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A Doll’s House
by 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.