A Doll’s Houseby Henrik Ibsen

A Doll’s House

Some Facts:

• Born to a middle-class family

whose economic stability was

threatened during his childhood,

Ibsen used A Doll’s House as one

vehicle for questioning the

importance—and the tyranny—of

wealth. This play comes from

Ibsen’s middle period, when his

most radical ideas were presented.

• Published in 1879

• Written originally in Norwegian (Et dukkehjem)

• The play was highly controversial when first

published since it is sharply critical of Victorian

marriage norms.

• Written while Ibsen was in Rome and Amalfi,

Italy

A Revolutionary Playwright

• With revolution fever permeating much of Europe in

1848, a new modern perspective was beginning to

emerge in the literary and dramatic world,

challenging the Romanic tradition.

• Ibsen has been credited for mastering and

popularizing the realist drama derived from this new

perspective.

• His plays were both read and performed throughout

Europe (in numerous translations) like no other

dramatist before. A Doll’s House was published and

premiered in Copenhagen.

Some things to look for in the play’s

structure:

• The events are almost never told in the

order in which they occurred.

• The ordering of the telling of the incidents

can be as important as the incidents

themselves.

• Events are often told from several

perspectives so that some characters

know certain facts before others do.

• Ibsen’s surface events are straightforward and

chronological.

• He uses his characters to reveal important info

about earlier incidents

• These revelations build tension in the play

because some characters obtain info that others

do not have, and that info changes the dynamics

of the play.

The importance of exposition

• This is background information that is

revealed through the course of the play.

• Exposition affects character development,

relationships, or the progress of the plot.

• In classical drama, a chorus or character

gives an initial speech to orient the audience.

• Ibsen was one of first playwrights to weave

exposition into the play itself.

• Effect is a gradual rise of tension in the

conflict

Character development terminology

• Protagonist—main character

• Antagonist—opposes the main character

• Round characters—fully formed characters with

an interior life

• Flat characters--limited personalities and offer

the audience little real interest. The role of a flat

character is to participate in incidents that move

the action forward or to behave in a predictable

way that moves another character to change

(Anna-Maria). Most flat characters are also

static characters; they don’t change or grow over

the course of the play.

• Dynamic character—the character grows

or changes (often also a round character).

• Stock characters--a stereotype,

manifesting universal characteristics. A

stock, flat, or static character is used as a

foil for a more highly developed character.

In this case, the less developed character

is used as a point of contrast in which a

dynamic character’s growth is made more

noticeable by the sameness of the foil.

Conflict in A Doll’s House

• ADH combines a dominant external conflict

with the internal conflict of one or more

characters.

• We don’t see much of Nora’s internal conflict

but her psychological development in the

course of the story is revealed at the play’s

ending.

Structure of A Doll’s House

The “Well Made Play”

1. Tight plot: revolves around a missing

element—letters, a lost or stolen

document, or an absent person

2. Subplots related to the missing element

adds tension. They often supply

exposition.

“Well-Made Play” (cont.)

3. A climax or scene of revelation is when

the missing element is revealed. Often

saves the hero from ruin or

embarrassment.

4. A denouement, or closing scene, is

where all earlier questions are explained.

This follows very soon after the climax.

Ibsen’s twist on the “Well Made Play””

• Ibsen’s play was notable for exchanging the last

act’s unraveling for a discussion.

• Critics agree that, up until the last moments of the

play, A Doll’s House could easily be just another

modern drama broadcasting another comfortable

moral lesson.

• 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—modern drama.

Major Themes

• Roles and Relationships between Women

and Men

• Appearance vs. reality

• Deception

• The Individual vs. society

• Money/materialism

• Morality

Other things to notice

• Not a lot of figurative language and

imagery because this is a realistic play

• Lots of visual symbolism

• Use of monologues to reveal character’s

world views

• Situational Irony

• Foreshadowing

Where is the “Wise Old Man”?

• Ibsen’s realist drama disregarded the tradition of

the older male moral figure.

• Dr. Rank, the character who should serve this

role, is far from a moral force; instead, he is

sickly—rotting from a disease picked up from his

father’s earlier sexual exploits—and his

lasciviousness by openly coveting of Nora.

• The choice to portray both Dr. Rank and the

potentially matronly Mrs. Linde as imperfect real

people was a novel approach at the time.

The Feminist Message• The play rocked the stages of Europe when the

play was premiered.

• Nora’s rejection of marriage and motherhood

scandalized contemporary audiences.

• In fact, the first German productions of the play

in the 1880s had an altered ending at the

request of the producers.

• Ibsen referred to this version as a “barbaric

outrage” to be used only in emergencies.

• Ibsen was reacting to the uncertain tempo of the

time; Europe was being reshaped with

revolutions.

• The revolutionary spirit and the emergence of

modernism influenced Ibsen's choice to focus on

an unlikely hero—a housewife—in his attack on

middle-class values.

• Quickly becoming the talk of parlors across

Europe, the play succeeded in its attempt to

provoke discussion. In fact, it is the numerous

ways that the play can be read (and read it

was—the printed version of A Doll’s House sold

out even before it hit the stage) that make the

play so interesting.