Ibsen and Dolls House

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Shattered Back Wall: Performative Utterance of "A Doll's House"

Author(s): Branislav JakovljevicSource: Theatre Journal, Vol. 54, No. 3 (Oct., 2002), pp. 431-448Published by: The Johns Hopkins University Press

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Shattered

Back

Wall:

Performative Utterance of A DoWs House

Branislav

Jakovljevic

The

Performative

(on)

Stage

In

the last

decades

of the twentieth

century,

J.

L.

Austin's

performative

speech

act

theory emerged

as

one

of the

most

passionately

contested

philosophical

ideas.1

There

aremany reasons for this. One of themost significant is that a performative speech act

reintroduces the

referent

into

linguistics:

it

brings language,

so

to

speak,

back

to

the

body

and

to

the

stormy

question

of

identity.

The

general

performative

speech

act

theory

oversteps

the

disciplinary

boundaries of

analytical philosophy

and

enters

the

domains of

poststructuralist theory,

feminist

theory,

and,

of

course,

performance

theory,

to

name some.

This

is,

in

part,

due

to

the brilliant

clarity

and

simplicity

of

Austin's

idea

to

"isolate" utterances

"in

which

by saying something

or

in

saying

something

we

are

doing

something."2

The

other

source

of

what

seems

to

be

the

unending

actuality

of

Austin's

theory

is

the

way

in

which,

not

so

brilliantly,

he

excludes

certain

performative

utterances: "a

performative

utterance

will,

for

example,

be

in

a

peculiar

way

hollow

or

void

if

said

by

an

actor

or

spoken

in

a

soliloquy

. . .

Language

in

such

circumstances is

in

a

special way?intelligibly?used

not

seriously,

but

in

ways

parasitic

upon

its

normal

use?ways

which

fall

under

etiolations

of

language"

(22,

italics

in

the

original). Paradoxically,

this

attempt

to

exclude

literature

from

the

theory

of

performative speech

acts

attracts

literary

critics,

and

rightfully

so;

the

performative

speech

act

theory

not

only

introduces

"plain speech"

to

philosophy

but also

establishes

powerful

connections

between

literature and

its

surroundings,

between

writer

and

reader,

or

writer and

critic.

That

is,

until

we

hit

upon

Austin's

Branislav

Jakovljevic

recently

received his

PhDfrom

the

Department of Performance

Studies

at

New

York

University.

His

articles

have

been

published

in The

Drama

Review,

PAJ,

Theater,

Rec,

Primer

Acto,

and Museum

Management

and

Curatorship.

I

would like to

thank

Peggy

Phelan,

who read this work

at

the

various

stages

of

writing,

and Yelena

Gluzman

and

Matvei

Yankelevich for

being insightful

and

loving

readers.

I

am

also

grateful

to

Susan

Bennett,

David

Rom?n,

and the

outside readers of

Theatre

Journal

for their valuable

comments

and

suggestions.

1

Reception

of

Austin's

theory

in the

seventies

was

marked

by

the

Jacques

Derrida-John

J.

Searle

debate

on

the

pages

of the

journal

Glyph,

while

in

the

eighties

Jean-Francois

Lyotard's

theory

of

postmodernism

added

to

Austin's

theory

a new

valence

and

a

whole

new

set

of

contradictions.

Alain

Badiou,

one

of

the most

prominent

French

thinkers of

the

1990's,

adamantly

rejects

Austin's

theory

and

philosophical

projects

that rest

on

it.

2

J.

L.

Austin,

How to Do

Things

with Words

(Cambridge:

Harvard

University

Press,

1962),

12,

italics

in

the

original.

Subsequent

references

will be

included

parenthetically

in

the

text.

Theatre

Journal

54

(2002)

431^48 ?

2002

by

The

Johns

Hopkins University

Press







432

/

Branislav

Jakovljevic

emphatic

exclusion of

literary

performatives

from his

theory.

This adamant

rejection

of

artistic

uses

of

language

points

precisely

toward

the

theatricality

deeply

imbedded

in

Austin's

performative speech

act

theory.3

In

bringing together

Austin's

analytical philosophy

and Ibsen's

analytical

drama,

my

aim

is

neither

to

search for

paradoxes

and

inconsistencies

in

Austin's

lectures

nor

to

dispute

the

validity

of his

general

theory

of

performative

speech

act.

Instead,

I

believe that

it

is

much

more

important

and useful

to

examine

the

ways

in

which

theatre and

Austin's

theory

inform and

support

each another.

A

series

of

questions

arise

from this

juxtaposition:

How

do the theatre and the

performative

act

upon

each

other? What

is

the

role

of

performatives

in

a

dramatic

text

and

in

a

theatrical

performance?

Is

there

a

critical

approach

to

theatre

that is

not

concerned

only

with

its

formal

and

aesthetic

properties

but also with

its

performativity (in

Austin's

sense

of

the

word)?

Assuming

that Ibsen's

A

Doll's House

belongs precisely

to

the

kind of

theatre

that Austin

sought

to

exclude from his

theory,

I

will

argue

in

this

essay

for the

possibility

and

effectiveness of

a

performative analysis

of

theatre,

an

analysis

that

begins

from

the

examination of

the

process

of

writing

and

extends

to

its various

performances.

Also,

I will

show

that

a

theatrical

act,

and

not

an

isolated utterance

delivered

on

stage,

can

achieve

an

impact

similar

to

that of

a

performative speech

act.

In

other

words,

I

will look

not

only

at

how theatre

is

performed

but

also

at

the

ways

in

which theatre

performs.

In doing so, Iwould like to start at the very opening of Ibsen's A Doll's House. At the

beginning,

there

is

just

an

ordinary,

comfortable

drawing

room:

"A

warm,

well

furnished

room,

reflecting

more

taste

than

expense.

At

stage

right,

a

door leads

to

a

hall.

Another

door,

stage

left,

leads

to

Helmer's

study.

There

is

a

piano

between these

two

doors."4 Ibsen's

family

drama is

set

within the

space

of

perspectival

constraints.

The entire

play

takes

place

in

this

single

set

that

represents

the

living

room

in

a

middle

class

family

flat.

In

his book

Theatrical

Space

in

Ibsen,

Chekhov and

Strindberg:

Public

Forms

of

Privacy,

Freddie Rokem extends the

perspectival metaphor

to

Ibsen's dramatic

technique,

asserting

that "the

focal

point

of the

set

directs

our

attention

to

sins

committed by the hero, usually in the distant past."5 He shows that the orphanage

visible

through

the

large

windows

of

the

conservatory

in

Ibsen's Ghosts

plays

the

double role of

the

visual and

symbolic

focal

point

of

the

play.

In

the

bourgeois

drama,

reality

of the

stage

is

always

measured

against

the

truth

of the outside

world,

and

this

outside world

enters

the enclosed

visual

space

of

the

drawing

room

through

the

windows. The

window

in A

Doll's

House is

located

downstage

on

a

sidewall.

Removed

from

the focal

point

as

far

as

possible,

it

is

a

"blind window" which

is

not

engaged

in

the

organization

of

the

perspectival

image.

Rokem

concludes

that A Doll's

House,

3

Barbara

Johnson

asserts

that

"for the

very

word

[Austin]

uses

to

name

'mere

doing/

the

very

name

he

gives

to

that from which

he excludes

theatricality,

is

none

other

than

the word

that

most

commonly

names

theatricality:

the word

perform.

As

if

this

were

not

ironic

enough,

exactly

the

same

split

can

be

found

in

Austin's other

favorite word:

act." For

her excellent discussion

of Austin's

theory,

see

Barbara

Johnson,

The Critical

Difference:

Essays

in

the

Contemporary

Rhetoric

of Reading

(Baltimore:

The

Johns

Hopkins

University

Press,

1980),

65,

italics in the

original.

4

Henrik

Ibsen,

A

Doll's

House,

trans. Frank

McGuinnes

(London:

Faber and

Faber,

1996),

1.

Subsequent

references

will

be included

parenthetically

in

the text.

5

Freddie

Rokem,

Theatrical

Space

in

Ibsen,

Chekhov

and

Strindberg:

Public Forms

of

Privacy

(Ann

Arbor:

UMI Research

Press,

1986),

17.







SHATTERED ACK

WALL

/

433

"Ibsen's

most

optimistic

social

drama,"

does

not

have

"a

clear focal

point

with

which

the hero has

to

struggle."6

However,

the

large,

curtained

window

on

the sidewall

is

not

the

only

window

in

this

bourgeois

family living

room.

At

the end of the second

act

of

A

Doll's

House

Nora

Helmer

anxiously

expects

the

letter from

Krogstad

in

which

he

threatens

to

reveal

the

major

misdeed of her

past.

It

surely

arrives:

A

Letter

falls

into

the

post

box.We hear

Krogstad's

footsteps

which

gradually

diminish

as

he

goes

down the stairs. Nora

gives

a

stifled

cry,

runs across

the

floor

to the

sofa

table. There is

a

short

pause.

The

post

box. The letter's there.

Torvald,

Torvald

-

we are

lost.

Mrs Linde

enters

with

the costume.

. .

.

Nora

speaks

hoarsely,

in

a

stifled

way.

Nora:

Kristine,

come

here.

Mrs

Linde

throws

the

clothes

on

the

sofa.

Mrs Linde: What's

wrong? Why

are

you

so

upset?

Nora: Come here. Do

you

see

the letter?

Look

-

through

the

glass

-

in the

post

box.

Mrs Linde:

Yes,

I

can see

it.

[67]

We

can

see

it.

The

glassed

letterbox

is

the window

through

which the Helmer

household

opens

toward the outside world. This window does

not

allow

us

to

see

the

physical

space,

the

landscape

with

fjords

and

orphanages

in the distant

background

of

the

stage.

Instead,

it

is

an

opening

toward the

discursive,

legal

space

that

surrounds

Ibsen's drama: the

entire

play

is

centered

on

letters,

cards,

contracts,

signatures

and

"papers"

in

general.

These written documents are not

only

the hard

proofs

of

past

actions;

they

fuel the

ongoing

action

in

the

drama

and

every

actual

performance

of the

play.

In

a

word,

A

Doll's

House is

a

play

about

writing.

It is

a

play

about

writing

with

consequences,

about words that

act

and

generate

action,

and

it is

precisely

the

consequences

of

different kinds of

writing

that

we

see

played

out

on

the

stage.

Even

more

precisely,

it

is

a

play

about

non-fictional

writing,

about

legal

writing,

writing

that

obliges

and

acts,

writing

that

teems

with

performative

speech

acts.

Like

an

utterance

made

on

stage,

a

performative

utterance

vitally depends

on

its

environment.

Every performative

has

its

own

stage,

its

own

situation,

which

is

inseparable

from

the utterance

itself.

In

the conclusion of the

fourth

Harvard lecture

Austin

acknowledges

this

"theatricality"

inherent

to

performative

speech

acts:

"we

must

consider the

total situation

in

which utterance is

issued?the

total

speech

act?if

we are

to

see

the

parallel

between

statements

and

performative

utterances,

and how

each

can

go

wrong"

(52).

By

"statement" Austin

refers

to

constatives,

utterances

that

are

not

used

to

perform

an

action but

instead

to

describe,

report,

or

"constate"

a

certain

state

of affairs.

He

stresses

that while constatives

are

subject

to

categories

of

truth

and

falsity, performatives

can

be

judged only according

to

their

"felicity"

and

"infelicity,"

or

according

to

their effectiveness.

The force of

a

performative

speech

act

is

just

as

important

as its

meaning.

Like a theatrical

performance,

a

performative

speech

act

is

reiterable:

it

is

an

act

that has "the

general

character of ritual

or

ceremonial,"

it is

a

"conventional act"

(19,

italics

in

the

original).

Austin does

not

stop

at

that,

and

throughout

his lectures he

returns

to

considerations of ceremonial

acts,

social

conventions,

and

circumstances

of

utterance.

6

Ibid.,

27.







434

/

Branislav

Jakovljevic

Certainly,

Austin's

objective

is

not

to

teach

us

how

to

do

things

with

words.

He

is

interested

in

appearance

and

performance,

in

language

and

action.

In

his

Harvard

lectures he examines how

performance

appears

in

language

and what kinds

of

linguistic

appearance

prevent

performance

from

happening.

In another series of

lectures,

held between

1947

and 1958 under the title

Sense

and

Sensibilia,

Austin

focused

on

appearance

and

perception.

In

the

penultimate

lecture he hinted

that

his

primary

concern

is

not

perception

but

knowledge.

Austin's

main

criticism of

empirical

philosophy

is

that it

establishes

its

own

foundations

as

something

that

is

beyond

doubt,

something

that

is

incorrigible:

Reflections

of

this

kind

apparently

give

rise

to

the idea that there is

or

could be

a

kind

of

sentence

in

the

utterance

of which

I

take

no

chances

at

all,

my

commitment is

absolutely

minimal;

so

that

in

principle nothing

could show that

I

had made

a

mistake,

and

my

remark

would be

"incorrigible."7

If,

in

Sense

and Sensibilia

Austin

denies

the

"incorrigibility"

of

empirical philosophy's

non-committed

speaker,

in

How

to

do

Things

with

Words,

he

sets

out

to

find

the

total

opposite

to

this absence of

commitment. The

"speaker"

of

a

performative

is

absolutely

committed

to

the

utterance.

Indeed,

the

very

possibility

of

the

performative

utterance

depends

on

a

speaker's

commitment to

her

speech.

A

performative

utterance

does

not

belong

to

the

world of

disembodied,

purely

linguistic

statements. It

reminds

us

that

language always

comes

from the

body,

and

not

only

that,

but that

it

is

a

bodily

act.8

This commitment of the

speaker

at the moment of utterance is

responsible,

for the

great part,

for Austin's famous exclusion of theatre from his

theory.

However,

it

would

be

wrong

to

reduce Austin's

general

attitude toward theatre

to

the

two

instances

in

which

he takes

acting

and

joking

as

perfect examples

of

non-committed

utterance.

The

role of theatre

in

performative

speech

act

theory

is

predicated

not

only by

commitment

of

the

speaker

but

also

by

what

we

might

call the

public

character

of

speech.

I

will

use

two

examples

to

illustrate this

point.

First

is the sudden

appearance

of the

reference

to

Greek

tragedy

in

the

conclusion

of

the

first

lecture.

Austin

begins

to

wrap-up

the

introductory

lecture

by

restating

the

point

that

a

performative

utterance

may

be

accompanied

by

an

appropriate gesture

or

that

it

may

be

completely

replaced by

a

gesture.

Then,

he

moves

to

a

performative

that

does

not

rely

on

a

conventional

phrase, speech,

and

even

gesture:

"the

awe-inspiring

performative

...

I

promise

to

. .

."

(9).

Three

years

later,

during

the discussion

that

followed his

presentation

of

the

paper

Performative-Constative

at

Royaumont,

France,

Austin addressed

briefly

the structure

of

the

"awe-inspiring" performative,

which,

he

said,

is

inseparable

from "that

species

of

mental

act

which

accompanies

in

general

every

promise

made

in

good

faith

to

another,

and

which makes

us

say

sotto

voce

T

promise

myself

to

keep

the

promise

I've

just

made'."9

Toward the end

of the

7

J.

L.

Austin,

Sense

and Sensibilia

(London:

Oxford

University

Press,

1962),

112,

italics in the

original.

8

In

one

of the best

discussions

of

a

literary speech

act in dramatic literature written

to

date

The

Literary

Speech

Act: Don

Juan

with

J.

L. Austin

(Ithaca,

New

York: Cornell

University

Press,

1983),

Shoshana

Felman

observed

that the relation between

utterance

and

body

is

"a relation

consisting

at

once

of

incongruity

and

of

inseparability,"

and

that

for

this

reason

performative

utterance is

"scandalous":

"the scandal consists

in

the

fact that

the

act

cannot know what it is

doing"

(96).

9

J.

L.

Austin,

"Performative-Constative"

in

Philosophy

and

Ordinary

Language,

ed.

Charles

E.

Caton

(Urbana:

University

of

Illinois

Press,

1963),

38.







SHATTERED

ACK

WALL

/

435

discussion,

the

respondent

Poirier

characterized this kind of

"mental act"

as a

"performative

thought,"

which

depends

on

the

"hazier

laws

of

belief,

of

probability,

of

desire,

of

hope,

of volition."10

From

a

loud

utterance to

whisper

(sotto

voce),

to

thought,

to

the

unconscious,

perceptibility

of

a

performative

decreases until

it

completely

disappears

from

the fields of

philosophy

and

linguistics.

But

back

at

Harvard,

Austin

managed

to

escape

the

"hazy

laws"

by driving

his

argument

toward

the

question

of

commitment:

I

must not

be

joking,

for

example,

nor

writing

a

poem.

But

we

are

apt

to

have

a

feeling

that

their

being

serious consists in their

being

uttered

as

(merely)

the

outward and

visible

sign,

for

convenience

or

other

record

or

for

information,

of

an

inward

and

spiritual

act:

from

which it is but

a

short

step

to

go

on

to

believe

or

to

assume

without

realizing

that

for

many

purposes

the outward

utterance

is

a

description,

true

or

false,

of

the

occurrence

of the

inward

performance.

[9]11

He then

offers the

example

from

Hippolytus

in

the

original

Greek.

In

his

comments

on

Austin's

lectures,

philosopher Stanley

Cavell underlines the

significance

of

this

reference

which

was

customarily

overlooked

in

discussion

of

Austin and

theatre:

"When

Hippolytus

says,

'My

tongue

swore

to,

but

my

heart

did

not,'

is

he

an

actor

on

a

stage?

Does

he think he

is,

that

is,

takes himself

to

be

on some

inner

stage?"12

Austin

offers

his

own

translation

of

Euripides'

line:

"i.e.

my

tongue

swore

to,

but

my

heart

(or

mind

or

other

backstage

artiste)

did

not"

(10).

Tongue,

the

utterer,

the

speech

organ

occupies

the

proscenium.

The

organ

of

speech

is not

the

speech

itself.

The

utterer

is

by

no means

alone,

nor

is the

backstage

area

vacated, enclosed,

and

peaceful.

Austin

prompts

his

translation

of

Euripides,

his

recitation

of

Euripides'

words,

by

yet

another

layer

of hidden

scenic

machinery.

In

the

footnote added

to

the

line

from

Hippolytus,

Austin

says13:

"But I

do

not

mean

to

rule

out

all the

offstage performers?the

lights

men,

the

stage

manager,

even

the

prompter;

I

am

objecting only

to

certain

officious

understudies,

who would

duplicate

the

play"

(10).

Austin

talks

not

only

about

language

but also about

voice

and

gesture,

and about

organs?hand, tongue, heart, the brain itself?that take part in the production of

language.

These

organs

bring

about bodies

in

their mutual

relationships:

the hands

are

stage

hands,

and there

are

also

managers,

and

even

prompters.

Second,

this

brief reference

to

theatrical

apparatus

points

toward his

detailed

discussion of the

nature

of

perception

and illusion

in

Sense and

Sensibilia.

Here,

like

elsewhere,

Austin insists

on

the concreteness

of

experience:

"If

...

a

church

were

cunningly camouflaged

so

that

it

looked

like

a

barn,

how could

any

serious

question

10

Ibid.,

49.

11

Italics

in

the

original.

Austin's dismissal of

psychologism

and

empiricism

can

be

traced

to

Gottlob

Frege,

whose

The

Foundations

of

Arithmetic he

translated

into

English.

This

translation

was

the

only

book-length

work

that Austin

published

during

his lifetime.

For

Frege's

opinion

on

empiricism

and

psychology

in

relation

to

analytic logic,

see

The

Foundations

of

Arithmetic

(Evanston:

Northwestern

University

Press,

1968),

especially

pages

v,

viii, 3,11,

and

37.

12

Stanley

Cavell,

A Pitch

of

Philosophy: Autobiographical

Exercise

(Cambridge:

Harvard

University

Press,

1994),

90.

13

Here,

one

can

not

avoid

raising

the obvious

question:

how

was

this

footnote

presented

(per

formed)

in the

lecture?







436

/

Branislav

Jakovljevic

be

raised

about

what

we see

when

we

look

at

it?We

see,

of

course,

a

church that

now

looks

like

a

barn.

We

do

not

see

an

immaterial

barn,

an

immaterial

church,

or

an

immaterial

anything

else."14

The

analogy

with

theatre

is

more

than

obvious.

It

is the

very

materiality

of theatrical

stage,

not

just

its illusionist

qualities,

that

provides

the

continuity

between

stage

and auditorium.

The "abstracted"

and "erased" fourth

wall

is

just

that:

an

abstraction and

an

erasure.

The

convention

of

the

"invisible,"

immaterial fourth

wall

permits

the

spectator

to

scrutinize the

events

on

stage,

while

at

the

same

time

it

prevents

the

events

to

"spill

over"

from the

stage

into

auditorium.

A

happy,

successful

performative speech

act

uttered

on

the naturalistic

stage

threatens

to,

as

theatre

professionals

put

it,

"break the

fourth

wall" and

render

null and void the

very

conventions

under which

it

was

uttered.

This

is,

I

hope,

the

appropriate

moment

to

propose

that the

performative

force

of

naturalistic

theatre

is

directed

not

toward the immaterial

front

wall but toward the

visible,

material

rear

wall that

delineates the

physical

boundaries of the

stage.

If

the

immaterial front

wall

establishes

the

relation of

discontinuity

between

stage

and

auditorium,

then the material back

wall

restores the

continuity;

it

is

a

concrete

object

with other

concrete

objects

arranged

on

and

in

relation

to

it,

which evokes

the

concrete

world

behind

it.

The

offstage

area

of the naturalistic

theatre

is

just

as

important

as

the

stage

itself.

It is

the

realm of

pure

potentiality.

The

encounter

between the

playwright,

performers,

and

the audience does

not

happen,

as

it is

commonly

assumed,

on

the

transparent

screen of the invisible front wall. It occurs in the

offstage

area.

Offstage

is

the

ambiguous

sphere

where

the

"unreality"

of theatrical

event

and

experiential

"reality"

of the audience

interact,

merge,

and

shape

each

other.

If

the

footlights

and

the

convention

of

the

immaterial

fourth

wall

affirm

the neat

distinction between

"reality"

and

"unreality,"

the back

wall

and

offstage

area

question

this distinction.

As

the

continuation

of the fictional

reality

of the

stage

event,

the

offstage

area

is

the

most

concrete

immediately

behind the

back

wall.

The cleft

on

the

mail

box

in A

Doll's

House

suggests

what

is

beyond

the Helmer

family

room,

the

staircase,

the

entrance

door

of

the

apartment

building,

the

street,

and the

city.

The

offstage

is

not

only

a

spatial

but

also

a

temporal

category.

In

relation

to

the

opening night

and

performance

in

general,

the

generation

of the theatrical

event,

from

the

process

of

script

writing

to

dress

rehearsals,

happens

offstage. Offstage

time

is

just

as

ambiguous

as

offstage

space:

it

can

be slowed

down

or

accelerated;

it

can

be

described,

analyzed,

and

observed

in

the

immediate

temporal vicinity

of

the

dramatic

event,

or

in

a

distant

past.

The

importance

of the

present

tense

of

the

play

"for

conjuring

up

of the

past"

is,

according

to

Peter

Szondi,

the

key

element of Ibsen's

analytical technique

of

his later

plays.15

This

is

not

so

in the

case

of

A

Doll's House:

here

the

ongoing

events

of the

play

have the function of

conjuring

up

the future.

Or,

more

precisely,

the

offstage

past,

the dramatic

present,

and the

performative

future are

aligned

by

a

series

of

performative

speech

acts.

Considered

in

their

totality, performative

speech

acts

employed

on

and

backstage

of

A

Doll's

House

reveal much

more

about

the

characters

than is

discernable from the

naturalistic

logic

of the

play.

14

Austin,

Sense

and

Sensibilia,

30,

italics in

the

original.

15

Peter

Szondi,

Theory of

Modern

Drama,

ed.

and

trans.

Michael

Hays

(Minneapolis: University

of

Minnesota

Press,

1987),

16.







SHATTERED

ACK

WALL

/

437

Nora's

Knowledge

In

his considerations of

a

hypothetical

dictionary

of "verbs

that act" Austin

mentions two kinds of sources: the plain English dictionary and the law books.16 He

repeatedly

compared

the

word

"performative"

used

in his

analytic

philosophy

with

the word

"operative"

as

used

in

the

language

of

jurisprudence.

One

of his

favorite

ways

of

illustrating

the

performative-constative

antithesis

was

to

compare

it

with

the

"preamble"

and

"operative"

clause

of

a

legal

instrument.17

Even

in

his dismissal of

a

parasitic

performative,

Austin

uses

the

lawyers'

idiom:

if

uttered

in

a

joke

or

in

a

poem,

the

performative

is

"null and void."18 Performative

speech

acts

are

thus divided

into normal and

not

normal,

serious and

not

serious,

into

utterances

of

judges

and of

jesters.

The

last distinction

describes

accurately

the division of

characters

in

A

Doll's

House, who fall into two categories sharply distinguished by gender and profession:

male

lawyers

and

their

wives. Austin

certainly

does

not

fail

to

marry

the

dictionary

of

plain

English

and

the law books

by

privileging

of the "I do"

as

an

exceptionally

clear

example

of

a

total

speech

act.

However,

in

the

process

something

else

gets

interlocked,

or

should

we

say

wedded.

As Eve

Kosofsky

Sedgwick points

out,

the matrimonial

"I

do"

always

brings

about

another

familial

relationship,

so

often

expressed

in

the

performative

"Shame

on

you."19

Shortly,

we are

going

to

see

that

gender

performativity

of

A

Doll's

House

effectively

enacts

the double relation of

"I

do"/

"Shame

on

you."

In

her

important

distinction

between the

performative

aspects

of

guilt

and

shame,

Sedgwick asserts that, the latter is "available formetamorphosis, refiarning, refiguration,

fnmsfiguration,

affective

and

symbolic loading

and

deformation;

but

unavailable

for

effecting

the work of

purgation

and

deontological

closure."20

A

Doll's

House

shows

the

workings

of the

"transformational

grammar"

of

shame

in all

of

its

stages.

In

the

opening part

of the

play,

Ibsen

presents

the

image

of

a

happy

household

infested

with

unhappy performatives.

Already

in

the

first

exchange

between

Nora

and

Helmer,

he fires

a

series

of

performatives

of

improper naming.

He

addresses

Nora

as

"skylark," "squirrel,"

"little bird." This does

not exhaust

the

inventory

of

Nora's

improper

names:

later

in

the

play

Torvald calls her

a

"songbird,"

a

"spendthrift,"

a

"sweet tooth," and "Miss Stubbornshoes." This improper naming (aswell as Torvald's

performative gestures

such

as

pinching

Nora's

ear

jokingly)

suggests

lack

of

seriousness

on

Torvald's

part

in

his

dealings

with

Nora. Hailed

with

multiple

names,

Nora

responds

in

multiple

ways.

The

entire

macaroon

game

reveals

a

network

of

unhappy

performatives.

Asked

if

she had

any

macaroons,

Nora

(mis)fires

a

performative:

"No,

Torvald,

I

really

swear

it"

(7).

Furthermore,

in

the

continuation of

the

game,

she

turns

a

different face

to

each

character with whom

she interacts.

In

the

encounter

with

Mrs.

Linde and

Dr.

Rank,

Nora

utters

a

bold lie about the

origin

of

the candies

that

are

banned

in

the Helmer

household.

Her

lie

is

a

stifled

cry

of

a

woman

who entertains her

husband

and fears

him

16

In

the

last

chapter

of

How

to

do

Things

with Words

Austin outlines

a

provisional

list

of

performative

verbs.

His

idea

of

a

dictionary

of

performatives

was

pursued by

Anna

Wierzbicka. See

her

English

Speech

Act

Verbs: A

Semantic

Dictionary

(Sidney:

Academic

Press

Australia,

1987).

17

Austin,

"Performative-Constative,"

23.

18

Ibid.,

23.

19

Eve

Kosofsky

Sedgwick,

"Queer

Performativity: Henry

James's

'The

Art

Of the

Novel/"

GLQ:

A

Journal

of

Lesbian and

Gay

Studies

1.1

(1993):

4.

20

Ibid.,

13.







438

/

Branislav

Jakovljevic

at

the

same

time.

Torvald's

relation

to

Nora is

defined

by

his

incessant

repetition

of

performatives

of

improper

naming.

These

failed

performatives

account

for

a

Butlerian

performative

interpellation,

an

authoritarian

hailing,

which

shows

"the

power

and the

force of

the

law

to

compel

fear

at

the

same

time

that

it

offers

recognition

at

an

expense."21

But,

that

is not

all

there

is in

Nora's and

Torvald's

performatives.

At

the

beginning

of

the first

act,

Nora

is

alone

on

stage.

She

holds

a

bag

of

macaroons.

Torvald

greets

her

from

his

study,

and

then

"he

opens

the

door,

looks

out,

pen

in

hand"

(2).

Nora

quickly

hides

the

bag,

and

Torvald

holds

his

pen.

She

has

been

interrupted

in

the

act

of

transgression;

he has

been

interrupted

in

the

act

of

writing.

Her

lips

still

taste

sweet

with

candy;

his

pen

still

wet

with

ink.

Lips

and

pen,

mouth

and

hand,

speech

and

writing?the

characters

in

A

Doll's House

are

deeply

marked

by

the kind

of

writing they perform, by their performatives ofwriting and inwriting.

Torvald's

non-serious

manner

in

his

interaction

with

Nora

stands

in

reverse

propor

tion to

his

attitude

of

utter

seriousness

in

the

world of

jurisprudence

and

business.

The

initial

conflict

between

Torvald

and

his

antagonist

Krogstad

happens

near

the

very

beginning

of

the

play.

This

sole

face-to-face encounter

between

them

occurs,

significantly,

offstage.

Both of

them

are

lawyers;

Helmer

doesn't

hide

that

he

attended

law

school with

Krogstad.

Although they

share

the

same

profession,

the

two

lawyers

come

from

different?even

opposite?ethical

backgrounds.

Helmer

had

been

a

dedi

cated

civil

servant

until

he

met

his

wife Nora

while

investigating

her

father's

dubious

business ventures. He left his low

paying

job

at a

ministry

and toiled to

support

his

family

as

a

free-lance

lawyer

until

he

lost his

health

and

almost

died.

Unlike

him,

Krogstad

was

unscrupulous

in

his

business

dealings

when

it

came

to

providing

for

his

wife and

two

children.

Helmer

and

Krogstad

do

not

share

only

their

pleasant

student

memories,

their

education,

and

their

professional

occupation

but

also

their

passion

for

writing.

For

the

honorable

Helmer

as

well

as

for

the

notorious

Krogstad,

writing

is

a

secret

weapon,

a

utilitarian

and

effective

means

for

reaching

their

goals.

In

act

two

of

A

Doll's House

Krogstad

is

portrayed

as

being

a

writer

before

anything

else. Nora

admits

to

Torvald

that she is scared to

death

of

Krogstad

because

he

"writes in

the

most

dreadful

newspapers

...

[that]

can

do

...

untold

harm"

(50).

Writing

leaves traces

on

paper

and

on

the

body;

it

bruises,

injures,

and

destroys.

Nora

says

for

example:

"People

wrote

such

wicked

things

about

Papa

in

the

papers.

Remember that.

They

slandered him

so

viciously."

Torvald,

however,

is

immune

to

this

kind

of

injury:

"Don't

you

see

it's

insulting

to

think

I

would

be

frightened

because

some

failed,

depraved

hack

wants

revenge

against

me?"

(53).22

His

knowledge

about

writing

is

deeper

than Nora's.

In

the

early

draft

of

the

play

Torvald

boldly

declares

the

source

of

his

knowledge

about

the

power

of

"pen-pushing":

"I

got

my

job

by

opposing

the

present

system

...

in

a

pamphlet, in a series of

newspaper

articles, and

by

a

pointed

speech

at the last

general

meeting."23

21

Judith

Butler,

Bodies

that

Matter:

On the

Discursive

Limits

of

"Sex"

(London:

Routledge,

1993),

121.

22

In

McFarlane's

translation

the

falsity

of

Krogstad's

writing

is much

more

emphasized.

The

line

reads:

"It's

hardly

flattering

to

suppose

that

anything

this

miserable

pen-pusher

wrote

could

frighten

me\"

Henrik

Ibsen,

The

Oxford

Ibsen,

vol.

5,

ed.

and

trans.

James

Walter

McFarlane

(London:

Oxford

University

Press,

1961),

244,

italics in

the

original.

23

Ibid.,

301.







SHATTERED ACK

WALL

/

439

Unlike the

two

"hack

journalists,"

Nora

seems

incapable

of

producing

any

kind

of

effective,

original

writing.

Nora-the-actress

can

only

imitate

an

already existing

text.

She

proudly

admits

to

Kristine Linde that

a

year

earlier,

while her

family

was

in

deep

financial

trouble,

she

got

a

copying

job

and she worked

secretly,

while the

rest

of the

family

was

asleep.

She confesses

to

Kristine

that

"it

felt like

...

like

being

a

man"

(19).

Of

course,

this work remained hidden from Torvald.

He

has

been led

to

believe

that

Nora

spent

long

winter

nights making

Christmas

paper

decorations,

which

were

at

the

end

destroyed by

a

cat.

Surely,

that is

not

the

only

copying

Nora

undertook

in

secrecy

and

without Torvald's

knowledge

and

approval.

She also

copied

her

father's

signature

on

the

contract

for the loan she took from

Krogstad.

At

one

moment,

Nora's inau

thentic, forced,

and

forged

writing

is

suddenly interrupted,

but

as

it

disappears

from

paper,

it

continues

in

her

gestures

and

actions.

In

a

play

about

writing,

Ibsen

never

shows the act of

writing

or

reading explicitly

on

stage.

All letters are written and read

in

the

play's

back

rooms,

their

contents

are never

fully presented

in

view

of the

audience. The network of

performatives

forms

an

alternative notation

of the

play.

This

hidden

notation

parallels

the

conventional

notation

of the

play

executed

in

stage

directions.24

Like the

offstage

world of naturalistic

theater,

the letters and

contracts

that drive the

play

are

remembered,

anticipated,

evoked,

and

imagined.

This

writing

never

fully

materializes,

as

if

this

living

text

was

written

in

invisible

ink.

The

precious

papers

appear

on

stage,

but

they swiftly

vanish

(into pockets,

backrooms,

or

into

the

stove)

before

anybody

reads their

contents

aloud. The

two

lawyers

and "hack

journalists"

communicate

through

Nora

Helmer;

she

exists

between

pen

and

paper,

between the

addresser and the

addressee.

Her

performance

is

literally

notated

by

this

suppressed

network of

performatives.

She

herself

writes

the letter

by

her

actions, voice, breath,

grimaces,

gestures.

She

is

the

signifying

form

without the

referent,

the

signifier

without the

signified.

In

her

performance,

she

is

writing

the letters

in

action and

as

action.25

This

ephemeral

writing

is

important

because

it

spells

out

Nora's

knowledge.

Torvald's

performative

interpellation effectively

establishes his wife's

ignorance;

the skylark is a feather-brained woman, awoman-child. The expense that Nora pays is

precisely

her

knowledge.

In

the

opening

scenes

of the

play,

this

ignorance

appears

as

studied and

artificial;

it

is

as

feigned

as

is

the

signature

on

the

contract

that

she has

given

to

Krogstad.

This false

ignorance

begins

to

deteriorate

already

in

Nora's

first

encounter

with

Kristine. The

same

pretense

of

a

careless intellectual

feather-weight

that

provides

Nora

with

certain freedom

in

her

relation with Torvald

becomes

unbearable

in

her

interaction with

Kristine:

24

Stage

directions

are

the

only performatives

inherent

to

drama and

theatre that

Austin

readily

includes

into

his

taxonomy

of

performative speech

acts. In How to

Do

Things

with

Words he

classifies

them

into

the

family

that he

names

behavitives,

"a

kind

of

performative

concerned

roughly

with

reactions

to

behaviour

and with

behaviour toward

others and

designed

to

exhibit

attitudes and

feelings"

(83).

25

Commenting

on

her

role of

Nora in the Lincoln Center

production

of

the

play

Ullman

said that

"it's the

closest

you

can

come

to

writing

if

you

are an

actress?you

write

a

person

through

your

interpretation

of her

character

and

your

actions

on

stage."

See

Joan

Templeton,

"Nora

on

the American

Stage,

1894-1975:

Acting

the

Integral

Text"

in

Contemporary Approaches

to

Ibsen,

vol.

7

(Oslo,

Norway:

Norwegian

University

Press,

1991),

126.







440

/

Branislav

Jakovljevic

Mrs

Linde:

Nora,

this

is

so

kind

of

you,

you

want

to

help

me

-

especially

you

who knows

so

little of how

difficult life

can

be

-

Nora:

I

know

-1

know

so

little

-

Mrs Linde

smiles.

Mrs Linde: Dear

God,

you

do

some

needlework,

you

embroider

-

you

are a

child,

Nora.

[15]

Nora

finds

insulting

this

comment

about her

childishness:

"You

are

as

bad

as

the

rest

of them.

You

all think

that

I'm

useless when

it

comes

to

knowing

how

hard life

can

be

-"

(15).

Ignorance

is

not

the lack of

learning,

but

the lack of

experience,

the

lack of

empirical

knowledge.

In

this

bourgeois

home,

inexperience

amounts to

uselessness

not

only

in

work but also

in

dealing

with

the "facts of

life,"

which

are

incorrigible

and

fundamental.

Nora's

question

about

the

possibility

of

woman's

use

of

knowledge

("if

awife knows how to use her brains") sets her on a journey out of ignorance. However,

her

emergence

from structural

stupidity

is not

procured

by

accumulation of knowl

edge

and

experience.

Ibsen

skillfully

avoids the

trappings

of the

bildungsrornan,

that

masculine

genre par

excellence.

Nora's task

is

much

more

difficult than

collecting

experiences

and

building

an

archival

knowledge.

Her

way

out

of the

feigned

ignorance

leads

her

not

toward

knowledge

but

toward

true

ignorance.

This

kind

of

ignorance

cannot

be achieved

through

learning,

or

through

unlearning

and

forgetting

of the

already existing

knowledge.

This

kind

of

ignorance

is

not

a

matter

of

exposure

and

experience,

but of

decision

and

commitment.

The

only

way

out

of the false

ignorance,

out

of the learned

absence of

knowledge,

and

toward true

ignorance

is

a

leap,

a

decisive

and

momentous

break.

Any

attempt

to

capture

this

authentic

movement in

some

kind of

representation

ends

in

failure. Like Nora's famous

tarantella

dance,

it

happens

on

the

outside,

offstage,

in

a

reality

broader than

the

one

contained

by

the visual field of

representa

tion

that is

the theatrical

stage.

In

the

words of Torvald

the

aesthete,

this

movement,

this

performance

is

"too

much";

it

goes

"beyond

the

demands of

art"

(82).

The

stage

permits

us

to

see

only

the

rehearsal,

the

promise

of

performance.

In

this

sense,

A Doll's

House

unravels

in

a

series

of

deliberations,

try-outs,

and rehearsals of Nora's

decisive

leap. Ibsen isolates this movement in away similar toAustin's isolation of a perform

ative

utterance.

In

the

sequence

of

considerations

of

alternatives

to

a

simple

plummet

into the

abyss,

the

most

evident is

the famous

"stockings

scene"

in

the

second

act

of the

play.

By

this

moment,

Nora's

destiny

has been decided:

Torvald

decisively

put

a

stop

to

her

pleas

on

Krogstad's

behalf

by sending

him

a

letter of dismissal from his

post

at

the bank.

Enter Doctor

Rank.

Nora is

aware

of his venereal

disease,

which

sentenced

him to

disfiguration

and

painful

death. Like

other

mortally

ill

people

in

Ibsen's

plays,

Doctor

Rank

has

a

profound,

almost

prophetic,

insight

into

the

true

significance

of

events

that

unfold around them.

Suggesting

that she is "in the mood for

madness,"

Nora takes out

the silk

stockings

from her

costume

box and shows them

to

Rank. That

is not

enough.

The

room

is

in

semi-darkness,

and she

describes

the

stockings:

"The colour of flesh.

Lovely,

aren't

they?"

(57).

She touches

Rank with

the

stockings.

Flesh

to

flesh:

a

healthy

young

woman

and

a

living

corpse.

Flesh

to

death.

Nora is

not

a

seductress: she

is

being

seduced

by

the

possibility

of

a

disfiguring

death. She

rejects

this

possibility,

and this

decision

resonates

throughout

the

rest

of the

play.







SHATTERED

ACK

WALL

/

441

Nora reaches the nadir

of

her

seductive

play

with

death

during

her

second

agon

with

Krogstad.

In

the

early

draft

of

A

Doll's

House,

in

which

the

protagonists'

family

name

is

Stenborg,

Ibsen

composed dialogue

that

abounds

with references

to

death

and

self-destruction.

Where

in

the final

draft of

the

play

Nora

briefly

and

unconvincingly

warns

Krogstad

that she

might

commit

suicide,

in

the

early

draft

they

discuss

that

issue

at

much

greater

length

and detail.

Here,

Nora

is

almost

convinced

that she

will

have

to

die

young

and leave

her children

behind;

she

confesses

to

Krogstad

that

in

the

past

few

days

she

"thought

about

nothing

else."

He

then

painstakingly

lists

the

possible

ways

of

committing

suicide.

Incorporated

in

this

inventory

of

final

acts

is the

first

mention

of

the

family

name

Helmer:

"Krogstad:

That

may

be.

But

by

what

means?

Poison?

Not

so

easy

to

get

hold

of. Shoot

yourself?

That

takes

a

fair

amount

of

skill,

Mrs.

Helmer.

Hanging?

Ugh,

that's

an

ugly

business...

you

get

cut

down."26

As

we are

going

to

see,

"Mrs.

Helmer"

surfaces

in

the

play

in

an

action,

as an

action,

of the

reversal

of

death.

This

action entails

a

double

performative

speech

act:

the

"awe

inspiring"

speech

act

of

promise

to

oneself,

and the

most

illustrative

speech

act

of

naming.

Famous for his

intimacy

with his fictional

characters,

Ibsen

once

made

a

remark

that

the

proper

name

of

A

Doll's

House's

heroine

"was

not

really

Nora."

He

continues,

"She

was

christened

'Eleonora.'

But at

home

they

called

her 'Nora'

because

she

was

such

a

little

pet."27

(At

which home?

Who christened

her?

What

is

real

about the

name

of

a

fictional character? Ibsen's play was followed by the unshaken public conviction in the

existence of

a

real

Nora Helmer

and

a

real

doll's house.

As

late

as

1924,

the

Boston

based

magazine

The

Living

Age published

the article

entitled "The

Real Doll's House"

in

which

the

elderly

Danish

lady

Laura Kieler

was

portrayed

as

the

model

for Ibsen's

Nora

Helmer.28)

Ibsen's

biographer

Halvdan

Koht

points

out

the

symbolism

of

the

name

Stenborg,

which

at its

root

has the

Norwegian

word

stenbo,

the

stone.

According

to

Koht,

Ibsen

changed

this

"too obvious

reference

to

domineering

husband"

into

a

"neutral

middle

class

Helmer."29

However,

stenbo,

the

stone,

also refers

to

weight,

gravity,

falling,

and

sinking.

The failed

suicide

of Nora

Stenborg

turns into

a

baptism

of

the heroine

Nora

Helmer.

In

the

first

version of

the

play, Krogstad hypothetically

submerges

the

new-named

Mrs.

Helmer

deep

into

the

cold

water

of the

noisy,

wild

river:

Krogstad:

The

river.

Yes,

of

course,

that's

what

you

have

been

thinking

of.

But

perhaps

you've only

thought

about

it

vaguely.

Imagine

now

really

getting

down into

it.

Out of

the

house,

late

at

night...

down

into

the

swirling,

black

water...

swept

away,

dragged

under

the

ice

. . .

fighting, choking,

and

being

fished

up

. .

.

sometime,

far below

. . .

and

in what

a

state

. . .

Nora:

Oh,

it's horrible

. . .

Oh,

I

can't.

. .

Oh,

it's

horrible

. .

.

Krogstad:

What is?

Nora: You see it all, it's no use trying to hide it. I haven't courage to die.30

26

Ibsen,

The

Oxford

Ibsen,

321.

27

Halvdan

Koht,

Life of

Ibsen,

ed.

and

trans. Einar

Haugen

and

A. E.

Santaniello

(New

York:

Benjamin

Bloom

Publishers,

1971),

318.

28

Xiane,

"The

Real Doll's

House,"

The

Living Age

320

(1924):

415-16.

29

Koht,

Life,

319.

30

Ibsen,

The

Oxford

Ibsen,

321.







442

/

Branislav

Jakovljevic

In

the

final version of the

play

this

scene

is

considerably

condensed:

Krogstad:

Under

the

ice,

perhaps?

Sinking

into the

black,

cold water?

And

then,

in

the

spring, floating to the surface, ugly, unrecognizable, with your hair fallen out.

Nora:

You

can't

frighten

me.

[66]

"I

haven't

courage

to

die"

turns

into

"I

am

not

afraid of life" and

"I

have

courage

to

live."

The

elaborate

drama

of

sneaking

out

from the

house,

of

a

terrifying night

walk

to the

riverbank,

and of

a

desperate leap

into the

stream

of "black

water"

has

been

replaced

by

the

final

image

of

a

disfigured,

bloated,

and hairless female

body.

In

his

narration

of

Nora's

eventual

suicide,

Ibsen relies

on

the

literary

tradition of

feminine

death.

In

the suicide

by drowning,

the

body

of the

victim

initially

remains

intact.

Instead of heroic blood

shedding,

this un-heroic

body

receives an excess of

liquid.

In

her discussion

of "the

Ophelia complex,"

Elaine Showalter

asserts

that

"water

is

the

profound

and

organic

symbol

of the

liquid

woman

whose

eyes

are so

easily

drowned

in

tears,

as

her

body

is

a

repository

of

blood,

amniotic

fluid,

and

milk."31

The

young

woman

approaches

the

ridge.

The

possibility

of the

leap

seems

inseparable

from

the

disaster

of

the

plummet.

She

can

reach the other

side

by pushing

resolutely upwards.

Letting

herself

go

with the

stream

means

exposure,

desecration,

and fatal

inversion of the interior.

Nora's

rejection

of suicide

is her

decisive

turn

away

from

the drowned

Ophelia. Although underemphasized

in

the

final version of

Ibsen's

drama,

this

rejection

is

just

as

momentous

as

her

refusal

to

compromise

with Torvald.

The

two

rejections

constitute

the

two

sides

of

the

same

decision: the

image

of

a

lifeless,

bloated

body

is

the

dark side of the

image

of

a

domestic doll.

At

one

point

in A

Doll's

House,

the

play's

visual and

verbal

contents

are

violently

separated.

The

meaning

of the

spatial organization

is

exhausted

at

the

moment

Torvald

opens

the letterbox.

The

notation

of

performance

hidden

in

letters

ceases

with

the

burning

of the

contract

that

contains

Nora's

forged

signature.

This

separation

of

voice

and

image

is

accurately

described

by

Austin:

It is

better

to

say

that

the

putative

statement is

null and

void,

exactly

as

when

I

say

that

I

sell

you

something

but

it is not

mine

or

(having

been

burnt)

is

no

longer

in

existence. Contracts

often

are

void because the

objects

they

are

about do

not

exist,

which

involves

a

breakdown

of

reference.

[137]

The material

evidence has

been

destroyed.

However,

this "breakdown

of reference"

does

not

end the drama.

What is

left, then,

is

the force of

performatives.

"Precision

in

language

makes

it

clearer

what is

being

said

-

its

meaning,"

explains

Austin:

"explicit

ness,

in

our

sense,

makes clearer

the

force

of the utterance"

(73).

On

another

occasion,

Austin referred to the

performative

force as "the second kind of

'meaning'."32

The

other

meaning,

beyond

true

and

false,

is

the

expressiveness

and

explicitness

of

action.

31

Elaine

Showalter,

"Representing Ophelia:

Women, Madness,

and the

Responsibilities

of

Feminist

Criticism"

in

Shakespeare

and

the

Question

of Theory,

ed.

Patricia

Parker

and

Geoffrey

Hartman

(New

York:

Methuen,

1985),

81. Gaston

Bachelard discusses

the

"Ophelia

complex"

in

literature

in

his

Water

and Dreams:

An

Essay

on

Imagination

of

Matter

(Dallas:

Pegasus

Foundation,

1983),

80-85.

32

Austin, "Performative-Constative,"

43.







SHATTERED ACK

WALL

/

443

In

the coda of

A

Doll's

House,

the

language

becomes

more

real than the

objects

on

stage.

This force

is

the

only reality

of

theatre,

continuous with

the

offstage

reality.

Nora's

voyage

from false

ignorance

into

true

absence

of

knowledge

ends before she

slams the

street

door

offstage.

By

the

moment

she declares her

ignorance

she

has

already

departed:

"I

don't

even

know

what

religion

is...

I

only

know

what

Pastor Hansen

told

me

when

I

was

confirmed"

(101).

Her

leap

is

not

calculated.

It is

not

knowledge

of

life,

but

an

affirmation of

life,

of the

outside, infinite,

boundless.

The

Prospect

of the Performative

She has

made

the

promise

to

leave,

the

awe-inspiring promise

to

herself. She

returned the

wedding

ring

to

her

husband. She un-married herself.

Now

she

says

"good-bye," opens

the

door, passes

the

mailbox,

and

disappears

in

the

stairwell.

Then

the sound

comes

from downstairs. Another

door slams shut.

She

is

outside,

on

the

street.

Nora's

final

exit is

not

seen or

reported.

It

comes as

a

noise.

This

sound

is

raw

and

inarticulate,

and

there

is

nothing designed

and

artificial about

it.

Nora's

exit,

however,

is

also

an

entrance.

She leaves the home

and

enters

into

dangerous,

unpredictable reality.

She

exits

the

stage

and enters

the

ambiguous offstage

world.

Before she

leaves,

Nora

makes

sure

to

prevent

Torvald

from

writing

to

her. No

more

letters.

Her

departure

is the end

of

writing.

And then what?

The

writing

stops

but

the

story

continues.

A

Doll's

House

needs

an

epilogue,

it

asks for

a

continuation

of

some

kind. She slams the door. What

happens

next?

She

steps

on

the

street.

And?

As Nora

on

the

pavement

Dances,

and

she

entrances

the

grey

hour

Into

the

laughing

circle

of

her

power.

The

magic

circle

of

her

glances,

As Nora

dances

on

the

midnight pavement.33

The first

steps

that

Nora

makes

in

the outside world

are

not

pedestrian.

The

English

poet

Arthur

Symons

imagines

Nora

dancing

and

leaping graciously

in

her

regained

naivete. The

poem

"Nora

on

the

Pavement,"

dated

April

22,

1893,

was

published

in

Symons's 1896 collection of poems London Nights. In his poem, Nora exits her

apartment

in

an

unnamed Scandinavian

town

and

enters

the

streets

of London.

Symons

was

responding

to

the

English

commercial

premiere

of Ibsen's

play

at

Novelty

Theater

(June 1889),

which

George

Bernard Shaw

characterized

as

"perhaps

the

only

one

that has

really

got

home

in

England."

In

his

review

of

A

Doll's House

revival

Shaw

compared

Nora's

slamming

of the door

with

cannons

of

Waterloo and Sedan.

It

was,

he

wrote,

"the end of

a

chapter

in

human

history."34

For

Shaw,

the slam

of the door

is

"more momentous" than battle

cannons

because

it

marks

the

crumbling

down of

"an

institution

upon

which

so

much

human

affection

and

suffering

have been lavished."35

Unlike the

consequences of Waterloo

and

Sedan, the

outcome

of Nora's exit

was

repeatedly imagined

and

reimagined,

corrected, reversed,

and

questioned.

33

Arthur

Symons,

Poems,

vol.

1

(London:

Martin

Seeker,

1924),

173.

34

Bernard

Shaw,

Dramatic

Opinions

and

Essays

With

an

Apology by

Bernard Shaw

(New

York:

Brentano's,

1922),

259.

35

Ibid.,

260.







444

/

Branislav

Jakovljevic

In

the

early

stage

history

of

A

Doll's

House,

this

urge

to

"epilogize"

Nora's

story

was

often

indistinguishable

from the

urge

to

apologize

for the

play.

In

Germany,

Ibsen's

text

was

appended

with

a

fourth

act in

which

a

"reconciliation"

is

achieved between

the Helmers at the

price

of the

cynical

scorn of Nora. At the end of this

phantom

fourth

act,

in

which

Nora

begs

his

forgiveness,

Torvald

"pulls

an

enormous

paper

bag

out

of

his

pocket,

opens

it,

takes

out

a

macaroon

and

pops

it in

her

mouth,"

at

which

Nora

cries

in

rapture:

"The miracle of

miracles "36

The

actress

Hedwig

Neimann-Raabe

refused

to

perform

in

this

bowdlerized version

of

A

Doll's

House,

but she

also

rejected

Ibsen's

original, reasoning

laconically:

"I

would

never

leave

my

children."37 Under

pressure,

Ibsen

agreed

to

write

an

alternative

ending

in

which

Nora

decides

not to

leave

after

Torvald makes

her look

again

at

her

sleeping

children.

From

phantom

writers,

to

frau

Neimann-Raabe,

to

Ibsen

himself,

attackers and

defenders of

A

Doll's

House alike insisted on

adding

text to the

existing

version of the

play

rather than

deleting

scenes

from

the

script.

Back

in

England,

this curious

textual

swelling

took

a

turn

away

from

the

script

itself

and

toward

the

offstage

continuation

of

the

story.

Less

then

six

months

after

the

opening

of

A

Doll's House

at

Novelty

Theater,

Walter

Besant

published

a

prose

sequel

to

Ibsen's

play

entitled "The Doll's

House?And

After,"38

which

picks

up

the

story

twenty

years

after

Nora's

departure

from the

Helmer

household. Besant

follows

the

principal

characters of

A

Doll's

House out

on

the

street,

into

the

city

and

the world

at

large.

The

long

twenty

years

brought

a

reversal

of

fortunes.

According

to

Besant's

thermodynamics

of

fate,

when the

Helmers

plummet,

the

Krogstads

rise:

Torvald

becomes

a

desperate

drunk,

and

Krogstad

the chairman

of

the

bank's board

and

a

mayor.

And Nora?

She,

says

Besant,

"went forth

to

find

-

Herself.

She

found

something

and

called

it

Herself."39

In

short,

she became

a

writer

and

a

prominent

women's

rights

leader.

Although

her

new

vocation

takes

her

on a

perpetual

tour

through

European

capitals,

"Norah"

(Besant

spells

Nora's

name

with

an

"h"

at

the

end,

apparently

to

make it

closer

to

his

English

readers)

never

entirely

leaves the

scene

of her

crime:

she

occasionally

returns to

her

hometown without

ever

visiting

her

children

and husband.

Besant's sequel is

a

tragedy of puritan revenge. It is

a

plot of repetition and reversal

in

which the sins

of the

past

pursue

the

next

generation.

The love affair

between

Nora's

daughter

Emmy

and

Nils the

younger

can't

come

to

fruition

because of the

bad

reputation

of

Emmy's

family. They

are

secretly engaged

and

plan

to

escape

to

America.

Meanwhile,

Emmy's

younger

brother

Robert,

who

works

in

Krogstad's

bank,

forges

a

signature

on

a

check.

Nils

Krogstad

Senior

visits

Emmy

in

her

poor

dwelling

and

asks

her

to

cancel her

engagement

with

his

son.

Emmy repeats

her

mother's

gesture

and

returns

the

ring.

This

time,

the

same

action

has

the

opposite

significance.

"In

heaven,

Emmy

Helmer,

you

will

have

reward,"

says

Krogstad

and

leaves.

Besant

goes

for

a

kill.

The

same

evening

Norah

is

in

a

carriage

on

her

way

to

a

railway

station.

She has decided

never

to

come

back

again.

However,

her

past

deeds

return

with

a

vengeance.

The

carriage

is

stopped

by

a

small

procession.

Torvald

is

36

Ibsen,

The

Oxford

Ibsen,

457.

37

Michael

Meyer,

Ibsen:

A

Biography

(New

York:

Doubleday,

1971),

459,

italics

in

the

original.

38

English

Illustrated

Magazine,

January

1890.

39

Walter

Besant,

"The Doll's

House?And

After"

in

Verbena

Camellia

Stephanotis

and

Other

Stories

(New

York:

Harper

and

Brothers,

1892),

327.







SHATTERED

ACK

WALL

/

445

there,

and

so

is

Christine.

The

burden

on

the

hands of the

people

in

the

procession

is

finally

revealed.

It

is the

body

of

Emmy

who

did

precisely

what

her

mother

refused

to

do

twenty

years

earlier. There

she lies

in

the

image

of

fair

Ophelia:

Emmy lay

upon

a

bier formed

by

the

coats

of

the

fishermen who had found

her;

someone

had

arranged

her

long

fair hair

across

her

bosom;

her hands

were

joined

as

if

in

prayer;

her

cheek

was

white

and

waxen,

in

no

way

injured by

the

water;

her

eyes

were

closed,

the

long

lashes

lying

on

the

cheek;

her face

was

at

rest,

and

for

ever.40

The

publication

of

Besant's

story

launched

a

frenzy

of

the

writing

of

sequels

to

A

Doll's

House.

This

was

not

an

ordinary

progression

of

literary sequels,

the

genre

that marked

the literature of the

Victorean

era.

While

sequels

to

A

Doll's

House,

as

well

as

sequels'

sequels,

often

appear

in

the form of

a

continuation

of the

narrative,

what

they

effectively

do is reverse the main

point

of the previous installment.41 It is a debate

carried

out

under the

guise

of

literary

sequels.

In

a

debate,

continuation is

actually

a

citation,

a

critical

citation

used

against

its

original

meaning

and context. Besant's

story

does

not

continue,

or

complete,

or

set

in

motion

Ibsen's

play.

As

a

response

to

the

statement

made

by

the

play,

it

clearly

represents

the

play's

effect,

which

brings

us

back

to

Austin and his

insistence that

"an

effect

must

be

achieved

on

the audience

if

the

illocutionary

act

is

to

be carried

out"

(116).^

The effect

produced by

the

illocutionary

speech

act

is

a

part

of the total

speech

act:

"generally

the effect

amounts to

bringing

about

the

understanding

of the

meaning

and of the force

of the locution. So the

performance of an illocutionary act involves securing uptake" (117, italics in the

original).

The

conventional

response

to

a

theatrical

performance

is

a

theatre

review.

In

his

unconventional

response,

Besant

literally

takes

up

Ibsen's

play

and

presents

the

inevitable

outcome

that

ensues

after

the conclusion of the

play.

Besant

wants to

convince

his

"fair

readers"

that

the

Helmer

family history

is

somehow

autonomous

from

the writer's

will,

that it

develops

according

to

laws

and

certainties

that

are

far

more

predictable

than

mere

intentions

of

the author.

Thus,

A

Doll's

House

becomes

a

house

haunted

by

the

possibility

of

perpetual

return

and continuation.

Nora

can

not

return

only

once. In Besant's

sequel,

Christine

says

to

Norah,

who is about to

depart

"perfectly

cold

and indifferent"

to

the

fate of her

family:

"Go

you

will be haunted for

ever

with the destruction

of

your

own

children

by

your

own

hand."43

Nora's

story,

however trivialized

by

Besant,

is the

story

of

haunting

and

impossibility

of definite

departure.

But

from where? Toward what?

Shortly

after

its

publication,

Besant's

treatment

of Ibsen's

play

was

again

taken

up

by

George

Bernard

Shaw.

His

sequel

of

the

sequel,

entitled

"Still

After The Doll's

40

Ibid.,

337.

41

Gerard

Genette

asserts that

a

literary sequel

"set[s]

in

motion

again

with

new

episodes"

a

work

that

was

already

considered

complete.

Gerard

Genette,

Palimpsests:

Literature in

the Second

Degree,

trans. Charma Newman and Claude

Doubinsky

(Lincoln:

University

of

Nebraska

Press,

1997),

162.

^Austin

distinguishes

between

illocutionary performatives,

where

we

are

doing something

in

saying

something,

and

perlocutionary performatives,

where

we

are

doing

something

by saying

something.

Judith

Butler

discusses

this

important

distinction

in

Excitable

Speech:

A

Politics

of

the

Performative

(London:

Routledge,

1997).

She

asserts

that

"whereas

illocutionary

acts

proceed by

way

of

conventions,

perlocutionary

acts

proceed

by

way

of

consequences"

(17).

43

Besant,

"The

Doll's,"

338.







446

/

Branislav

Jakovljevic

House,"

was

published

in

"Time"

in

February

1890.44

Besant's

story

concludes

with

the laconic

address

of

the

carriage

driver

to

Norah: "Madame will

be

in

time

to

catch

the

train."45

In

Shaw's

continuation

of

the

narrative,

she

changes

her

mind and

returns

(again)

to her room

only

to find

Krogstad

the elder

waiting

for her. In the

ensuing

dialogue

Shaw

reverses

Besant's

story

by

revisiting

and

reinterpreting

all

of

its

major

points.

"Still After The Doll's

House"46 resides

within

"The

Doll's House?And After":

Shaw

enters

Besant's

tale

and

comes

to

haunt

it.

He

examines the cracks

and

gaps

in

the architecture

of

Besant's

narrative,

brings

down false

walls,

and

exposes

secret

rooms.

Nora

(the

original spelling

of her

name

is

restored

in

this

sequel)

discovers

"cupboard

skeletons"

in

the

lives

of

Krogstad

and

Christine,

in

their

sons'

successful

careers,

in

the

hypocritical

affairs of

the

members

of the bank's Board of

Directors

over

which

Krogstad

presides.

Besant's

offstage

world

shrugs,

trembles,

and cracks

open

as

Ibsen's

play

and all of its

sequels

return to it.

Shaw's

story

is

a

sequel

to

Besant's

story,

which is the

sequel

to

Ibsen's

play,

which

is

based

on

a

biographical

accident

from the life of

Laura

Kieler,

who

first

came

in

touch

with Ibsen

as

a

twenty-year-old girl

who

published

a

sequel

to

his

play

Brand.

The

suffering

caused

by

her affair

with

the

forged

bill of

exchange,

which

Ibsen

used

as

a

pretext

for

his

play,

was

much harsher than

any

theatrical

and

literary

sequel:

her

husband

Victor

Kieler

divorced

her;

her

children,

including

a

newly

born

baby,

were

taken

away

from

her;

and she

was

committed

to

a

mental

asylum.

She told

her

biographer

that

two

years

later

she

"agreed

to

[Victor Kieler's]

plea

and

returned

to

their

marriage," primarily

in

order

to

get

back

to

her

children.47

A

decade later

Laura

Kieler

wrote

the

play

The Men

of

Honor

in

which

she "turned

the

sting against

the

artists' and

writers'

purely

aesthetic

play

with life's

most

serious

subjects."48

Ibsen

privately

endorsed

her

play

but

carefully

avoided

making

a

public

statement

about

differences

between

Laura

Kieler

and his

Nora Helmer.

The

publication

of

Men

of

Honor

provoked

heated debate

in

the

Kopenhagen press.49

Eventually,

the

newspaper

Politiken

published

an

article which referred

to

the

past

of

the author of

The

Men

of

Honor,

asserting

that she doesn't

have

the

right

"to constitute herself

a

judge

of

some

of

her

male

colleagues."50

The article

was

signed

"Helmer."

Laura

Kieler,

"the

real

Nora,"

was haunted

by

the fictional Nora. Her

biography

turned into a

sequel

to

Ibsen's

play.

In

Quintessence

of

Ibsenism

Shaw

suggests

the

possibility

of

yet

another

44

Another

sequel

to

A Doll's

House,

written

by

a

prominent

New

England

woman

Ednah

D.

Cheney,

was

provoked by

Besant's

sequel.

In

April

1890,

a

slim volume

was

published

in

Boston. This

story

of

reconciliation

between Nora

and

Helmer

told

in

epistolary

prose

was

entitled,

not

surprisingly,

Nora's

Return.

45

Besant,

"The

Doll's,"

338.

46

Bernard

Shaw,

Short

Stories,

Scarps

and

Shavings

(New

York: Wise

and

Company,

1932).

47

B. M.

Kinck,

"Henrik

Ibsen

og

Laura

Kieler"

in Edda:

Nordisk

tidsskrift for litteraturforskning, Argang

22,

Bind

35,1935,

unpublished

translation into

English

by Anja

Musiat. See

also

B. M.

Kinck,

"Laura

Kieler:

The

Model for

Ibsen's

Nora,"

The

London

Mercury

and

Bookman

37

(1937):

12-15.

48

Kinck,

"Henrik

Kieler,"

21.

49

According

to Laura

Kieler,

the

main

conspirators

that

raised

campaign

against

her

were

Danish

literary

critic

and Ibsen's

friend

Georg

Brandes and his

brother

Edvard,

who

was

at

that time

member

of the

management

of

Royal

Theater

in

Kopenhagen,

which

rejected

Kieler's

play.

For details of

this

affair and

on

the

relationship

between Ibsen

and

Laura

Kieler,

see

B.

M.

Kinck,

"Henrik Ibsen

og

Laura

Kieler,"

1935.

50

Ibid.,

26.







SHATTERED

ACK

WALL

/

447

sequel

to

this

already

too

long

and

perplexing

story.

He

ends

the

lengthy

footnote

on

the Besant affair

by

saying:

"I

wrote

a

sequel

to

this

sequel.

Another

sequel

was

written

by

Eleanor,

the

youngest

daughter

of Karl

Marx.

I

forget

where

they appeared."51

On

January

15,1886

Shaw

appeared

in

the

role

of

Krogstad

in

a

stage

reading

of

A

Doll's

House

organized

in

the house of Eleanor

Marx

on

Great

R?ssel

Street

in

London.

The

part

of

Nora

was

read

by

Eleanor

and the

part

of Torvald

by

Dr.

Edward

Aveling,

with

whom Eleanor

lived

in

a

"free union."

Five

years

later,

Eleanor

Marx

co-authored

with

Israel

Zangwill

a

piece

entitled

"'A

Doll's

House'

Repaired,"

which

was

published

in

March

1891 issue

of

Time.

This

was

the

only

work of

fiction from the

pen

of

Eleanor,

who

wrote

a

number of critical

essays,

pamphlets,

and

research

papers.

She

also translated Ibsen's

plays

(An

Enemy of

the

People

and

The

Lady from

the

Sea)

and

Flaubert's

novel

Madame

Bovary. Formally,

"'A

Doll's

House'

Repaired"

is

a

sequel

neither of Ibsen's

play

nor

of

Shaw's

sequel

to

Besant's

sequel

to

Ibsen's

play.

She

joined

the debate

by

bowdlerizing

a

bowdlerization of

A

Doll's

House,

which

under the

title

Breaking

the

Butterfly

premiered

in

the

spring

of

1884.

The

progressive

press

of

the

day

denounced this

version

of

Ibsen's

play.

In

his

review

published

in

the

journal

To

Day,

Dr.

Edward

Aveling

wrote

that

Breaking

a

Butterfly,

co-authored

by Henry

Jones

and

Henry

Herman,

represents

a

"mutilation" of

Ibsen,

who

"sees

our

lop-sided

modern

society

suffering

from

too

much

man,

and he

has been born the

woman's

poet.

He

wants to

aid

in

. .

.

revolutionizing

. . .

the

marriage

relationship."52

Eleanor

Marx

used this "mutilation"

to

write

a

serious

parody

of the

original by simply reversing

the

roles

of Nora

and Helmer

in

the finale of the

play.

Authors

of

"'A

Doll's

House'

Repaired"

insist

that

the title of their work

should

be

taken

literally.

Much

like

Shaw

did with Besant's

story,

they

enter

Ibsen's

structure,

his

house,

and

alter

it

according

to

the

principles

of the

"sound

English

commonsense"

of

Jones

and

Herman.53

It is not

necessary,

they

claimed,

"to

seriously

alter

the

building

in

order

to

carry

out

these

sanitary repairs.

We

repeat,

we

have carried

out

our

work

absolutely

in

accordance

with

the

original

plan

of

the

Norwegian

Architect."54

A

doll's

house

is

not

a

haunted house.

It is

a

house that haunts its

former

dwellers,

who

are

now homeless. The interior has been driven out, exorcised, and it looms out in the

open.

The shattered

back wall

permits

the

onstage

and

offstage

worlds

to

merge.

The

sequels

to

A

Doll's House

do

not

prove

only

Shaw's

point

that the

performance

of

this

play

was

more

momentous

than the battle

cannons

of

Waterloo.

They

also

prove

a

much

more

disturbing

idea

implied

by

Austin's

general

theory

of

performative

speech

acts:

language

has

to

be

theatricalized,

subjected

to

conventionalization

in

order

to

take

place visibly.

In her

argument

about

inseparability

of

body

and

discourse,

Judith

Butler

sees

the

performative

as

a

"discoursive

production,"

and

performativity

as

the

51

Bernard

Shaw,

The

Quintessence

of

Ibsenism

(New

York: Hill and

Wang,

1966),

90.

52

Edward

Aveling

quoted

in

Chushichi

Tsuzuki,

The

Life

of

Eleanor Marx:

A

Socialist

Tragedy

(Oxford:

Clarendon

Press,

1967),

161. For

details

on

Eleanor Marx's

life

see

also

Kapp,

Yvonne

Mayer,

Eleanor

Marx

(New

York:

Pantheon

Book,

1977).

53

Eleanor

Marx

and

Israel

Zangwill,

"'A

Doll's House'

Repaired,"

Time,

New

Series

(1891):

239.

54

Ibid.,

239.

The

entire

literary

debate

coincided

with

the

publication

of Ibsen's

drama

The

Master

Builder,

in

which he returns

to

the

problem

of

dwelling

and

dolls.

IfA

Doll's

House

was

a

meditation

on

the

complexity

of human

action,

The

Master

Builder

is

an

attempt

to

think

through

the

problem

of

space,

dwelling,

inferiority,

and,

above

all,

the

impossibility

of

return.







448

/

Branislav

Jakovljevic

"relation of

being implicated

in

that

which

one

opposes"

and

"turning

the

power

against

itself."55 While

Austin

never

explicitly analyzes

the relation between the

utterance

and

the

uttering

subject,

it

is

clear

that

a

performative

haunts its

speaker:

from a mental

act,

to

whisper,

to loud

utterance,

it binds the

speaker's

body

to

discourse.

By

the

end

of

this

process,

the

utterance

retains

the

same

form,

but

the

utterer

has

been

irrevocably

transformed.

Laura

Kieler,

Nora

Helmer,

Eleanor

Marx.

Laura, Eleonora/Nora,

Eleanor. There

are

at

least

two

ways

of

looking

at

this constellation of

names

and lives

that

outline the

curve

of

a

single

story.

One would be

a

Borgesian

tale

in

which

two

women,

separated

in

time and

space

and

unaware

of each

other,

come

together

through

a

literary

character.

This

reading

points

to

the romantic

obsession

with

short-circuiting

literature

and

life. The

other

reading,

more

pertinent

for

this

discussion, recognizes

that the

two

women,

Laura

Kieler

and

Eleanor

Marx,

are

joined by

a

series

of

men:

Victor

Kieler,

Henrik

Ibsen,

the Brandes

brothers,

Walter

Besant,

Bernard

Shaw,

Henry

Jones,

Henry

Herman,

Edward

Aveling.

The

two

women are

not

tied

through

a

simple

mechanism

of

identification,

but

through

a

persistence

of

a

certain

kind of discourse. This

discourse

consists

of

performatives

and

enthusiastic

responses,

misunderstood

actions,

unhappy performatives,

reversals of

performative

force,

of

interpellations

and

misrecog

nitions.

If

we

take

Victor

Kieler and Edward

Aveling

as

the

two

cardinal

points

in

the

chain,

the

actual

persistence

of

discourse,

the

power

of

its

performatives,

will become

obvious.

At

the end of

the

chain,

the

story

unravels

with

an

almost

unbearable

certainty.

At

home

they

called

her

Eleanor

Tussy.

She

was a

pet

child

of

an

aging

father. When

he died she

wrote

the

obituary

for secularist

monthly

Progress

edited

by

another

older

and

impressive

man,

Dr.

Edward

Aveling.

She fell

in

love.

He

was

already

married,

but

his wife

ran

away

with

a

priest,

or so

believed Eleanor's

father's

best

friend,

Friedrich

Engels.

Eleanor confided

in

a

letter

to

a

friend:

"I

cannot

be his wife

legally,

but

itwill

be

a

true

marriage

to

me?just

as

much

as

if

a

dozen

registrars

had

officiated."

They

shared

their

political opinions

and

love for

theatre:

he

was

an

emerging

dramatist,

and

she

was

an

aspiring

actress. In

the

same

year

they organized

a

reading

of

A

Doll's

House, they co-authored the article "TheWoman Question" inwhich they commended

Ibsen's denunciation

of

marriage

based

on

borrowing

and

debts.

In

the

future

society,

they

wrote,

there will

be

no

"hideous

disguise,

the

constant

lying,

that

makes

the

domestic

life of almost all

our

English

homes

an

organized

hypocrisy."56

They

toured

Great

Britain

and the United

States,

giving

lectures

and

organizing political

rallies. She

occasionally

performed

in

theatre,

and he

achieved

some

recognition

as a

playwright

under the

pseudonym

Alec Nelson.

In

June

1897

the

playwright

Alec

Nelson married

the

actress Eva

Frye

at

the

registry

office

at

Chelsea. The

political

activist and lecturer

Dr.

Edward

Aveling

continued

his "free

union"

with Eleanor

Marx.

Two

years

later

Eleanor received

a

letter

that

exposed

the hidden

life of her

partner.

She summoned

him

home,

and

"a

stormy

interview"

followed. He

left. Eleanor did

not

drown: she

had

a

bath,

dressed

in

white,

retired

to

bed,

and drank chloroform

mixed with

prussic

acid.

Eleanor,

the

reversed

Nora,

left

a

note:

"Dear,

it

will

soon

be all

over

now.

My

last

word

to

you

is

the

same

that

I

have said

during

all

these

long,

sad

years

-

love."

55

Butler,

Bodies,

241.

56

Eleanor

Marx and

Edward

Aveling,

The Woman

Question

(London,

1886),

36.

Documents

Ibsen and Dolls House