and win
back as much respect as I can in this town.” Torvald takes
an extreme view of Krogstad’s effect on his children,
believing his moral breakdown is infectious: “Each breath the
children take in such a house is full of germs of evil.”
● While we do not hear about his parents or his upbringing,
Torvald makes some strong statements about the moral
influence of parents on children: “Almost everyone who has
gone to the bad early in life has had a deceitful mother.”
When he learns of Nora’s forgery, Torvald works out a plan
for his wife to live in the house, but she must not see the
children: “I dare not trust them to you.”
● Since Torvald is hardly an admirable character, how should we
interpret his comments? Do you think Ibsen intends for us to
consider them as truths?
Symbols
Ibsen uses several symbols in A Doll’s House to
reveal character, to foreshadow events, and to
create drama and suspense:
●
Christmas tree: the tree sets the time of year, a
time of happiness and birth, a birth of a new Nora
occurs at the end of the play. Like the tree, Nora
is little more than a decoration in her own home.
●
Macaroons: signifies a small rebellion that
foreshadows Nora’s larger rebellion at play’s end.
Eating the macaroons and lying about them give Nora
a sense of power over Torvald; the macaroons are a
small representation of her larger “secret.” Note
the following lines from Nora: “It’s perfectly
glorious to think that we have – that Torvald has
so much power over so many people. … Dr. Rank,
what do you say to a macaroon?”
●
Mending/knitting: Mrs. Linde does the mending of
Nora’s costume, but more significantly she mends
Nora’s life by allowing the truth about the loan to
surface. She also mends Krogstad’s life when she
Significant Ideas and Quotes
Torvald holds Nora and says that he sometimes wishes her life were in
danger so that he could risk everything to save her. Nora tears herself
away and tells Torvald to read his letters. At first Torvald says he will
leave them until the morning because he just wants to be with Nora
that night, but Nora asks if he can do that knowing that Dr. Rank is
dying.
Torvald concedes that he does feel unsettled and that “an ugly thing”
has come between them because now they are thinking of death. He
resolves that they go to sleep separately and kisses Nora goodnight.
She puts her arms around his neck and bids him goodnight too.
The Letter
Torvald holds up the letter and asks if Nora knows what’s in it.
She admits that she does, and asks that he let her go, insisting
that he not try to save her. Torvald asks in disbelief if what
Krogstad writes is true, and Nora says it is, saying she loved
Torvald more than anything in the world. He says this is a
“paltry excuse,” calls her a “miserable woman” and asks what
it is she’s done. Nora tells him again to let her go and not to
try and take the blame for her. He tells her to stop
play-acting, locks the front door, and says she must stay to
give an account of herself.
“Nora what have you done to me!/?”
Torvald paces up and down, saying that in the eight years they
have been married, Nora has been “a hypocrite, a liar, worse than
that, a criminal!”
He says he should have realized something like this would happen
because her father had no religion, morals, or sense of duty.
He claims that this is his punishment for turning a blind eye to Nora’s
father. He says that Nora has ruined his happiness and jeopardized
his future, as he is now at the mercy of Krogstad. He says he must
now do whatever Krogstad wants, and all because of Nora, who he
calls “a feather-brained woman.”
Appearance vs Reality
Torvald’s thoughts about preserving appearances reveal that
respectability matters more to him than his own happiness, the
happiness of others, or love. It also suggests that he believes that,
no matter how badly he treats Nora, she will continue to obey him
and play along with whatever plan he devises.
He says he will try to find a way of appeasing Krogstad, and will
make sure that nobody finds out about the whole situation. He tells
Nora that things must appear to be the same between them, but
that he will not let her raise the children, as he can’t trust her to do
so. He insists that they must preserve appearances.
“I am saved”
Torvald’s snatching of the note addressed to Nora shows:
● That he doesn’t believe she has the right to privacy.
● His first words after reading it are “I’m saved” is telling;
SIGNIFICANCE:
Torvald has only considered this situation in light of his
own fate, with Nora barely even existing as an
afterthought.
Nora’s Transformation
Nora returns, wearing her everyday clothes. Torvald, surprised, asks why she’s not
in bed. Nora replies that she won’t sleep that night, and asks Torvald to sit down so
they can talk.
Torvald says he is frightened and doesn’t understand, and Nora replies that this is
exactly her point; he does not understand her.
She asks that he doesn’t interrupt and simply listens to her.
She asks if it is striking to him that, in their eight years of marriage, this is the first
time they have had a serious conversation together.
SIGNIFICANCE:
Nora has evidently undergone a transformation both visually and in the way she
speaks to Torvald. For the first time, she is addressing him as an equal and
demanding that he treat her with respect by listening and not interrupting.
Nora Leaves
The final moments of the play deal with the theme of the
destruction of hope.
Nora’s capacity for hope has already been destroyed, as
shown by the fact that she says she no longer believes in
miracles.
Meanwhile, the devastated Torvald has one final moment of
hope at the very end of the play; however, the decisive slam
of the door brings this moment to an abrupt end, finally
shattering the illusion of his and Nora’s marriage.