A DOLL’S HOUSE - HENRIK IBSEN

1. ‘A Doll’s House’ as a feminist play.

Henrik Ibsen (1828-1906) has certainly achieved a unique and peculiar place among
the most significant modern dramatists. He is famous not only for his plays and poems but
also for his deep philosophical and revolutionary ideas, which had an undeniable impact on
the development of literature in general and drama in particular throughout the nineteenth
and twentieth centuries. He is considered as the father of modern drama and the first
dramatist who wrote various tragedies about ordinary people. Ibsen developed the problem
plays or drama of ideas whose main emphasis is on the presentation of a drama. The
problem of Ibsen’s social drama is consistent through all his works.
Feminist theory aims to understand the nature of inequality of women and focuses on
gender politics, power relations and sexuality. It campaigns on issues such as reproductive
rights, domestic violence, maternity leave, equal pay, sexual harassment, discrimination and
sexual violence. Themes explored in feminism include discrimination, stereotyping,
objectification (especially sexual objectification), oppression and patriarchy. The basis of
feminist ideology is that rights, privileges, status and obligations should not be determined
by gender. Modern feminist theory has been extensively criticized as being predominantly,
but not exclusively, associated with western middle-class academia. Feminist activism,
however, is a grass roots movement which crosses class and race boundaries. It is culturally
specific and addresses the issues relevant to the women of that society. Some issues such as
rape, incest, mothering, are universal themes.
In ‘A Doll’s House’, he especially probed the social problem of the passively assigned
to women, in a male-oriented society. After considering the plight of Nora Helmer, he then
investigated what would have happened if she had remained at home. In A Doll’s House,
Ibsen is concerned with the problem of women’s position in society. The theme that is more
interesting to him in this play is the duties towards oneself and achieving the individuality
and individual rights in the society. Indeed, in a patriarchal society which is controlled by
men’s rules, this is woman, who should try to get her rights.
A Doll’s House is a tragedy in which Nora leaves her house by slamming of a door to
the world of new possibilities. She is going off to know her own responsibilities towards
herself. This kind of self-realization, which usually leads to a new beginning, is one of
Ibsen’s main ideologies posed in his play. Nora opens her eyes and observes that her
individuality and freedom have been taken in living with Torvald Helmer. Nora is a woman
who will not go on living her life on illusions and with a strange man anymore. Helmer has
lived according to the reasons and rationality of a man, his point of view is arranged based
on power and order. For such a systematized, disciplinary man, reputation is more important
than sacrificing himself for the family life. Now he sees that only the hope of a miracle is
left since reason no longer accomplishes anything. Nora’s winning of her individual freedom
is for self-development whereby she is to become a person in her own right and also in the
sight of others. She has discovered painfully that she has been treated as a nullity and that
this must be changed.
A Doll’s House is a spotlight on the society when people are under the pressure of
public opinion about masculine society. This play discusses social problems in general, and
individuals’ in particular, women are considered as victims and society as a victimizer. Nora,
as a new woman, experiences victory, her journey to self-realization happened as a miracle,
unexpected, uncertain, but on time. She is the protagonist of this play who lives in
decorative surroundings as a doll, and finds out that she is nothing but a precious instrument
in her husband’s hands. This knowledge helps her to strive in order to find her lost or
neglected values in a conventional society. Therefore she leaves her home and children in
opposition to the conventional and majority’s rule, society’s oppressive authority and
conventions. At first glance, Nora lives in a home that seems peaceful. Although apparently
Helmer, her husband loves her and Nora is everything for him, it reveals that Helmer is just
a proud man who only thinks about his social situation and Nora’s personality has no
meaning for him. Nora’s forging to save his life is an illegal action, but she does it, for, she
loves him. She supposes that if one day this secret is revealed, Helmer will protect her, but
when she sees that it is just a dream, an illusion and she is only like a pet animal in
Helmer’s hands, she decides to leave her home and children in a dark night and puts herself
in the outside society, inviting insult, destitution and loneliness.
The play deals with the issue of the position of woman in marriage and in the
society. In Ibsen’s time the wife is more a servant than a helper. She only states indirect
suggestions about home policies and decisions. Her husband is the leader of the family and
she is obliged to follow him; hence, she is just like an attractive instrument in her husband’s
hands to be loved and cherished but nothing more. She does not share in any family
responsibilities or troubles. As Ibsen himself, in Notes for Modern Tragedy, insists “a woman
cannot be herself in modern society. It is an exclusively male society”. In this society, a
wife, or a woman in general, has no idea about what is right or wrong. There is a dilemma
in this kind of society, natural feelings on the one hand, and belief in authority on the other
hand, lead her to distraction.
The point that Ibsen has followed is that this kind of society cannot satisfy the
natural needs of the woman for freedom and this idea forms the background to his criticism
of the contemporary life or society. He believes that there is a contradiction between the
official and the private life of the individual. He tries to suggest this idea as a commentator
on the contemporary life. In his point of view the individual is sustaining element in society;
thus, his status in the family stands as an illustration of his position in the whole society.
The power structure within the domestic home reflects the hierarchical power structures
which prevail in the outside world. Ibsen concentrates on some phases in the contemporary
situation where latent crisis suddenly becomes visible. In this way he is able to embody
contemporary social problems through the medium of women’s destiny.

2. The Character sketch of Nora Helmer.

In Henrik Ibsen's A Doll's House, Nora Helmer spends most of her on-stage time as a
doll: a vapid, passive character with little personality of her own. Her whole life is a
construct of societal norms and the expectations of others. Until she comes to the realization
that her life is a sham, she spends her whole life in a dream world. In this dream world,
Nora does not take life seriously, an attitude that led to many of the plot’s complications.

Until her change, Nora is very childlike and whimsical. Her first act on stage is her
paying the delivery body. Though his service only costs 50-p., she gives him a hundred. The
fact that this seemingly mundane occurrence is presented as the first action on stage
showcases the reckless attitude implied. Fiscal irresponsibility is a prominent factor in the
advancement of the plot. It is Nora’s fiscal irresponsibility that catalyzes the situation in
which Nora's childlike expectations of Torvald are shattered. The conflict of the story is
driven by Nora’s forging of loan documents to raise money for an expensive trip to Italy.
Krogstad, who had processed the loan, tries to blackmail Nora over the fact that she forged
the documents. Another aspect of the crime, which was not elaborated on so much, is that
even if the documents were not forged, Nora did not have any means to repay the loan
anyway.

Nora could be excused for trusting Krogstad not to blackmail her, but not recognizing
that the loan would have to be repaid is inexcusable. An important aspect of a dream world
is the suspension of cause and effect. Nora’s lackadaisical approach is very prominent
throughout the story. One example of her disregard for others is when she blames Mrs. Linde
for smuggling forbidden macaroons into the house. Though she is just trying to hide her
indiscretions, she does not care whom she hurts in the process.

Nora is always trying to make herself happy by buying things: dresses, toys, candy
etc., rather than doing anything meaningful with her life. She has never spent serious time
with her husband of nearly a decade, and is always dumping her children on the nurse
rather than bonding with them herself. In her dream world, Nora takes a back seat approach
to life and becomes like an object, reacting to other’s expectations rather than advancing
herself. As a result of her passivity, Torvald is very possessive of, frequently adding the
“my” modifier to all the pet names he calls her. In one line, Torvald calls her “[his] dearest
property”. Though she is infatuated with the acquisition of possessions, she herself is a
possession of Torvald.

Nora is being treated like a cute little girl and she happily accepts the epithets.
Torvald finds himself having to restrain Nora with rules, much as a father would have to
inhibit a child, forbidding her from pursuing candy and other temporal pleasures. The
maturity level Nora exhibits demonstrates that the relationship between Torvald and Nora is
more like father and daughter than husband and wife. She whines at Torvald, exhibits poor
judgment, does not care about the consequences of her actions, and immaturely shuts her
ears to unpleasant thoughts, placing her hand on her mouth and exclaiming, when Torvald
presents a hypothetical tragedy.

The father-daughter relationship is referred to later when Nora confronts Torvald in

the final act. She makes this connection that life with her father was like life with Torvald.
Nora’s father would force his beliefs on her and she would comply with them lest she upset
him; she would bury her personal belief under Papa’s. According to Nora, Torvald was guilty
of the same things. In addition to his insistence on her wearing the fish girl costume is his
frustration over her inability to grasp the tarantella. The costume and dance are part of
Torvald's fantasy of gazing upon Nora from across the room at a party and pretending that
she is something exotic. Torvald made Nora take on a foreign identity; Torvald used her as a
doll.

At the end of the play, the doll symbolism becomes very powerful. Nora imagines that
Torvald will two dimensionally remain morally upright and, on principle, defend Nora's
honor and not allow Krogstad to blackmail the Helmers. Nora imagines that Torvald would
sacrifice his own reputation and future to save her, but Torvald tells her that he would not
make the sacrifice, shattering Nora's dream world. At this point it becomes clear to Nora
that “[she] had been living all these years with a strange man, and [she] had born him three
children”. This realization forces Nora into the real world and she ceases to be a doll. At the
end of the above statement, she adds “Oh, I cannot bear to think of it!” which echoes her
childlike shutting out of unpleasant thoughts.

When Nora comes to the realization that her character was little more than a
composite of societal and others’ expectations, she recognizes that the strong, staunch,
principled Torvald she thought she was married to, was only a character formed out of her
own expectations. Their marriage was a doll marriage: he a doll husband, she a "doll wife”,
and their children destined to be “doll children”.
3. Trovald Helmer

A predicatable response to reading Henrik Ibsen’s A Doll’s House might be a distaste for
Nora’s feeble-minded obsession with money, possessions, and culture through the first two
acts that is then, suddenly and unexpectedly, reversed as those harsh opinions fall upon her
dumbfounded husband as Nora breaks loose from her marionette strings and takes a stand for
the potential she had that was suppressed and squandered by the men dominating her life.

Torvald Helmer is a lawyer who has been offered the post of the manager of a bank when
the play opens. The first thing that strikes us about this man is that he is very fond of his
wife and that he addresses her by all kinds of pet names such as “my little skylark” and
“my little squirrel”. Subsequently also we find him using similar expressions to show his
affection for her. At the same time we perceive that his manner of speaking to his wife is
somewhat patronizing. He speaks to her from a higher level. This becomes apparent in the
way in which he tries to impress upon her the need of thrift in spending money on
household needs. However, Helmer is not a miser. Apart from urging his wife to be
economical in spending money, he takes upon himself the role of a mentor to her in other
ways also. For instance, he has always advised her not to eat sweets, his reason being that
they would spoil her teeth.

Helmer seems more like a moralist through out the play. He seems to be quite strict with his
wife so far as his moral principles are concerned, even though in course of time it becomes
manifest to us that his own ego and his self-interest are more important to him than what
he regards as his moral principles. He scolds his wife, though very mildly, for having told
him the lie that nobody had come to the house when actually Krogstad had called upon her
in his absence. When she recommends Krogstad’s case to him, he tells her that Krogstad had
been guilty of forgery and that, furthermore, the man had not confessed his guilt but had
escaped the punishment for his guilt by employing a cunning trick. He then tells her that a
man like Krogstad, with a crime on his conscience, would always be telling lies to his wife
and children, would be spreading moral disease and infection in his whole household, and
would poison his children for years with lies and deceit. By talking like this, Helmer
unconsciously gives rise to a feeling of guilt in Nora’s mind because she too, without his
knowing it, had been guilty of forgery.

Although Helmer’s apparent reason for deciding to dismiss Krogstad is that the man had a
criminal record, Helmer’s real reason for his decision comes out when he admits to his wife
that Krogstad had been a friend of his in their boyhood and that Krogstad, on the basis of
his past intimacy with him, speaks to him now also, and in the presence of other people, in
a familiar manner, creating an embarrassing position for him. Thus, as Nora points out,
Helmer has a petty mind and is narrow in his general outlook. The hollowness of his moral
principles is exposed here because he is willing to condone Krogstad’s moral lapses if koostad
had not been speaking to him on terms of equality in the presence of other people. It is his
ego which is hurt when Krogstad calls him by his Christian name in the presence of others.

Although Helmer seems to be a man in whom the head is more important than the heart,
yet he is capable of speaking in a romantic and poetic manner about his love for Nora. On
seeing the seductive movements of Nora’s body when she performs the Tarantella, his
passion is aroused and he cannot wait to make love to her. Back in his own apartment he
gazes at her amorously, calling her his most treasured possession and claiming that all her
loveliness is his, and his alone. He then begins to speak with the ardour of a romantic and
youthful lover.

Helmer shows himself utterly unfit to face the crisis which Krogstad’s incriminating letter has
created in his life. He calls his wife a hypocrite, a liar and a criminal. He says that she has
inherited her irresponsible and vicious ways from her late father. He accuses her of having
no religion, no morality, and no sense of duty. He tells her that she has ruined his entire
happiness and put his whole future in danger. He also now believes that she is not fit to
bring up her children. Thus it is clear that Helmer’s moral principles were shallow and
fragile and that he cannot sustain them when he is faced with a crisis, just as his love for
Nora has proved to be a mere self-deception and a make-believe.

Although we feel that Helmer richly deserves the fate that he meets at Nora’s hands when
she forsakes him, he does appear to be a somewhat pathetic figure at the end. He tries his
utmost to make her change her mind, but his appeals and assurances to her prove futile. He
offers to live with her as a kind of brother to her, instead of as her husband. He then tells
her that she would be his wife no matter where she is or what she does. He wants her
permission to write to her and to send her money if she needs it. But her answer to all
these suggestions and requests from him is a firm “no”. We do feel sorry for him at this
point, but he has brought this punishment upon himself by his own behaviour and by his
own wrong notions of the relationship between a husband and a wife. His ego-centricity, his
false ideas of respectability, his ingrained conservatism and conventionality, his self-
complacency, his feeling of his own moral superiority and, above all, his possessive attitude
towards his wife are the causes which wreck his conjugal life. If the responsibility can be
shared between Helmer and Nora, with neither dominating the other and with both being
true to themselves rather than dutifully fulfilling their gender roles, then the question of
gender subsides, for both are equal and, in a sense, androgynous.