Download A Doll`s House

Prof. Sukhwinder Kaur
Dept. Of English
Johan Ibsen (20 March 1828 – 23 May 1906)
was a major 19th-century Norwegian playwright,
theatre director, and poet.
 He is often referred to as "the father of realism" and
is one of the founders of Modernism in theatre.
 He is the most frequently performed dramatist in the
world after Shakespeare, and A Doll's House became
the world's most performed play by the early 20th
century.
 Henrik
 Born
in Skien, a tiny coastal town in the south of
Norway
 Merchant father went bankrupt – raised in
poverty.
 Mother was a painter and loved theatre.
 Age 18 – fathered and supported his illegitimate
child through journalism
 Failed his entrance exam to the university where
he had hoped to become a physician.
 Catiline, a
tragedy, which reflected the atmosphere of the
revolutionary year of 1848 which sold only a few copies.
 The Burial Mound was performed three times in 1850.
 The first performance of Cataline did not take place until
1881. After successfully performing a poem glorifying
Norway's past, Ibsen was appointed in 1851 by Ole Bull
as "stage poet" of Den Nationale Scene, a small theater
in Bergen.
 During this period Ibsen staged more than 150 plays,
becoming thoroughly acquainted with the techniques of
professional theatrical performances.
 In addition to his managerial work he also wrote four
plays based on Norwegian folklore and history, notably
Lady Inger of Ostrat (1855), dealing with the liberation
of medieval Norway. In 1852 his theater sent him on a
study tour to Denmark and Germany.
― Luigi Pirandello
(1867-1936), Italian
dramatist and
novelist and the
winner of the Nobel
Prize in Literature in
1934.
His major works include
 Brand,
 Peer Gynt,
 An Enemy of the People,
 Emperor and Galilean,
 A Doll's House,
 Hedda Gabler,
 Ghosts,
 The Wild Duck,
 Rosmersholm,
 The Master Builder.
A Doll's House (Norwegian: Et dukkehjem; also translated
as A Doll House) is a three-act play in prose by Henrik Ibsen. It
premiered at the Royal Theatre in Copenhagen, Denmark, on
21 December 1879, having been published earlier that month.
Nora Helmer – wife of Torvald, mother of three, is living out the ideal
of the 19th-century wife, but leaves her family at the end of the play.
 Torvald Helmer – Nora's husband, a newly promoted bank manager,
suffocates but professes to be enamoured of his wife.
 Dr. Rank – a rich family friend, he is secretly in love with Nora. He is
terminally ill, and it is implied that his "tuberculosis of the spine"
originates from a venereal disease contracted by his father.
 Kristine Linde – Nora's old school friend, widowed, is seeking
employment. She was in a relationship with Krogstad prior to the play's
setting.
 Nils Krogstad – an employee at Torvald's bank, single father, he is
pushed to desperation. A supposed scoundrel, he is revealed to be a
long-lost lover of Kristine.
 The Children – Nora and Torvald's children: Ivar, Bobby and Emmy
 Anne Marie – Nora's former nanny, she now cares for the children.
 Helene – the Helmers' maid
 The Porter – delivers a Christmas tree to the Helmer household at the
beginning of the play.

Ibsen started thinking about the play around May 1878,
although he did not begin its first draft until a year later,
having reflected on the themes and characters in the
intervening period (he visualised its protagonist, Nora, for
instance, as having approached him one day wearing "a blue
woolen dress"). He outlined his conception of the play as a
"modern tragedy" in a note written in Rome on 19 October
1878. "A woman cannot be herself in modern society," he
argues, since it is "an exclusively male society, with laws
made by men and with prosecutors and judges who assess
feminine conduct from a masculine standpoint.
Ibsen sent a fair copy of the completed play to his publisher
on 15 September 1879. It was first published in Copenhagen
on 4 December 1879, in an edition of 8,000 copies that sold
out within a month; a second edition of 3,000 copies followed
on 4 January 1880, and a third edition of 2,500 was issued on
8 March.
“A Doll’s House”
The word “doll” means a woman who has no mind or will of
her own. “A Doll’s House” therefore means a house in
which there lives such a woman. The word “doll” in the
play is applicable to Nora. She is a doll because, during
the eight years that she has spent as Helmer’s marriagepartner, she has always been a passive and subservient
kind of wife to him.
At the very beginning of the play
Helmer treating his wife as a kind of a
pet. He addresses her as his “little
skylark” and as his “little squirrel”;
and she fully responds to these terms
of endearment.
It has become a normal practice for
Helmer to address her thus, and she
accepts the role of a pet without in the
least being conscious of anything
usual or singular about it.
• The
authoritarian attitude of
Helmer becomes more
emphatic when he rejects
Nora’s recommendation
on the behalf of Krogstad.
• Helmer on the occasion
appears as a stern moralist.

His condemnation of Krogstad is so strongly worded
that Nora, applying the condemnation to her own case,
shudders inwardly.


If Nora had been a self-assertive woman, she could very
well have taken up a firm attitude on this occasion and
tried refute Helmer’s arguments.
But far from adopting a firm attitude ,Nora begins to
think of suicide.





Nora is entirely depended on her husband.
She seeks his advice as to what kind of a costume she
should wear at the fancy-dress ball.
She tells him that she can not move a step without his
guidance in this matter.
She then seeks his guidance in rehearsing the Tarentella,
appealing almost helplessly to him for his direction.
According to the ideas then prevailing, Nora is a model
of wifely devotion.
Nora has been living a doll’s house without having ever
been conscious that she was a doll.
• After Helmer’s totally unexpected reaction to Krogstad’s
two letters, Nora realises that she has always been a nonentity in this house.
• Nora realises that she has been rendering blind obedience to
convention and custom all these years in order to keep her
husband pleased.
•It now dawns upon her mind that her husband is not the man
she had thought him to be.
•
Nora’s love for Helmer now drops dead, and her mind
now becomes active.
• she discovers that she is an individual in her own right,
but that her individuality has remained dormant and
suppressed all these years.
•She tells Helmer that he has been treating her as his dollwife just as her father had in the past treated her as his
baby-doll.
•She says that she would now like to know things at firsthand and, in order to do that, she must go out into the
world alone.
•
•At
the end of the play
Nora is no longer a doll.
• She is a woman and
individual in her own
right.
• She would now discover
her own potentialities and
seek to achieve the
fulfilment.
The title
for the play is most
appropriate because it signifies the kind of a life that
Nora has led for eight years in her husband’s home.
Her exit from her husband’s home is turning-point in
her life; her exit can prove to be a new starting-point
for Nora.