A Doll’s House
by
Henrik Ibsen
(About the play)
A Doll’s House (1879) was conceived at
a time of revolution in Europe. Charged with the fever of the 1848 European
revolutions, a new modern perspective was emerging in the literary and dramatic
world, challenging the romantic tradition. It was Ibsen who popularized the
realist drama derived from this new perspective. His plays were read and
performed throughout Europe in numerous translations. A Doll’s House was
published in Copenhagen, Denmark, where it premiered.
His success was particularly important
for Norway and the Norwegian language. Ibsen deliberately chose a colloquial
language style to emphasize local realism, though Torvald Helmer does speak in
“stuffy Victorianisms.” Ibsen quickly became Norway’s most popular dramatic
figure. But it is the universality of Ibsen’s writings, particularly of A
Doll’s House, that has made this play an oft-performed classic.
It is believed that the plot of A
Doll’s House was based on an event in Ibsen’s own life. In 1870 Laura Kieler
had sent Ibsen a sequel to Brand, called Brand’s Daughters, and Ibsen had taken
an interest in the pretty, vivacious girl, nicknaming her “the lark.” He
invited her to his home, and for two months in the summer of 1872, she visited
his home constantly. When she married, a couple of years later, her husband
fell ill and was advised to take a vacation in a warm climate–and Laura, like
Nora does in the play, secretly borrowed money to finance the trip (which took
place in 1876). Laura falsified a note, the bank refused payment, and she told
her husband the whole story. He demanded a separation, removed the children
from her care, and only took her back after she had spent a month in a public
asylum.
Laura and Nora have similar-sounding
names, but their stories diverge. In Ibsen’s play, Nora never returns home, nor
does she ever break the news to her husband. Moreover—here the difference is
most striking—it is Nora who divorces her husband. The final act of the play
reveals Torvald as generous and even sympathetic.
A Doll’s House was the second in a
series of realist plays by Ibsen. The first, The Pillars of Society (1877), had
caused a stir throughout Europe. Ibsen’s letters reveal that much of what is
contained in his realist dramas is based on events from his own life. He later
wrote a series of psychological studies focusing on women.
One of the most striking
characteristics of A Doll’s House is the way it challenges the so-called
well-made play in which the first act offers an exposition, the second a
situation, and the third an unraveling. Ibsen’s play was notable for exchanging
the last act’s unraveling for a discussion, one which leaves the audience
uncertain about how the events will conclude. Until the last moments of the
play, A Doll’s House could easily be just another modern drama broadcasting
another comfortable moral lesson. Finally, however, when Nora tells Torvald
that they must sit down and “discuss all this that has been happening between
us,” the play diverges from the traditional form. With this new technical
feature, A Doll’s House became an international sensation and founded a new
school of dramatic art.
Ibsen’s realist drama disregarded the
tradition of featuring an older male moral figure. Dr. Rank, the character who
should serve this role, is far from a positive moral force. Instead, he is not
only sickly, rotting from a disease picked up from his father’s earlier sexual
exploits, but also lascivious, openly coveting Nora.
One more importance of A Doll’s House
is the feminist message that rocked the stages of Europe when the play
premiered. Nora’s rejection of marriage and motherhood scandalized contemporary
audiences. In fact, it is the numerous ways that the play can be read and
interpreted that make the play so interesting. Each new generation has had a
different way of interpreting the book. This richness is another sign of its
greatness.
The play is “founded on the belief…that
women can and must be raised to the dignity of man,” but Ibsen himself believed
it to be more about the importance of self-liberation than the importance of
specifically female liberation.
There are many comic sections in the
play: Nora’s “songbird” and “squirrel” acts, as well as her early flirtatious
conversations with her husband, are especially humorous. Still, like many
modern productions, A Doll’s House seems to fit the classical definition of
neither comedy nor tragedy. Unusually for a traditional comedy, at the end
there is a divorce, not a marriage, and the play implies that Dr. Rank could be
dead as the final curtain falls. But this is not a traditional tragedy either,
for the ending of A Doll’s House has no solid conclusion. The ending is left
wide open: there is no brutal event, no catharsis, just ambiguity. This is a
play that defies boundaries.
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