A Doll

1
A Dolls House
35

• Henrik Ibsen
• (1828-1906)

2
Introduction

• A Dolls House premiered on December 21, 1879 in
  Copenhagen, Denmark.
• Two weeks before the production, A Dolls House
  was printed in book form and sold 8,000 copies
  within two weeks.
• A Dolls 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 Dolls 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 Ralph Richardson.

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Controversy

• When it was first staged, A Dolls 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 Noras 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 womens
  rights but for justice for all humanity.
• For the plays German debut, Ibsen was forced to
  write an alternative ending, one in which Nora
  looks at her children before she is about to
  leave, collapses to the floor, and decides to
  remain. Ibsen later called the ending a
  barbaric outrage.

4
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, Norways second largest city.

5
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 Ibsens home in Norway

• In 1864, Ibsen left Norway for virtually a
  twenty-seven year exile. However, all his plays
  would be set in Norway.

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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.
• Ibsens health deteriorated after a series of
  strokes in 1900. He died in 1906, leaving a
  profound mark on the world theater.

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After Shakespeare, without hesitation, I put
Ibsen first. - Luigi Pirandello
(1867-1936), Italian dramatist and
novelist and the winner of the Nobel
Prize in Literature in 1934.
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Ibsens as Dramatist

• While his reputation might have waned over the
  years, Ibsens 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.
• However, he is best known for his plays of social
  commentary and psychological realism, like A
  Dolls 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
  underestimated. He has been referred to as the
  Father of Modern Drama.

Title page in the manuscript of When We Dead
Awaken
Title page in the manuscript of Ghosts
Title page in the manuscript of Hedda Gabler
Title page in the manuscript of The Master
Builder
9
Realism in the Theater

• 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 Dolls
  House played a significant role in the movement.
  Realism reached America later, finding its
  fullest expression in Eugene ONeill.
• 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 audiences eavesdropping on a
  slice of life.
• Realists tend to depict the middle, lower, and
  lower-middle classes their work, family life,
  language, dress, and problems.

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Realism in the Theater continued

• 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 plays 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?

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Well-Made Play

• While Ibsens use of realist techniques and his
  frank discussion of social issues were
  innovative, he drew his form for A Dolls 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.

12
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.

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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.

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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
  after four weeks at the same spa, and in the
  third, as intimate friends.

Henrik Ibsen paa Verdens-Theatret 1898
Caricature by Alfred Schmidt in Hver 8. Dag.
15
Marriage in A Dolls House

• A Dolls 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?
  Why or why not?
• The play suggests that marriage should be
  conceived as a partnership of equals.

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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 husbands
  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 husbands life
  through forgery, using the money for a necessary
  trip to the warmer climates of Italy. She has
  worked diligently to repay the loan.
• Through the forgery, Ibsen raises a question with
  social implication Why couldnt Nora or a woman
  in her position secure a legal loan?
• Similarly, why does Nora not have a key to the
  familys mailbox?

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Nora continued

• After Torvalds 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.
• Noras decision to leave represents a triumph of
  the individual over social convention and a
  personal past.
• Do you consider Noras action at the end to be
  brave? Necessary? Selfish? Cruel?

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Does Nora return to her family?

• Ibsen was asked several times. Once, he said,
  Certainly, she does.
• 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.

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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.
• Noras 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.

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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 Torvalds and Noras
  transformations if their love for one another is
  genuine.

• Mrs. Lindes functions are also clear
• - She brings out exposition concerning Noras
  efforts to save her husbands 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.

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Themes

• The two major themes of A Dolls House might be
  stated as,
• 1. The restraints imposed on individual
  development and self-fulfillment by societys
  conventions.
• 2. The effects on individual development of our
  pasts (including the influence of parents,
  upbringing, and genetic inheritance).

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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
  Ibsens time many thought the disease could be
  inherited.
• Noras father encouraged her to remain a little
  person, passing her from his home to her
  husbands. More importantly perhaps, she has
  inherited her fathers want of principle, as
  Torvald calls it No religion, no morality, no
  sense of duty. Of course, her and her fathers
  want of principle might not be so corrupt. We
  do not know her fathers motivation, but Noras
  forgery saved Torvalds life.
• The poor health of Mrs. Lindes 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.

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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 Krogstads 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 Noras 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?

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Symbols

• Ibsen uses several symbols in A Dolls 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 Noras larger rebellion at plays
  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 Its 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
  Noras costume, but more significantly she mends
  Noras life by allowing the truth about the loan
  to surface. She also mends Krogstads life when
  she declares her love for him.

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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
  bear cultural, societal, and parental 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, Noras tarantella reflects her
  agitated state of mind.
• Title The title suggests that all the
  characters are puppets playing conventional roles
  with little free will. They are more like dolls
  or puppets than individuals.

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For Further Consideration

• Who is the villain in the play? (Torvald is too
  simple a response.) Explain.
• Does Nora make the right decision to leave her
  family? Why or why not?
• Discuss the significance of the title. How would
  you, as a scenic designer, stage the play to take
  maximum advantage of the symbolism implied by the
  image?
• Some critics have contended that the play is
  outdated. That the womens liberation movement
  of the twentieth century has provided more
  options for women. Do you agree that the play is
  outdated? Why or why not?
• Interpret the events in the play from the point
  of view of one of the Helmer children who is now
  an adult looking back at this significant time in
  his/her childhood.
• Write a review of one of the film adaptations of
  A Doll House. Consider the actress playing Nora.
  Did she present a different Nora than you
  expected? Consider other character portrayals
  and issues. For instance, how effective were the
  liberties that the film takes with Ibsens text?