A Doll's House

Ibsen by 1879 had removed himself from the 'theatre of ideas' exemplified by 'Brand' and 'Peer Gynt' (1866-1867). 'A Doll's House' is very different in tone and intent and all the better for that. Apart from the hysterical last act, this is complex theatre that is true to human nature.

Ibsen denied it was a 'feminist play'. He is a better judge of his own work than the liberal middle class that seized upon it for their own ideological purposes. After all, Nora is, in fact, an unimpressive human being - a rather dim young thing looking for an excuse to break free from obligations.

Torvald, her husband, is, of course, a self-deluding patriarch bound by convention and by a duty that suits his leadership position in a bourgeois family but show more both are victims of that convention. The last act sees him genuinely seeking to find a way to make amends in some way he barely understands.

Ibsen is, in this play, observing human interactions in a closed society with theatrical brilliance and the play hooks you with its 'truth' throughout the first two acts. These are interactions with no easy resolution but drama demands resolution and so we have to accept the sometimes risible final act.

Even that final act contains truths in the cold reaction of Nora to the possibility of a way out that would preserve a family and, incidentally, the duty of care to two small children who barely seem to matter here. This is a narcissist finding a way out and seizing it.

Of course, this is not how the play has been presented since. It became part of a more general search for middle class feminist justifications of rebellion reaching a peak of literary canonisation in the next century. Middle class liberals appropriated it for all the wrong reasons.

Nora's true nature was abandoned by ideologues for a 'message', turning the play back to being the vehicle for an 'idea' which is not what Ibsen intended. On the contrary, Ibsen was getting closer to a Chekovian observation of a situation and allowing us to draw our own conclusions.

In this case, the sensible conclusion is that the stable conventions of bourgeois marriage contain the seeds of their own potential unravelling and of human misery at the point when a justifiable questioning of their grounds emerged. Thinking is a problem within such a society.

The justifiable questioning of course requires triggering since most people find it difficult to think 'ab initio'. Torvald cannot but respond when he is triggered. Nora is triggered by Kristine Lynd, her 'friend', who is actually expressive of the sort of sly bitterness that gives feminism a bad name.

There are interesting sub-plots in Dr. Rank being the victim of his selfish father's syphilitic adventurism and in the blackmailing Krogstad whose 'evil' proves to be more grounded in mere mistake and desperation and perhaps deserving of redemption.

The play abounds with error - of a father irresponsibly passing on disease, of a man who forged a document, of a woman forced to give up her own child and caring for Nora's, of Nora being an irresponsible idiot because she has no understanding of money and of Torvald for being conventional.

The errors are errors of ignorance and circumstance. The hidden question is always how to come clean and forgive or not as the case may be. Convention creates order but it also creates misery in creating order yet breaking free of convention also creates misery and pain.

If there is a hidden message, it might be that the ambiguous conservative anarchism of Ibsen is struggling here with the role of truth-telling within social order. As a good dramatist, he leaves any possible answers to the conscience of his audience. Some have come up with nonsense. show less

I've been meaning to read this ever since I finished Miss Julie, that beautifully written atrocity of Strindberg. To have an empowered female protagonist in a 20th century Naturalist play is out of ordinary, and Ibsen's plays are just that extraordinary. Like Torvald the husband, almost all of the dramatists of 1900s lobbed all women into the same category, ascribing to them personalities so diverse, that they could've been condensed to just one inconsequential character that nudges the hero's path.

I've never really identified with the utter breakdown of a person described in books, but I saw myself in Nora. Silently going through life liking everything your father likes, and then your lover, afraid of disagreeing, afraid of holding a show more different opinion, going silently through personal hell for them, only to come out and discover that that reciprocation will never come. Nora holds out till her final breakdown. She silently prepares herself for the worst, hoping it would never materialise because they would surely come through for you. And then one desperate moment you realise that you're utterly utterly mistaken.

Walking out has always been hard, you know you'll be labelled as the immoral, inhuman wretch by society. I don't know if Nora ever explained her decisions to the world, and if she did, was it all in vain?

Note:
In this review I've often drifted from Nora's pov to mine. It is grammatically inconsistent, and I realised that when I proofread before hitting send. But I've decided to let it stay as it is. This kind of representation in literature is hard to come by. Oh to discover their pain in yours... show less

This does two things that are really hard. 1) It delivers a murderously effective emotional blow in a very compact space, and 2) It has kept its edge for 130 years. I’ve read the criticism and I think that Ibsen’s critique of marriage is out of date, but he is spot on in the moment the Nora realizes that the person she adored and sacrificed for has never loved her, and probable never thought highly of her. I’ve lived through one of those.

English review at the bottom

El idílico retrato de un matrimonio del siglo XIX es el escenario de esta obra que lleva a la reflexión del papel del hombre y la mujer en la sociedad. En una relación común para la época tenemos a Nora, una sumisa, complaciente y perfecta esposa, que acata cada capricho de Torvaldo, el recto, sabio y proveedor esposo, esté último tiene un sentido de la moral, la responsabilidad y el orgullo que(hoy día) podríamos considerar chocante aunque en 1879 era el común. Pero, en este retrato ¿Qué sucede cuando Torvalo descubre que su maravillosa esposa no es tan perfecta como siempre lo ha creído? ¿Puede perdonarle el ser sólo humana? La relación entre ambos es odiosa, si bien se puede señalar a Nora show more como una mujer tonta y débil difiero de esa opinión, es una mujer que actúa como se espera que sea no como es realmente; mientras que Torvaldo es marcado como un imbécil que funge el papel de esposo y padre (de hecho esto último es recalcado en repetidas ocasiones por parte del matrimonio), lo cual tampoco es del todo correcto, sí bien él no es para nada de mi agrado ¿debo juzgarlo en base a la percepción de la realidad actual y no de la de su época? No debo (aunque por dentro lo hago) y por tanto no puedo señalarlo como un hombre tonto y machista.

La premisa de la historia puede ser simple pero el desarrollo de la misma muestra un crecimiento impresionante en Nora quien, tras ocho años de esconder un "terrible"(?) secreto se ve entre Escila y Caribdis, y ella, al sacar el gato de la bolsa, dolorosamente vislumbra la realidad de su vida. De hecho esta situación lleva a que todos los personajes demuestren su verdadera naturaleza fuera de esa imagen de rectitud demostrada ante la sociedad.

La escena final está rodeada de polémica y, pasado más de un siglo, en muchos aspectos estamos igual. Nora es señalada y estigmatizada por sus decisiones y, el otro culpable, es completamente ignorado o justificado en cierto modo. Con un mensaje que dependiendo del lector puede ser positivo o negativo y una metáfora que inequívocamente todos entendemos la lectura es placida y desesperante, una dicotomía que pocas veces funciona pero que aquí lo logra perfectamente.
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The idyllic portrait of a marriage nineteenth century is the setting for this work that leads to reflection of the role of men and women in society. In a common relationship for the time we have to Nora, a submissive, compaciente and perfect wife who obeys every whim of Torvald, rectum, wise and husband supplier, the latter has a sense of morality, responsibility and pride ( today) we might consider shocking but in 1879 it was the common. But in this picture, what happens when Torvalo discovers that his wonderful wife is not as perfect as he has always believed? You can forgive the only human being? The relationship between the two is odious, but may point to Nora like a fool and weak woman differ from that opinion, is a woman who acts as expected is not as it really is; while Torvald is marked as a jerk who acts the role of husband and father (in fact the latter is stressed repeatedly by marriage), which is not entirely correct, although it is not at all to my liking should I judge him based on the perception of the current reality and not of its time? I should not (although inside I do) and therefore I can not identify it as a fool and macho man.

The premise of the story may be simple but the development of it shows an impressive growth in Nora who, after eight years of hiding a "terrible" (?) secret is found between Scylla and Charybdis, and she, to get out the cat bag, painfully saw the reality of his life. In fact, this situation leads to all the characters to show their true nature beyond the image of rectitude demonstrated to society.

The final scene is surrounded by controversy and more than a century later, in many ways, we are at the same point. Nora is singled out and stigmatized by their decisions and the other guilty, is completely ignored or justified in a way. With a message depending on the reader can be positive or negative and a metaphor that unequivocally all understand reading is placid and exasperating, a dichotomy that rarely works but here it succeeds perfectly. show less

"A Doll's House" is a classic. But this edition had an introduction by R. Farquharson Sharp that kinda ruined it for me. Sharp's insistence that Ibsen, "...had no patience with those whose idea of self-development seems to consist chiefly in the abandonment of the sphere in which woman is pre-eminent and the invasion of spheres for which she is organically unsuited.Women, he used to maintain, must inevitably in the future have an immense influence in the practical world: but as mothers, and as mothers only."

But, this isn't true, is it? All that I have read and heard people say, is that his view of the role of women had changed from a very conventional upbringing's stereotypic one to a more humane expectation of the role of gender in show more society. show less

I can see why this caused such a splash when it was first performed, and I may have responded to it better if I'd seen it performed rather than read it on the page. A strong actor playing Nora might be able to make the play transcend its inherent melodrama. I can respect the project of what Henrik Ibsen was trying to do here, but I didn't believe in any of these characters as people as opposed to, well, Ibsen's dolls.

I decided to revisit Ibsen's A Doll's House (1879) while I was concurrently reading George Gissing's The Odd Women (1893). Very happy in my decision. Ibsen's masterpiece is the perfect crafting of a theatre piece as delivery mechanism for a contemporary issue of the highest magnitude. It is proffered by the literary academicians that Gissing was not influenced by Ibsen's play, insisting that Gissing did not read the Norwegian playwright until 1888, but I'm unconvinced. No matter, the two works go together quite nicely. Unintentional feminist writing they say. Hmm...