Title

Title:A
new world for women? Stephanie Forward considers Nora's dramatic exit from
Ibsen's A Doll's House
Author(s):Stephanie Forward
Source:The English Review. 19.4 (Apr. 2009): p24. From Literature Resource Center.
Document Type:Critical essay
Bookmark:Bookmark this Document
Library links:
Check HCC Library Holdings
Full Text: COPYRIGHT 2009 Philip Allan Updates

http://www.philipallan.co.uk/englishreview/index.htm
Full Text:
[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]
During the late nineteenth century many women were seeking independence and greater
freedom of choice about their lives. In England several of Henrik Ibsen's plays were staged as
part of a privately subsidised feminist experimental project by the Free Theatre movement.
A Doll's House had been performed originally in 1879 in Copenhagen. However, the first uncut
public performance in England took place only in 1889. Five years before this English
production, the author Olive Schreiner enthused about Ibsen's play in a letter: 'It shows some
sides of woman's nature that are not often spoken of, and that some people do not believe
exist--but they do.'
The drama ends with the sound of the heroine, Nora Helmer, walking out of the family home and
shutting the door, deserting her husband and their three young children. Long afterwards, Edith
Ellis recalled her reaction to that moment: 'How well I remember, after the first performance of
Ibsen's drama in London, with Janet Achurch as Nora, when a few of us collected outside the
theatre breathless with excitement ... We were restive and almost savage in our arguments.
This was either the end of the world or the beginning of a new world for women. What did it
mean? Was there hope or despair in the banging of that door? Was it life or death for women?
Was it joy or sorrow for men? Was it revelation or disaster?'
James Joyce said of the dramatist: 'Ibsen's knowledge of humanity is nowhere more obvious
than in his portrayal of women. He amazes me by his painful introspection; he seems to know
them better than they know themselves.' This sentiment was echoed by Irish suffragist Louie
Bennett: 'More than any other modern writer he has proved himself a prophet and an apostle of
the cause of woman; no other modern writer has shown more sympathetic comprehension of
her nature and its latent powers.'
While Ibsen's admirers hailed him as a great moralist for exposing hypocrisy in middle-class
family life, outraged critics denounced him. They regarded Nora as an unnatural woman for
leaving her husband and children, because such behaviour undermined and threatened the
stability of society. In October 1878 Ibsen had jotted down some 'Notes for the Modern Tragedy',
in which he observed that: 'A woman cannot be herself in the society of the present day, which
is an exclusively masculine society, with laws flamed by men and with a judicial system that
judges feminine conduct from a masculine point of view.'
We might make the assumption that A Doll's House is a feminist play, but in fact Ibsen stated
that it is not about women's rights as such; rather, the drama is about human rights. In a speech
at the Festival of the Norwegian Women's Rights League in 1898 he asserted firmly that he was
not a member of the league and had no conscious aim of creating propaganda when he wrote
A Doll's House: 'I am not even quite clear as to just what this women's rights movement is. To
me it has seemed a problem of humanity in general.'
In the original Norwegian the play's title actually meant 'a small, cosy, neat home' rather than
a house made for dolls. The domestic setting was confined and ordinary, but this was effective
because it reflected the homes of the audience members, who could envisage their own houses
and therefore might possibly identify with the events unfolding before them. They were, in a way,
eavesdropping on their own lives. Theodore Dalrymple (the pen-name of psychiatrist Anthony
Daniels) has said of Ibsen: 'It was he who first realised that mundane daily life, relayed in
completely naturalistic language, contained within it all the ingredients of tragedy.'
Playing games
When A Doll's House begins, Nora appears to be childish and doll-like, and Torvald addresses
her throughout as though she is a small creature: 'my little lark', 'my little squirrel', 'my little
spendthrift', 'little featherhead', 'my sweet little skylark', 'Miss Sweet Tooth', 'my little songbird',
'my precious little singing bird', 'my capricious little Capri maiden', 'little featherbrain'. These
diminutive terms may become irritating to the audience, because they are so demeaning; yet
Nora seems to accept them, and even uses them about herself at various points in the action.
Indeed, as the action proceeds we might well feel that the two main characters are playing a
strange kind of game. Although Nora may come across initially as a doting wife and mother,
there are early hints that all is not quite as it seems. It becomes clear that she is humouring
Torvald, and we soon gather that she is capable of deceitful behaviour when she eats
macaroons surreptitiously, despite knowing that he would disapprove. She assures Torvald: 'I
should not think of going against your wishes' (p. 4), then lies again later, telling Dr Rank that
Christine Linde gave her the macaroons (p. 16). When Nora asks Torvald for money for her
Christmas present the stage directions require her to toy with the buttons on his coat (p. 3). This
action could be considered childlike, but, on the other hand, it is possible that the behaviour is
flirtatious--even sexually manipulative. Perhaps Nora has devised her own means of coping with
her husband, and occasionally she can circumvent his control.
[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]
Later in the play she again cajoles and wheedles, when she wants to persuade Torvald to retain
Krogstad's services at the bank: 'Your squirrel would run about and do all her tricks if you would
be nice and do what she wants ... Your skylark would chirp, chirp about in every room, with her
song rising and falling ... I would play the fairy and dance for you in the moonlight' (p. 34).
Nora's behaviour with Dr Rank is also flirtatious at times, as when she teases him with her silk
stockings.
Between the lines
Ibsen blended realism and symbolism, encouraging audiences to engage with serious issues.
Often it is necessary to 'read between the lines' of a text, to consider its subtext. To this end, it is
important to think about the impact of semiotics--of signs--and of symbols in the play; to
appreciate how words and objects can be used effectively by a writer to represent or suggest
something else. Signs and symbols (like the macaroons) can reveal or hint at facets of
character. For example, Nora decorates the Christmas tree, determined to make it 'splendid' (p.
25), then at the start of Act 2 we see it 'stripped of its ornaments and with burned-down candle
ends on its dishevelled branches'. It would be possible to draw parallels with Nora as we
observe the tree's decline.
Brian Johnston has highlighted the significance of doors in the play. One leads to Torvald's
study, and 'represents security, authority, patriarchal power'. There is also a door to the outside
world, which becomes 'the door of liberation' for Nora. A third leads 'to the nursery and bedroom
and the shared sexuality of Torvald and Nora'. Other signs in the play include the locked
letterbox, which might convey to us that Torvald has absolute, patriarchal control over the
household; and the fisher-girl costume, which could be interpreted as implying a repressed but
passionate personality.
There are some rather troubling expressions of sexual power relations by the time Nora
performs the tarantella, and it is worth thinking about the significance of the dance. Traditionally
it is supposed to be based on the frantic movements of a person who has had a fatal bite from a
tarantula spider. It has been suggested that the tarantella expresses Nora's sexual self. Another
interpretation is that Nora could be manifesting suicidal impulses at this point; certainly she has
considered killing herself. It is possible to see her as a representative figure, mirroring feelings
that other women experienced, so her situation might be regarded as something more than a
personal, individual problem. Nora is usually obliged to fulfil the limited roles expected of her by
society--those of wife and mother--but when she dances her movements are very expressive.
There is a degree of ambiguity about all this, however, as it could be argued that even her
dancing is controlled by male figures. The feminist critic Toril Moi has explored the tarantella
scene, suggesting that it displays the torment of Nora's soul. Perhaps Nora is partly avoiding
her guilt, yet also admitting to it.
'It is no use lying to one's self'
Although Nora may initially seem childish and capricious, we gradually perceive that she cannot
be written off as shallow and flighty. After all, when her husband had a problem she attempted to
devise a solution. It is also apparent to the audience that Nora loves her children, and
consequently she is extremely alarmed by Torvald's assertion that 'an atmosphere of lies infects
and poisons the whole life of a home'. He adds: 'Almost everyone who has gone to the bad
early in life has had a deceitful mother' (p. 27).
After Torvald has read Krogstad's letter he accuses Nora of being like her father, having 'No
religion, no morality, no sense of duty' (p. 62), but she ultimately comes to see herself as an
object moulded by her father and then by her husband: 'I have been your doll wife, just as at
home I was Papa's doll child; and here the children have been my dolls' (p. 67). She needs the
opportunity to find her 'self': 'I must try and educate myself ... I must stand quite alone, if I am to
understand myself and everything about me.' Torvald is shocked that she will neglect her 'most
sacred duties'--to her husband and children--but Nora points out that she has other duties that
are just as sacred: 'Duties to myself' (p. 68).
Earlier in the play Dr Rank says to Nora: 'It is no use lying to one's self' (p. 37). Nora's eventual
realisation that she has been living a lie could be described as an anagnorisis (a term from
Aristotle's Poetics), or 'recognition'. This is the moment of illumination, when a character moves
from ignorance to understanding. Nora does not know what the future will hold, but she realises
that she requires space and freedom if she is to develop morally and spiritually. At the end of the
play she resolves to withdraw from the game of 'Happy Families'--she has the courage to take a
life-changing decision, to pursue her destiny, to be first and foremost a human being.
A tragic heroine
Ian Johnston has suggested that Nora merits comparison with other tragic figures. He observes
that 'at the heart of great characters is a mystery, an ambiguity, something that finally eludes
rational interpretation'. There are moments in the drama when Nora seems to be in control and
well aware of how to get her own way, but when Krogstad compromises her she no longer feels
in control. Questions can be posed about the ending. Is Nora genuinely transformed into a 'new'
woman? Or is she being fundamentally selfish and intransigent, just trying to regain control by
selecting a new role for herself? Johnston argues that 'it is a great mistake to insist exclusively
upon one or the other--to celebrate Nora as a champion of feminist principles or condemn her
as an egotist', because 'the ending resists simple moral formulation'. It could be said that 'Nora
is both triumphantly right and horribly wrong. She is flee, brave, strong, and uncompromisingly
herself and, at the same time, socially irresponsible, naive, self-destructive, and destructive of
others.'
In her study of Ibsen, Muriel Bradbrook stressed that Nora's decision to leave her home was a
very serious step: 'She was putting herself outside society, inviting insult, destitution and
loneliness. She went out into a very dark night.' Back in the late nineteenth century, audience
members grasped how momentous this was. Toril Moi claims that Ibsen has been, arguably, the
most important playwright writing after Shakespeare. Certainly he was a bold pioneer, whose
memorable heroine Nora Helmer has continued to engage and inspire theatre-goers.
References and further reading
Bradbrook, M. C. (1946) Ibsen the Norwegian: A Revaluation, Chatto and Windus.
Ibsen, H. (1992) A Doll's House, Dover Publications, Inc.

Johnston, B. 'Realism and a Doll House', www.ibsenvoyages.com/e-texts/doll/index.html
Johnston, I. (2000) 'On Ibsen's A Doll's House' [the text of a lecture] www.ibsen.net/index.gan?
id=512&subid=0
Meyer, M. (2005) Ibsen, Sutton Publishing.
Moi, T. (2006) Henrik Ibsen and the Birth of Modernism, Oxford University Press.
Richardson, A. and Willis, C. (eds) (2001) The New Woman in Fiction and in Fact, Palgrave.
(Chapter 4 'Ibsen, the New Woman and the Actress')
Stephanie Forward is senior tutor in open studies in the Centre for Lifelong Learning at the
University of Warwick, and an associate lecturer with the Open University.
Forward, Stephanie
Source Citation (MLA 7th Edition)
Forward, Stephanie. "A new world for women? Stephanie Forward considers Nora's dramatic exit from Ibsen's A Doll's
House." The English Review 19.4 (2009): 24+. Literature Resource Center. Web. 28 Apr. 2013.
Document URL
http://0-go.galegroup.com.librus.hccs.edu/ps/i.do?id=GALE
%7CA196227179&v=2.1&u=txshracd2512&it=r&p=LitRC&sw=w
Gale Document Number: GALE|A196227179

Title:Ibsen's A Doll's House and 'The Dead.'
Author(s):Steven Doloff
Publication Details:James Joyce Quarterly 31.2 (Winter 1994): p111-114.
Source:Short Story Criticism. Ed. Janet Witalec. Vol. 64. Detroit: Gale, 2004. From Literature Resource Center.
Library links:
Full Text:COPYRIGHT 2004 Gale, COPYRIGHT 2007 Gale, Cengage Learning

Full Text:
[(essay date winter 1994) In the following essay, Doloff finds similarities in setting, plot, symbol,
and character between Henrik Ibsen's A Doll's House and Joyce's story, "The Dead."]
Richard Ellmann notes in passing in James Joyce, that while Joyce seemed to think little of
Henrik Ibsen's A Doll's House,1 he may have transposed into "The Dead" the play's plot device
of a husband discovering that his doll-like wife has a consciousness of her own (JJII [James
Joyce, 1982] 135n). Ellmann later offers biographical data from the lives of Joyce and Nora as
the primary source material for the couple and the setting in Joyce's story (JJII 243-53). He also
cites as a source for the final scene in "The Dead" a specific episode in the George Moore
novel Vain Fortune (JJII 250). Ellmann, however, may have overlooked the full extent of Joyce's
indebtedness to Ibsen's play in the construction of "The Dead,"2 for numerous parallels link the
two works besides the common denominator of the wife who displays a certain amount of
emotional autonomy.
For example, while Ellmann attributes the Christmas dinner setting in "The Dead" to Joyce's
sentimental wish to demonstrate the virtues of Irish hospitality (JJII245), he neglects the more
structurally meaningful link to the Christmas setting in Ibsen's play. In both works, the
humiliating personal revelations experienced by the principal male characters follow upon the
heels of lavish Christmas parties during which both men find themselves reinfatuated with their
own wives. Both of these revelations are ironically underscored by their pointed denial of the
sentimental miracles and emotional reaffirmations traditionally expected of Christmas tales.
Similarly, Ellmann notes in "The Dead" how the dashing of Gabriel Conroy's amorous
expectations in learning of his wife Gretta's long dead lover resembles a scene in the Moore
novel where a honeymoon night is ruined by the suicide of a woman recently jilted by the
groom. In Ibsen's play, however, the amorous feelings of the husband, Torvald Helmer
(DH [A Doll's House] 158-59), also change to humiliation, but after (as in "The Dead") he
discovers facts about his wife Nora's past. Although those facts do not involve a previous lover,
they do reveal, to his chagrin, Nora's independent mental life. And Torvald, unlike the character
in the Moore novel, shares Gabriel's jealousy of his wife's past. Nora reports, "Torvald loves me
so indescribably, he wants to have me all to himself. ... When we were first married he was
almost jealous if I even mentioned any of my old friends at home" (DH 95).
The idea of death, in both literal and metaphorical forms, is alluded to throughout "The
Dead." To cite only one obvious example, there is the discussion at the party of the monks who
sleep in their coffins "to remind them of their last end" (D [Dubliners] 201).
In A Doll's House, we find a corresponding memento mori in the figure of Dr. Rank who
gloomily stalks the play alluding to his own impending demise from a congenital condition
inherited from his father. Moreover, just as Gabriel Conroy's depressed reflection upon the
prospect of his aged Aunt Julia's death and funeral (D 222) precipitates his final empathetic
musing upon the living and the dead, so too do Torvald Helmer's thoughts about his friend
Rank's anticipated death draw him closer, albeit superficially, to his wife (DH 167).
Going beyond these corresponding elements of setting, plot, and symbol in the two works, we
note a number of additional parallels in the thoughts of Gabriel and Torvald. As a part of their
affectionate regard for their wives, for example, Gabriel admires Gretta physically as she
dances (D 215), and Torvald becomes excited by Nora as she dances (DH 159). Gabriel wishes
at one point in the story that he could valorously "defend her [Gretta] against something"
(D 213). Torvald similarly tells Nora that he wishes "some danger might threaten" her so that he
might "risk body and soul" to save her (DH 167). Gabriel tenderly thinks of his and Gretta's
secret "life together ... that no one knew of" (D 213), and then, shortly afterwards, imagines
himself and Gretta off again on their honeymoon (D 214). An admiring Torvald tells Nora, "I am
fancying that we love each other in secret, ... and that no one dreams that there is anything
between us" (DH158), and then, shortly afterwards, confides in her how he imagines she is
once again his new bride (DH 159).
The two men also share comparable negative thoughts about their wives. Gabriel humorously
implies in talking to his Aunt Kate that he finds Gretta unthinkingly heedless, and Gretta adds
how Gabriel imposes the same didactic paternalism upon both herself and their children
(D 180). Torvald twice calls Nora a "featherbrain" (DH 27, 162), tells her that he views her as his
child as well as his wife (DH 175), and tells her that he will educate her (DH 179). Gabriel
appears somewhat condescending towards Gretta's provincial origins and resents her being
identified with them (D 187, 189). Torvald speaks condescendingly of Nora's father's morals and
values and accuses Nora of inheriting them (DH 32, 170).
The two men even share a dietary idiosyncrasy. Gabriel is described as never eating sweets
(D 200), and Torvald is said to be against eating sweets (DH 60).
While Ellmann contends that the character of Gabriel is a composite made "mostly out of Curran
[a friend of Joyce's], Joyce's father, and Joyce himself" (JJII247), I think in some small measure
we may add to this company the literary figure of Torvald Helmer. Less self-conscious, less
developed as a character, and less sympathetic than Gabriel, Torvald nevertheless anticipates
facets of Gabriel's status-driven mentality, egotistical self-deception, pettiness, jealousy, and
romantic objectification of his wife. Joyce may well have found in A Doll's House a domestic
predicament that reflected his own insecurities and around which he could construct a narrative
of personal associations. He may also have found in Ibsen's work some useful details of setting,
plot, symbol, and character with which to artfully fashion that narrative.
Notes
1. Henrik Ibsen, A Doll's House, trans. William Archer (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons,
1911). This is the edition read by Joyce. Further references will be cited parenthetically in the
text as DH.
2. Ibsen's general influence on Joyce's work has, of course, received considerable attention. For
discussion of the broader aspects of this influence, see Bjorn J. Tysdahl's Joyce and Ibsen: A
Study in Literary Influence (Oslo: Norwegian Univ. Press; New York: Humanities Press, 1968)
and Vivienne Koch Macleod's "The Influence of Ibsen on Joyce" in PMLA, 60 (1945), 879-98.
For Ibsen's more specific impact on Joyce's Exiles, see Hugh Kenner's "Joyce and Ibsen's
Naturalism" in the Sewanee Review, 59 (1951), 75-96; James T. Farrell's "Exiles and Ibsen"
in James Joyce: Two Decades of Criticism, ed. Seon Givens (1948; New York: Vanguard Press,
1963), pp. 95-131; and Bernard Benstock's "Exiles, Ibsen and the Play's Function in the Joyce
Canon" in Forum, 11 (1970), 26-37. With only a few exceptions, however, like James R. Baker's
"Ibsen, Joyce, and the Living-Dead: A Study of Dubliners" in A James Joyce Miscellany, ed.
Marvin Magalaner (Carbondale: Southern Illinois Univ. Press, 1962), pp. 19-32, relatively little
has been written on Ibsen and individual Dubliners stories. And nothing I have seen
links A Doll's House to "The Dead" in any specific way beyond a superficial comparison of Nora
Helmer and Gretta Conroy. I have found only one article that argues a multifaceted debt to a
particular Ibsen work in Joyce's writing of "The Dead," but that work is Hedda Gabler. See
Theoharis C. Theoharis's "Hedda Gabler and 'The Dead'" in ELH, 50 (1983), 791-809.
Doloff, Steven. "Ibsen's A Doll's House and 'The Dead.'." James Joyce Quarterly 31.2 (Winter 1994): 111-114. Rpt. in Short
Story Criticism. Ed. Janet Witalec. Vol. 64. Detroit: Gale, 2004.Literature Resource Center. Web. 28 Apr. 2013.
Document URL
%7CH1420053358&v=2.1&u=txshracd2512&it=r&p=LitRC&sw=w
Title:Review of 'A Doll's House
Author(s):Clement Scott
Publication Details:The Theatre 14.79 (July 1889): p19-22.
Source:Twentieth-Century Literary Criticism. Ed. Paula Kepos. Vol. 37. Detroit: Gale Research,
1991. From Literature Resource Center.
Document Type:Critical essay, Excerpt
Library links:
Full Text:COPYRIGHT 1991 Gale Research, COPYRIGHT 2007 Gale, Cengage Learning
Full Text:
[As theater critic for the Daily Telegraph, Britain's largest newspaper, from 1871 to 1898, Scott
wielded enormous prestige and influence. He was one of Ibsen's bitterest opponents in
England, attacking the dramatist and his works on moral grounds. In the following excerpt, he
excoriates A Doll's House.
[There] are already signs of weakness in the over-vaunted Ibsen cause. The Ibsenites, failing to
convince common-sense people of the justice of their case, are beginning as a last resource to
abuse the opposing counsel. Hard words and ill names are flying about. For serious argument
the defenders of the new faith are falling back on tu quoques [you toos; childish name-calling].
Having shown us [in A Doll's House] a child-wife compounded of infantile tricks and
capriciousness, a frivolous and irresponsible young person who does not hesitate to fib, and
can, at a pinch, condescend to forge; a wife of eight years' standing who changes from a grown-
up baby to an illogical preacher; a woman who, in a fit of disappointment, in spite of appeal to
her honour, her maternity, her religion, her sense of justice, leaves the husband she has sworn
to love, the home she has engaged to govern, and the children she is made to cherish; having
introduced us to the sensual Dr. Rank, who discusses hereditary disease and the fit of silk
stockings with the innocent wife of his bosom friend; having contrasted the sublimated egoism
of the husband Helmer with the unnatural selfishness of Nora, his wife; having flung upon the
stage a congregation of men and women without one spark of nobility in their nature, men
without conscience and women without affection, an unloveable, unlovely, and detestable crew
the admirers of Ibsen, failing to convince us of the excellence of such creatures, turn round
and abuse the wholesome minds that cannot swallow such unpalatable doctrine, and the stage
that has hitherto steered clear of such unpleasing realism.
Now what, after all this fuss, is the true story of Nora Helmer? She is the child of a fraudulent
father, badly brought up, neglected at home, bred in an atmosphere of lovelessness, who has
had no one to influence her in her girlhood's days for good. She marries the man of her choice,
a practical, hardheaded, untomantle banker. There is no suggestion that the marriage is forced
upon her; she does it of her own free will. For eight long years she is, apparently, as happy as
the day is long. She is the mother of three handsome children; she idolises her prosaic
husband; and her supreme joy is to ruin her white teeth with sweetstuff and macaroons, to dress
Christmas trees, to play hide-and-seek with her adorable infants, and to bound like a frisky
kitten about the sofas, chairs, and setteesa restless, frivolous, creature, who would drive any
nervous man mad in a fortnight. Nora does not profess to be an intellectual companion to her
husband, even if he wanted it. She has never once sighed for a communion of souls. Her
household god is King Baby, so husband Helmer very sensibly leaves her to the enjoyment of
her maternity and her macaroons. Ruskin very aptly remarks, A woman may always help her
husband by what she knows, however little; by what she half-knows or misknows she will only
tease him.
From this point of view Nora is a rather undesirable companion. She misknows everything. She
is all heart like a cabbage, and affectionate as many spoiled children are; but she does not know
the value of money, the virtue of truth, or the penalty of a criminal action. She spends money,
like other silly women, over bargains; she tells little innocent lies, because it is so funny; and,
when her husband is ill, and wants a change, she forges a promissory note, because the object
of borrowing the money is in her eyes a good one. It is the forged note that gets Nora into
trouble. The holder of it presses for payment, and threatens to tell her husband. Now, this is the
last thing that Nora desires. She feels that he thinks she is a good-natured little fool, and does
not desire to be further humiliated in his eyes. He pinches her ear, and calls her by pet names,
such as Squirrel, and Mouse, and Bird; but in all practical matters she is a positive hindrance to
his ambition. The truth about the forged note will be very inconvenient to Nora's husband, in a
commercial sense; it is mixed up with his position as a bank manager and his authority over the
clerks; so, when Nora discovers that her innocent act is in reality a very serious one, she is in a
pitiful plight indeed. She cannot consult her best woman friend, because that practical person
despises Nora's senseless frivolity almost as much as her husband does. She cannot borrow
the money from her husband's friend, the moribund doctor, because that very objectionable
gentleman desires to be false to his friend before he departs for another world, and becomes
rather too familiar before the family lamp is lighted. No one can fail to pity this poor, weak,
defenceless little creature as she dances the tarantella with hysterical excitement, in order to
prevent her serious husband going to the compromising post-box.
The crash is inevitable; and it comes. It was natural, no doubt, that Nora should believe that
when her husband discovered her innocent blunder he would forgive her, and take the blame on
his shoulders. But it was equally natural that a business man would, at the first blush of things,
be very angry at the idea of forgery connected with his spotless name. At any rate, Helmer is
very angry indeed. He forgets all his affection and endearments; he can think only of his
personal injury. Helmer's attitude towards his child-wife is natural but unreasonable. Nora's
conduct towards her husband, when the forged bill has been returned, and he has apologised
for his impetuosity, is both unreasonable and unnatural. Here is embodied the germ of the Ibsen
creed; here we have the first fruits of the new gospel, the marvellous philosophical revelation
that is to alter the order of our dramatic literature; here is the extraordinary discovery that is,
forsooth, to place Henrik Ibsen on a platform with Shakespeare.
It is an unlovely, selfish creedbut let women hear it. Nora, when she finds her husband is not
the ideal hero she imagined, determines to cap his egotism with her selfishness. It is to be an
eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth. Pardon she cannot grant, humiliation she will not recognise.
The frivolous butterfly, the Swedish Frou-Frou, the spoiled plaything has mysteriously become
an Ibsenite revivalist. There were no previous signs of her conversion, but she has exchanged
playfulness for preaching. She, a loving, affectionate woman, forgets all about the eight years'
happy married life, forgets the nest of the little bird, forgets her duty, her very instinct as a
mother, forgets the three innocent children who are asleep in the next room, forgets her
responsibilities, and does a thing that one of the lower animals would not do. A cat or dog would
tear any one who separated it from its offspring, but the socialistic Nora, the apostle of the new
creed of humanity, leaves her children almost without a pang. She has determined to leave her
home. She cannot pass another night under her husband's roof, for he is a stranger. She is a
wife no longer; the atmosphere is hideous, for he is a strange man. Her husband appeals to
her, but in vain. He reminds her of her duty; she cannot recognise it. He appeals to her religion;
she knows nothing about it. He recalls to her the innocent children; she has herself to look after
now! It is all self, self, self! This is the ideal woman of the new creed; not a woman who is the
fountain of love and forgiveness and charity, not the pattern woman we have admired in our
mothers and our sisters, not the model of unselfishness and charity, but a mass of aggregate
conceit and self-sufficiency, who leaves her home and deserts her friendless children because
she has herself to look after. The strange man who is the father of her children has dared to
misunderstand her; she will scorn his regrets and punish him. Why should the men have it all
their own way, and why should women be bored with the love of their children when they have
themselves to study? And so Nora goes out, delivers up her wedding-ring without a sigh, quits
her children without a kiss, and bangs the door! And the husband cries, A miracle! a miracle!
and well he may. It would be a miracle if he could ever live again with so unnatural a creature.
German audiences revolted against Ibsen's conclusion. They compelled him, against his
conviction, to bring Nora back. The little children cried and the wife returned. But the Ibsenites
were shocked. It was too conventional by far; the love of a mother for her children was too
commonplace for the modern philosophical drama. And as yet the English public has said no
word, except to sit with open-mouthed astonishment at the Ibsen stage, and to try to feel that
good acting wholly atones for false sentiment. There are certain things in the play that err
against good taste, not to be readily forgiven. Dr. Rank, with his nasty conversation, his medical
theories, and his ill-judged discussions can hardly pass. But what are we to say of Ibsen's Nora
foolish, fitful, conceited, selfish, and unloveable Norawho is to drive from the stage the
loving and noble heroines who have adorned it and filled all hearts with admiration from the time
of Shakespeare to the time of Pinero? (pp. 19-22)
Scott, Clement. "Review of 'A Doll's House." The Theatre 14.79 (July 1889): 19-22. Rpt. in Twentieth-Century Literary
Criticism. Ed. Paula Kepos. Vol. 37. Detroit: Gale Research, 1991.Literature Resource Center. Web. 28 Apr. 2013.
Document URL
Gale Document Number: GALE|H1420014978
Title:An overview of A Doll's House

Play, 1879
Author(s):Sheri Metzger
Norwegian Playwright ( 1828 - 1906 )
Other Names Used:Bjarme, Brynjolf; Ibsen, Henrik Johan;
Source:Drama for Students. Detroit: Gale. From Literature Resource Center.
Document Type:Work overview, Critical essay
Full Text:
Full Text:
Henrik Ibsen elevated theatre from mere entertainment to a forum for exposing social problems.
Prior to Ibsen, contemporary theatre consisted of historical romance or contrived behavior plays.
But with A Doll's House, Ibsen turned drama into a respectable genre for the examination of
social issues: in exposing the flaws in the Helmer marriage, he made the private public and
provided an advocacy for women. In Act III, when Nora slams the door as she leaves, she is
opening a door into the hidden world of the ideal Victorian marriage. In allowing Nora the right to
satisfy her need for an identity separate from that of wife and mother, Ibsen is perceived as
endorsing the growing women question. And although the play ends without offering any
solutions, Ibsen has offered possibilities. To his contemporaries, it was a frightening prospect.
Bjorn Hemmer, in an essay in The Cambridge Companion to Ibsen, declared that Ibsen used
a A Doll's House and his other realistic dramas to focus a searchlight on Victorian society
with its false morality and its manipulation of public opinion. Indeed, Torvald exemplifies this
kind of community. Of this society, Hemmer noted: The people who live in such a society know
the weight of `public opinion' and of all those agencies which keep watch over society's `law and
order': the norms, the conventions and the traditions which in essence belong to the past but
which continue into the present and there thwart individual liberty in a variety of ways. It is the
weight of public opinion that Torvald cannot defy. And it is the weight of public opinion that
condemns the Helmer's marriage. Because Torvald views his public persona as more important
that his private, he is unable to understand or appreciate the suffering of his wife. His reaction to
the threat of public exposure is centered on himself. It is his social stature, his professional
image, and not his private life which concern him most. For Nora to emerge as an individual she
must reject the life that society mandates. To do so, she must assume control over her life; yet
in the nineteenth century, women had no power. Power resides with the establishment, and as a
banker and lawyer, Torvald clearly represents the establishment.
Deception, which lies at the heart of A Doll's House, also provides the cornerstone of Victorian
life, according to Hemmer. Hemmer maintained that it is the contrasts between reality and fiction
that motivated Ibsen to tackle such social problems as marriage. Victorian society, Hemmer
stated, offered a clear dichotomy between ideology and practice. The facade of individuality
was buried in the Victorian ideal of economics. In the hundred years since the French
Revolution, economic power had replaced the quest for individual liberty, and a married woman
had the least amount of economic power. When Nora rejects her marriage, she is also rejecting
bourgeois middle-class values. In this embracing of uncertainty rather than the economic
guarantee of her husband's protection, Nora represents the individual, who, Hemmer asserted,
Ibsen wanted to make the sustaining element in society and [who would] dethrone the
bourgeois family as the central institution of society. Nora's rebellion at the play's conclusion is
a necessary element of that revolution; it is little wonder that Ibsen was no disgusted at the
second conclusion he was forced to write. In making Nora subordinate her desires as an
individual to the greater need of motherhood, Ibsen is denying his reason for creating the
conflict and for writing the play.
The question of women's rights and feminist equality is an important aspect of
understanding A Doll's House. Ibsen himself stated that for him the issue was more complex
than just women's rights and that he hoped to illuminate the problem of human rights. Yet
women have continued to champion both Ibsen and his heroine, Nora. Social reform was
closely linked to feminism. In her discussion of the role Ibsen played in nineteenth-century
thought, which appeared in The Cambridge Companion to Ibsen, Gail Finney explained: The
most prominent socialist thinkers of the day, male and female, saw that true sexual equality
necessitates fundamental changes in the structure of society. Thus, in embracing women's
equality in A Doll's House, Ibsen is really arguing for social justice. Ibsen supported economic
reform that would protect women's property and befriended a number of notable Scandinavian
feminists. Finney argued that Ibsen's feminist wife, Suzannah, provided the model for Nora as a
strong-willed heroine.
Finney devoted part of her essay to the feminist reception of early stage productions
of A Doll's House, which Finney maintained, opened the way to the turn-of-the-century
women's movement. Nineteenth-century feminists praised Ibsen's work and saw it as a
warning of what would happen when women in general woke up to the injustices that had been
committed against them, according to Finney. Finney indicated that in Ibsen's own notes for this
play the playwright asserted that a mother in modern society is `like certain insects who go
away and die when she has done her duty in the propagation of the race.' That the prevailing
view is that women have little worth when their usefulness as mothers has ended is clear in
Torvald's repudiation of Nora when he discovers her deception; she can be of no use to her
children if her reputation is stained. That he wants her to remain under his roofthough
separate from the familydefines his own need to protect his reputation within the community.
Her use, though, as a mother is at an end. Until, that is, Torvald discovers that the threat has
been removed. If Nora wants to define her worth, she can only do so by turning away from her
children and husband.
Finney refutes early critical arguments that Nora's transformation in Act III is unbelievable or too
sudden. Nora's childlike response to Torvald in which she states I would never dream of doing
anything you didn't want me to and I never get anywhere without your help contrast sharply
with the reality of her situation, which is that she has forged a signature and saved her
husband's life and has also shown herself capable of earning the money necessary to repay the
loan. Thus Nora's submissiveness is as much a part of the deception as other elements of
Nora's personality. Finney also argued that Nora's repeated exclamations of how happy she is
in Act I and her out-of-control practice of the tarantella are indicative of a woman bordering on
hysteria. This hysteria further demonstrates that Nora is a more complicated woman than the
childlike doll introduced at the beginning of Act I. Finney noted that Ibsen stated late in his life
that it is the women who are to solve the social problem. As mothers they are to do it. And only
as such can they do it. Finney posited that rather than arguing that women are suited only for
motherhood, Ibsen really saw motherhood as a vocation that women perform best when it is
offered as a choice. When Nora states that she must leave to find her identity because she is of
no use to her children as she is, she is giving voice to Ibsen's premise: Nora must have the right
to choose motherhood and she cannot do that until she has the freedom to choose.
Errol Durbach was also concerned with Nora's role of mother. In a discussion in
his A Doll's House: Ibsen's Myth of Transformation that focuses on the critical reception that
greeted Nora's decision to leave her children, Durbach offered the review of Clement Scott, an
Ibsen contemporary. Scott held that Nora committed an unnatural offense unworthy of even the
lower animals: À cat or dog would tear anyone who separated it from its offspring, but the
socialistic Nora, the apostle of the new creed of humanity, leaves her children without a pang.'
But Durbach maintained that for Nora to subordinate her own needs to the function of
motherhood would be a greater offense, and cited Ibsen's own words to support his claim:
These women of the modern age, mistreated as daughters, as sisters, as wives, not educated
in accordance with their talents, debarred from following their mission, deprived of their
inheritance, embittered in mindthese are the ones who supply the mothers for the new
generation. What will be the result? Nora's decision, then, can be described not as an offense,
but as a display of strength. Rather than take the easy path, she recognizes that to be a good
mother requires more than her presence in the home; she cannot be a model for her children,
especially her daughter, if she cannot claim an identity as an individual. Clearly this principle
exemplifies Ibsen's stated position that if women are to be mothers of a new generation, they
must first achieve a measure of equality as human beings.
Of Ibsen's approach to marriage, Durbach asserted it would be a mistake to
read A Doll's House and extrapolate from the play that Ibsen was striking a militant blow
against the institution of marriage. For although Nora slams the door on marriage, Kristine
opens the same door. In the same way that a mirror reverses a reflection, Kristine reflects the
opposite of Nora. Kristine has already suffered in marriage and has been provided with a
second opportunity with the death of her husband. She has the freedom that Nora now seeks.
Where Nora has known security and happiness, Kristine has known deprivation and a loveless
marriage. As Durbach illustrated, Kristine is clearly a non-doll to Nora's doll. Durbach argued
that if feminists want to embrace Ibsen's Nora as a symbol for women's equality, they must also
address the problem of Kristine; her choice is the opposite of Nora's and coming to terms with
that choice only reveals the complexities of Ibsen's play. As nineteenth-century critics noted,
Ibsen presents no solutions, only questions.
Metzger, Sheri. "An overview of A Doll's House." Drama for Students. Detroit: Gale. Literature Resource Center. Web. 28
Apr. 2013.
Document URL
Title:Henrik Ibsen
Author(s):W. E. Simonds
Publication Details:Dial 10.119 (Mar. 1890): p301-303.
Source:Literature Resource Center. Detroit: Gale. From Literature Resource Center.
Document Type:Critical essay, Excerpt
Full Text:COPYRIGHT 2013 Gale, Cengage Learning

Full Text:
[In the following excerpt, Simonds calls A Doll's House one of the strongest plays that Ibsen
has produced, praising the playwright's ability to create a narrative that grows in intensity and
captivates its audience. Simonds also examines the pivotal role of Nora Helmer in
communicating the play's themes and tone to the audience.]
The Doll's House is one of the strongest plays that Ibsen has produced. In the way of
character-painting, and artful and artistic handling of the situations, he has done nothing better.
It is a pity that we could not have had The Enemy of Society, with its strong autobiographic
suggestiveness, first; but there is no more characteristic play upon the list, nor one more
indicative of the author's mind and powerif only it be read with fairness and appreciation,
than the one selected. The heroine of The Doll's House is its light-hearted pretty little mistress,
Nora Helmer. She has been eight years the wife of Torvald Helmer, and is the mother of three
bright vigorous children. She is her husband's doll. Torvald Helmer calls her his little lark, his
squirrel, provides for her every fancy, hugely enjoys her charms of person, forgets that she has
a souland is sure he loves her most devotedly. Nora has always been a child; her father, a
man of easy conscience, has brought her up entirely unsophisticated. She knows nothing of the
serious side of life,of its privileges, its real opportunities,nothing of the duties of the
individual in a world of action. Nora is passive, she submits to be fondled and kissed. She is
happy in her doll-house, and apparently knows nothing outside her home, her husband, and
her children. Nora loves her family with an ideal love. Love, in her thought, is an affection which
has a right to demand sacrifices; and in turn is willing to offer up its own treasures, whether life,
honor, or even its soul, be the stake. She is not merely ready for such a sacrificepoor
sentimental Nora! she has already, though in part ignorantly, made it, and has committed a
crime to save her husband's life.
There is much machinery to carry on the plot; but in spite of the abstract nature of the theme,
the episodes are so dramatic and the dialogue so brisk and natural that the drama moves
without perceptible jar, and our interest intensifies and the suspense increases until
the denouement occurs. Herein lies the secret of the success of this and all the other of Ibsen's
kindred dramas. Along with the poet's insight and the cold clear logic of the philosopher, he
possesses in an emment degree the secret of the playwright's art, and knows well how to clothe
his abstract dialogue on themes philosophical or psychological, so that the observer follows
every incident and every word with an interest that grows more and more intense.
It is impossible to tell all of Nora's story here. Miss [Henrietta Frances] Lord's translation will do
that best, if only curiosity may be aroused concerning it. Suffice it to say that the catastrophe
falls in a situation characteristically dramatic. The curtain descends just as Nora, the wife and
mother, turns her back upon husband and children, and passes, by her own free choice, nay, in
accord with her relentless insistence, out from her doll-home into the night, and whither? This
is the question that all the hosts of Ibsen's censors are repeating. Whither? And did she do right
to leave her children and her husband? And what a revolutionary old firebrand Ibsen must be to
teach such a moral, and proclaim the doctrine that all those unfortunate mismated women who
find themselves bound to unsympathetic lords may, and should, turn their back on the home and
abandon their offspring to the mercies of strangers! But alack! this isn't the moral of Nora
Helmer's story. It was the doll-marriage and the relation between Torvald Helmer and his doll-
wife that was at fault. Nora's abandonment was an accidental, though a necessary, episode. It is
the denouement of the play, to be sure; but the end is not yet. There is an epilogue as well as a
prologue to the drama, though both are left to the reader's imagination to perfect. A hope
inspires Helmer as he hears the door close after Nora's departure; and he whisperingly repeats
her words the greatest of all miracles!
This particular phase of wedded lifeand perhaps it is becoming not so very infrequent a phase
even on this side the wateris a problem which confronts us in society. Is this your idea of
marriage? demands Ibsen. Is it a marriage at all? No; he declares bluntly. It is a cohabitation; it
is a partnership in sensuality in which one of the parties is an innocent, it may be an
unconscious, victim.
Nora goes forth, but we feel she will one day return; her children will bring her back. Neither she
nor Torvald could have learned the bitter lesson had Nora remained at home. It is the wife at last
who makes the sacrifice. How strange it is that so many of the critics fail to see that Nora's act is
not selfishness after all! There is promise of a splendid womanliness in that emancipated
individuality that Ibsen's enemies are ridiculing. There will be an ideal home after the mutual
chastening is accomplished: an ideal homenot ideal people necessarily, but a home, a family,
where there is complete community, a perfect love.
Simonds, W. E. "Henrik Ibsen." Dial 10.119 (Mar. 1890): 301-303. Rpt. in Literature Resource Center. Detroit: Gale,
2013. Literature Resource Center. Web. 28 Apr. 2013.

Document URL
Title:The Doll's House

Author(s):W. Glyn Jones
Publication Details:Tove Jansson. Boston: Twayne Publishers, 1984. p149-162.
Source:Short Story Criticism. Ed. Jelena O. Krstovic. Vol. 96. Detroit: Gale, 2007. From Literature Resource
Center.
Library links:
Full Text:COPYRIGHT 2007 Gale, Cengage Learning

Full Text:
[(essay date 1984) In the following essay, Jones discusses the thematic content of the stories
in The Doll's House, describing it as Jansson's "most powerful work to date."]
The Doll's House stands in stark contrast to the books immediately preceding it and is far more
closely related to The Listener in mood and content than to any of Tove Jansson's other work. It
probes the darker recesses of the mind and aims at producing fear in its reader. It is without
doubt Tove Jansson's most powerful work to date and is characterized by a new intensity and a
new depth of understanding.
"The Monkey," the first story in the book, is the shortest and most optimistic, although even
here the optimism is slightly tinged with melancholy. An ageing artist gets up one morning and
as usual reads his newspaper, which he is "helped" to do by his pet monkey, who jumps through
it. The review of his latest work is negative, though the critics treat him condescendingly rather
than harshly; he is himself aware that he is in decline. He carries out a number of aimless tasks,
then sleeps for a time, and then takes the monkey out with him to have lunch with some of his
fellow artists. Their comments are bitingly sarcastic, and the mood affects the monkey--which
has already been infected by the sculptor's own restlessness. They leave, and the monkey
finally makes off up a tree; the sculptor does nothing to stop it, only remarking that it may be
cold, but at least the monkey can climb, a final comment intended to indicate that the monkey in
a way serves as an inspiration to him to have another try.
Although the artist thus derives something positive from the monkey, the idea of limited contact
between two living beings is taken to its farthest limit in the portrayal of the relationship between
the man and the animal: they are used to each other and the sculptor knows the monkey's
habits, but a closer contact between the human being and the monkey with the "expressionless"
eyes is impossible. Yet the monkey is susceptible to atmosphere, sensing the sculptor's own
mood in the morning, reacting to the teasing of the children on the way to the caf and even
more violently to the teasing of the critics. It is an outsider. So, in his way, is the ageing artist, as
he gradually feels his diminishing artistic ability. Here, then, is a special instance of the artistic
problem, a brief and unsentimental look at the artist who is losing his grip.
This is followed by the title story, "The Doll's House," in which the central character, Alexander,
is a carpenter and decorator. He is described as a man with a highly developed sense of taste
and an unfailing sense of aesthetic values. He shares a flat with a friend, Erik, and when they
both come to retiring age, the harmony that existed between them is put to the test. While
Alexander succumbs to his creative bent and starts fashioning a doll's house, Erik, far more
earthbound, sees to the food. The kitchen has to be divided between them, and Alexander
finally is overcome by the obsession of building the house--which in the course of the story
becomes the House. He is a perfectionist, bordering on the fanatical, and he cuts himself off
more and more. When the telephone rings, it is now described as being like a sound from
another world. Alexander has created his own world, and there he is content to live.
Meanwhile, this spoils the contact between Alexander and Erik, who is less at home in this
world. He lacks the artistic gifts of his friend, and when he finally does take a hand in things, it is
only with limited success. He is forced out to an ever-increasing extent, and this process is
accentuated with the arrival of an electrician, Boy, who helps Alexander and becomes as
obsessed with the whole idea as he is. Erik resorts to the television, and his estrangement from
his closest friend is underlined by the fact that the hatch between his kitchen and Alexander's
workshop is closed while Alexander and Boy are working in there, with the result that Erik can
hear the drone of their voices but not distinguish the words.
It becomes obvious that some change is coming over Erik, that a crisis of some kind is
approaching. It comes when Boy finishes the tower on the house and shows it to Erik, referring
to it as "our house." Erik rejects the implication that it is "theirs" and virtually goes amok,
attacking Boy with a metal drill and injuring his face; he threatens to destroy either the house or
Boy. He is obviously on the borderline of insanity in his despair at being estranged from his
lifelong friend, but a simple, everyday movement--that of taking off his spectacles--brings him to
his senses. Alexander returns and understands the implication when Erik says he has saved
"our home," and he retrieves the situation by remarking that there never was such a house as
Erik's and his.
The story centers on the artistic problem again, though this time it is represented by a skilled
craftsman rather than an artist proper. He is at all events a man who is seized by a project and
cannot leave it alone. Alexander even gets up in the night to go to his House, and he eats his
breakfast in his workshop. His obsessive preoccupation with his project creates a barrier
between him and Erik and is itself the result of the need to adapt to the change in life-style
resulting from retirement. As in Sun City, the innate characteristics of a person emerge more
clearly in old age. Alexander even fails at one time to perceive the borderline between reality
and fantasy, and he comes close to infecting Erik with his ideas: Erik takes a look at the house's
kitchen, typically, of course, for the man who spends his time preparing food in real life, and
notices that there is a wood fire in it:
"Of course. It looks nice.""Good Lord," said Erik. "I can't imagine a wood fire. It's no use. Not when you're used to a
modern kitchen.""You'll get used to it," said Alexander.
A tragicomedy, this story is nevertheless compelling and thought-provoking. The drama

develops consistently and constantly until the climax is reached a couple of pages from the end.
At one point, it looks as if the outcome will be tragic, but this is prevented by an ordinary action
which reasserts everyday reality and breaks through the charged atmosphere that has gradually
built up.
The borderline between the real and the unreal is even less clear in the next story, "Time
Concept," a whimsical tale of an elderly grandmother with no sense of time who pesters her
grandson by giving him a cup of tea in the middle of the night or trying to get him to go to bed at
six in the morning. However, this timeless world of hers is skillfully combined with a different
time pattern when she and the grandson travel over the North Pole to Anchorage, to the
accompaniment of the time changes that take place on such a journey. When they arrive, there
is a red glow in the sky, and Lennart, the grandson, remarks that the sun is rising:
"No, dear, it's setting," replied the grandmother. "That's what's so interesting. Here we come out of a long arctic night,
and when we get here the day has already turned into evening."[36]
And she is right. Her complete lack of a sense of time has here won over the grandson with his
acute sense of it. The implication may well be that it does not matter in any case.
Time concepts and misconceptions are scattered throughout this story, including the ideas of
having enough time or of being short of time. In contrast to the grandmother with her
indifference to time comes the rush and bustle in the airport in Anchorage, where everyone is
hurrying as though every second counted. The grandson's own sense of time no longer works
after his watch symbolically stops on the way--after which there is a surprising change from a
first-person to a third-person narrative.
For her part, the grandmother has, in Lennart's own words, created a world within herself, a
world in which she is happy and can thrive, and when he seeks to disillusion her, she is upset.
At the very end, when Lennart has rushed about trying to find postcards and discover departure
times in an empty part of the airport--a scene with distinct Kafkaesque overtones--he finds the
grandmother together with her childhood friend, John, a doctor who is said to be able to help
people suffering from illusions and lapses. Lennart overhears his grandmother telling John that
time has no significance for her--she finds days and nights equally beautiful. She is happy in her
world, however it has been fashioned, and John's final words to her as they proceed to their
plane are, "We have plenty of time" [39].
After this delightful story, there is a radical change of mood in "Locomotive," undoubtedly the
most powerful and intense story in the volume. The narrator, who like many of Tove Jansson's
characters is not named, is a loner, a man living entirely in a world of make-believe, obsessed
with what he calls the "idea" of the locomotive. He is a draughtsman who in his spare time
makes colored drawings of locomotives; in his eyes, however, they are not just drawings, but an
attempt to express the innermost being of the locomotive. He cuts himself off from the world
around him, but in his sporadic enforced contacts with other people, his aim is always to make
them betray themselves by talking and talking until they give away their most profound secrets.
This he calls "the moment of the locomotive." From these "moments" he derives a--false--sense
of power.
As a child, he has walked to school through the railway station each day, making up stories of
trains or shipwrecks in which it is always he who has the power of life and death over others--he
is the "imperator," he says. Even now, he sometimes goes to the station, and on one such visit,
he meets a woman in the station restaurant. They start talking. She is in the station because
she likes watching trains--and the narrator immediately interprets this innocent remark as a sign
that she is also interested in the "idea" of the locomotive. He meets her again weeks later, and a
"friendship" develops between them. He appoints her as his daily help, and she gradually
begins to take him over in the same way as he has taken over other people in his imagination.
He becomes disenchanted when he discovers that the character with which he has endowed
her in his imagination has nothing to do with reality: she is not interested in any abstract ideas
but is an ordinary woman who, as she herself has said, likes watching trains. However, a
relationship of some kind is struck up between them; she gains more and more power in his
home, and while she is obviously trying to see to his needs and fuss over him, he feels she is
devouring him. When she finally sees one of his color illustrations, her exclamation is as
forthright as that of the child in Andersen's story of the emperor's new clothes: "But they are
standing still." Frustrated, disillusioned, and weary, he decides "to let her die." The final section
of the story tells how she persuades him to go for a weekend in Rovaniemi, and how he plans to
dispose of her. It is not clear whether he does actually murder her, but in view of the number of
plans he lists for getting rid of her, it can safely be assumed that the one he apparently carries
out also merely takes place in the mind. He lacks the strength of purpose to kill her in reality,
and the plan to dispose of her is really only another in the long series of imaginary events in
which he has been the master of life and death.
In this complex story, Tove Jansson is working on two or three different levels. There is the
straightforward portrayal of the narrator living in a world of his own, a world created by a
neurotic, perhaps even psychotic, personality. He is interested only in machines, because of
their "supreme indifference" to other people, and he is afraid of the demands people might make
on him. He dislikes physical contact with people, even avoids such expressions as "to lend a
hand" because they imply physical contact, and so when the Woman (whose name, Anna, he
can scarcely bring himself to use) stands and holds his hand as a train comes in, she is
damning herself in his eyes--though a warm frisson goes through him at the same time. When
she puts her arms around him, the heat of her body fills him with disgust. His only contact with
other people is to try to discover their secret beings, and there is a demonic urge in him to take
them over and derive strength from them. However, ironically, this is precisely what he feels that
the Woman is doing to him--though as it is all experienced through his eyes, we have only his
rather unreliable word for it, and there is no other concrete evidence to suggest that her
approaches to him are anything but those of a woman feeling growing affection for a man with
whom she is seeking contact. He speaks to her, compulsively, until he has betrayed everything
about himself, and the story is full of expressions indicating the extent to which he feels he has
surrendered himself to her. He even dreams of her: "... she came closer, hopping like a black
bird over the rails, she was hot and smelled of sweat and held her arms outstretched to take
hold of me, and at the same time I knew that she already had me, she had the whole of me
packed into her stomach, undigested and with no possibility of release" [61]. In committing
these strikingly Freudian images to paper, the narrator is, of course, also betraying himself on a
different level--to the reader. His jottings are often disjointed, and although for the sake of
"objectivity," he tries to tell his story in the third person, he resorts to the first person as he
becomes more and more emotional about what he has to tell. And as he becomes increasingly
obsessed with the idea that the woman in some way has devoured him, the crisis he is
undergoing is underlined by more and more frequent references to how tired he is; he often has
to stop his account, sometimes in mid-sentence, and return to it later.
Very little is learned of the woman, as everything is seen through the narrator's eyes. She is the
only person he has ever been interested in, but the personality he ascribes to her is one he
imagines and is therefore a projection of himself. The general impression of her is that she is a
very ordinary, even colorless person who is probably genuinely fond of the narrator--or at least
uses him as a relief from her own loneliness.
While "Locomotive" examines a sick mind, "A Tale from Hilo, Hawaii" turns to the mind of an
innocent abroad, a young hippie from America who comes to a small town in Hawaii with the
preconceived notions of the ignorant foreigner. Hilo is no paradise: it is a seedy little place, with
a lot of rubbish on the shore, and when Frans decides to tidy it up, he merely makes it worse
than ever. He stays on, a well-intentioned but unrealistic hanger-on, properly speaking
unwanted, but in a way liked by the local population. The narrator points out that unfortunately
he took a liking to him--and implies that he was never paid for the board and lodging he gave
him.
In contrast to "Locomotive," this is a light and humorous story in which the only sense of
tragedy is that of the encroachment of modern civilization on a somewhat backward outlying
area of Hawaii. However, it has serious overtones, underlined perhaps by the inability of Frans
and the grandmother to communicate, as the grandmother, with her ninety-seven years, does
not speak English, thus affording the narrator the opportunity of covering up for her and
embarking on a series of lies to placate the young tourist. On a different level, the inability to
communicate spreads to the clash of cultures, as the young hippie fails to understand the
Hawaiian culture in which he finds himself. He is misunderstood and misunderstanding, and
much as people like him, he is an object of gentle fun. By the end of the story, he has been
accepted, but only as part of a kind of game.
"A Memory from the New Country" is a more everyday tale, drawing on the experiences of
three Finnish sisters who have emigrated to the United States. The eldest of them, Johanna,
has responsibility for the other two, and of these the younger, Siiri, soon shows signs of
irresponsibility. She marries a good-for-nothing Italian, a small-time thief who proceeds to exploit
the sisters' meager financial resources. In a final confrontation with the Italian brother-in-law,
Johanna threatens him with the police if he does not go away. He leaves, and the three sisters
settle down to a normal, uneventful life in their new country.
This is an uncomplicated, though scarcely lightweight story, in which more than one private
world is glimpsed. The obvious one is Siiri's marriage to her Italian, a dream that could not
possibly come true, an infatuation if not an obsession. However, in a way, this is
counterbalanced by Johanna's own private world, as she is trying in America to maintain the
Finnish quality of their lives, to create a little bit of Finland in America. Perhaps there is even a
hint that a make-believe world, in this case the Finland Society of which Johanna is a member,
is necessary in order to survive in alien surroundings. The third of Tove Jansson's essential
themes also glimpsed is the inability of the three sisters to communicate with each other.
Johanna understands the situation, but she is unable to penetrate Siiri's silence, while Maila, the
middle sister, is torn between the two and is in her turn less than open with Johanna. It is an
almost archetypal situation, with the eldest sister feeling her responsibility and the younger ones
resenting, to varying degrees, the authority that is naturally hers.
Following her custom of varying the weight and seriousness of the stories within one volume,
Tove Jansson now proceeds to a longer and more intense story,"The Strip Cartoon Artist." It
would be wrong to talk of an autobiographical story, but there must be a considerable element of
personal experience in it in view of Tove Jansson's own activities in this very field. Despite the
American setting and the fictitious action, it is obvious that some of the atmosphere surrounding
the strip cartoonist must result from an intimate knowledge of the scene.
Allington, the creator of the world-famous "Blubby' has given up his job, and his paper is
desperately trying to find a successor who can continue the series without interruption. A young
artist called Stein takes over the task and moves into Allington's spot in the newspaper offices.
He tries to discover why Allington has given up, what has become of him, and both his and the
reader's curiosity is aroused by the evasive answers he is given. In the end he discovers where
Allington lives and goes to visit him. Allington talks at length about the pressures on the artist
and the intellectual monotony of the job. As the conversation continues, it becomes apparent
that he has suffered a nervous breakdown as a result of his work and the strain it has put on
him. In the abrupt but effective ending to the story, he offers to do a few drawings for Stein if he
ever needs inspiration.
Possible personal experience apart, this story puts the dilemma of the commercial artist into
perspective. He has to create, whether the inspiration is there or not, and what he creates has
to be good. There is no time to relax, and it is significant that on glancing in a mirror toward the
end of the story, Stein notices that he is looking tired. He, like Allington before him, is living in a
world apart, but it is a world created through outside pressures rather than one resulting from
some twist in his own personality. Stein is a stable young man at the beginning of the story and
indeed also at the end of it, but he has now seen the ravages that stress of this kind can bring
about in another human being who was equally normal.
Problems of the artist are also present in "White Lady," in which three ladies of around sixty
are out enjoying themselves. The general problem of ageing--as opposed to old age--is implicit
in this glimpse of the three in a restaurant on an island outside Helsinki, enjoying the feeling of
relaxation and looking back on their youth. Yet they have little contact with the young people
they meet there, although they do try to talk to them. Ellinor, the writer, specializes in novels for
young people, but she now begins to realize how little she really knows them and how little she
has in common with them.
Not unlike the novel Sun City, "White Lady" portrays ageing people unable to come to terms
with the age they have attained and wanting to keep in touch with younger people, but unable to
do so. As in the novel, certain facets of their personalities become slightly exaggerated as they
age: Regina's sentimentality, and Ellinor's love of metaphors. At the end, the shadow of death
passes as the boat approaches to take them back to Helsinki, and May (like Mrs. Rubinstein in
the coach in Sun City) refers to it as Charon's barge. They have all spent an evening in an
artificial world, dreaming of a world that is past--if it ever existed--and in Charon's barge, they
are being ferried back to reality.
"Art in Nature," which comes next, also takes place on an island. Again it is a world on its own,
a world this time in which art dominates. The only person left in this open-air exhibition at night
is a watchman, who lives his own life among the paintings and sculptures. He prefers the
sculptures. One evening he is going his rounds and comes across a middle-aged couple having
their own little barbecue, and after the inevitable reprimands, he starts talking to them about a
parcel they have with them. It is an abstract painting they have bought, and they cannot agree
as to what it represents. The watchman suggests that they should wrap it up artistically and
hang it unopened on the wall instead of disagreeing: "That's the strange thing about art.
Everyone sees in it what he can, and that's the intention" [145]. He avoids having to comment
on the subject of the painting by saying that it is too dark to see it, after which he returns to his
own unadorned room.
One of the shortest stories in the book, this merely hints at some of the main themes--the artist's
problem in communicating with the public, the object of abstract art, and the necessity for the
viewer to participate actively in understanding it. Indirectly, the question of communication
between human beings is suggested, and the watchman is a clear example of someone living
apart from the world of reality. However, none of the motifs is dealt with at length, and the story
aims to set the mind in action rather than to provide any kind of answer to the questions it
raises.
"Leading Role" continues the study of the artist's problems, in particular the need for some
kind of inspiration. In "The Strip Cartoon Artist," Allington has spoken at length on the need he
has felt to exploit every chance acquaintance in the quest for material: "Your own resources are
dried up, and so you take everything they have and use it and exploit it, and whatever they say
to you, you are wondering whether you can use it" [124]. In "Leading Role," the artist is an
actress who needs to study and mentally devour an uninteresting and unsuspecting cousin in
order to perfect the part she is to play. There is in Maria something of the same demonic need
to absorb and live on other people's personalities as there is about Allington and the narrator
in "Locomotive."
For the first time, Maria is offered the leading role in a play, but to begin with, she finds the
character uninteresting. When it is pointed out to her that it is in fact very difficult to play the part
of such a colorless character, she decides that her cousin Frida resembles the part so much that
her best way of mastering it is to invite Frida to spend a week with her in her lonely, dismal
summer house. The story is concerned with the interplay between these two characters, with
Maria watching Frida's every movement and deliberately creating embarrassing silences in
order to study her insecure cousin and note both her gestures and the way in which her voice
dies away. When Frida finds that she can be useful about the house, her insecurity vanishes,
and in order to bring it back, Maria sends for her own housekeeper to take over the work. Little
does the cousin realize that on going to her room, Maria is noting her every gesture and trying
to rehearse her movements in front of a mirror. The supreme irony comes when Frida fails to
understand how Maria can be so considerate of her--a remark that obviously has its parallel in
the play under rehearsal, where Ellen, the colorless principal figure, also fails to realize that she
is being cruelly treated.
There is little sign of real contact between the two women, but toward the end Maria is
overcome with what she sees as Frida's natural goodness, and although there is not sufficient
warmth about her completely to efface the impression of a cold, calculating actress, a modicum
of sympathy begins to emerge, and Maria decides at least to play the part of a good hostess.
Frida is a type not entirely unknown in Tove Jansson's work, the little, unattractive, and
neglected person whom life is obviously passing by. The contrast between her and the
calculating Maria is underlined by the scene in which the reader on the one hand sees
everything through Maria's eyes and on the other realizes that Maria is consciously studying her.
Sympathy is aroused for Frida for the very reason that she is experienced through Maria's eyes,
and the use to which she is being put is very clear indeed.
"Leading Role" is an examination of artistic integrity and artistic self-sufficiency. How far can an
artist create without consciously drawing on others for inspiration? The narrator
in "Locomotive" can only with reservations be called an artist, but the signs are that Allington is
one on his way and that Maria is at least a capable actress. Yet none of them is able to support
his or her art without a deliberate and conscious exploitation of other, unsuspecting people. In
different ways and to different extents, all three of these figures have a vampire-like quality,
drawing their life strength from other living beings, who might then go on to praise them for their
originality. One of the problems for the artist appears to be the necessity of exploiting human
beings in order to communicate with--human beings.
In "Flower Child," there is no exploitation of people, but the question of human contact looms
large, coupled with the problem of ageing and the changes it brings about within a person or a
group of people. Flora Johansson is a svelte young thing who lives a gay life as a young girl,
surrounding herself with friends of like mind. She marries an American and goes to live in the
United States where she continues her spoiled and carefree life. Time passes and Flora is
prevented from going to Finland by the war. Her parents die, and so does her husband. In the
end she goes back to Helsinki and rejoins her former friends. All have looked forward to the
reunion, but all have aged and changed, and the close contact that formerly existed is no longer
to be found. After the first elation, things settle down. Memories can no longer provide the stuff
for more than superficial conversation: "The close-knit circle around an all too small table
presupposed an intimate contact which no longer existed" [166]. And moreover, that contact
cannot be re-established.
Flora's life in Helsinki is now a lonely one. Her friends have other interests and duties--jobs,
grandchildren, worries about their health--but she has nothing to live for except her own
memories. And that is precisely what she does. She creates her own world of memories,
imagining that she has guests, entertaining them, dismissing them when she has had enough.
And she plies them with champagne, which she buys in great quantities and needs in order to
keep a clear view of what is going on around her. Time begins to have little significance for her,
almost as little as for the grandmother in "Time Concept," and she sleeps when she feels the
need, at any time of the day: "And Flora went to sleep on her fur, and the day passed into
twilight, and she woke up and drank just a little champagne, just a single glass so that she could
see and experience everything the clearer" [169]. Like many of the other stories in this
collection, this has an open ending, and these final words indicate the hopeless and unchanging
situation in which Flora now finds herself.
"Flower Child" is the story of a "light" woman, a woman who seeks superficial enjoyment in a
world of her own and is finally faced with a reality with which she cannot cope. She has never
understood her husband's business, and even the luxury in which she has lived as the wife of a
rich businessman has been a false world, as he has been heading for bankruptcy. She has
been fted and spoilt, has scarcely grown up, while her friends have developed in a different
direction. What once united them now divides them, and the contact that was there before is
there no longer. It is a tragic story of loneliness and a hunger for contact growing with the years.
The last of the stories, "The Great Journey," takes up the theme of the imaginary journey
found in "Locomotive," though the story itself is very different. It tells of a triangle. Rosa is torn
between her friend, Elena, and her mother. Both want to travel with her, but Rosa is tied to her
mother and cannot go away with Elena, with whom a very close relationship is indicated. The
mother, who has dominated Rosa, has always been promised a trip abroad, but has never
managed to go on one, and now she travels in her imagination to places with exotic names such
as Gafsa and Bahia. Rosa is like Frida in "Leading Role," a gentle person with a constant bad
conscience even if she has done nothing to merit it. Elena tries to persuade her to break the
bond that ties her so closely to her mother, but finally changes to persuading her to take the
mother to the Canary Islands. What effect this will have on their relationship is left unclear. The
dream world motif and the idea of the limits to understanding, this time among three people, are
clearly discernible.
Taken as a whole, The Doll's House is a natural continuation of Tove Jansson's earlier work, a
book in which she continues to examine the themes on which she has already laid so much
emphasis. In all these stories, there is some character living in a dream world or a world not
perceived by anyone else, a "doll'shouse." The extent to which they are divorced from reality
varies considerably; in some cases, it is merely a constituent part of a totality, but in others it
emerges, takes on a life of its own, and leads either to neurosis or psychosis or demonic
fascination. There is even enough to suggest the need in people for some kind of "life dream"--
perhaps related to Ibsen's "life lie"--as the basis on which to live their lives. It emerges at least
as a book about people's need for some kind of dream with which to supplement the reality of a
humdrum or demanding everyday life.
Selected Bibliography
Page references are given in the text. Those enclosed in parentheses refer to the English
translations, Puffin editions. Those in brackets refer to the original Swedish editions, and in
these cases, the translations are my own.
Primary Sources
1. Tove Jansson's Works in Swedish
Note: All first editions published by Schildt, except Smtrollen och den stora
versvmningen which was published by Sderstrm.
Smtrollen och den stora versvmningen. Helsinki 1945.
Kometjakten. Helsinki 1946.
Trollkarlens hatt. Helsinki 1948. Edition quoted: Helsinki 1968.
Muminpappans Bravader. Helsinki 1950.
Farlig Midsommar. Helsinki 1954. Edition quoted: Helsinki 1969.
Trollvinter. Helsinki 1957. Edition quoted: Helsinki 1970.
Det osynliga barnet. Helsinki 1962. Edition quoted: Stockholm 1974.
Pappan och havet. Helsinki 1965.
Kometen kommer. Helsinki 1968.
Sent i november. Helsinki 1971. Edition quoted: Stockholm 1974.
Bildhuggarens dotter. Helsinki 1968. Edition quoted: Helsinki 1969.
Lyssnerskan. Helsinki 1971. Edition quoted: Stockholm 1973.
Sommarboken. Helsinki 1972.
Solstaden. Helsinki 1974.
Dockskpet. Helsinki 1978.
2. Tove Jansson in English
Note: All first editions of the novels in translation were published by Ernest Benn. Permission to
quote from the English editions of Tove Jansson's Moomin books has been given by the
copyright holders, Messrs. Ernest Benn Ltd.
Finn Family Moomintroll. Translated by Elizabeth Portch. London 1951. Edition quoted: Puffin
Books, 1980.
Comet in Moominland. Translated by Elizabeth Portch. London 1951. Edition quoted: Puffin
Books, 1980.
The Exploits of Moominpappa. Translated by Thomas Warburton. London 1952. Edition quoted:
Puffin Books, 1980.
Moominsummer Madness. Translated by Thomas Warburton. London 1955. Edition quoted:
Puffin Books, 1979.
Moominland Midwinter. Translated by Thomas Warburton. London 1958. Edition quoted: Puffin
Books, 1980.
Tales from Moomin Valley. Translated by Thomas Warburton. London 1963. Edition quoted:
Puffin Books, 1980.
Moominpappa at Sea. Translated by Kingsley Hart. London 1965. Edition quoted: Puffin Books,
1980.
Moominvalley in November. Translated by Kingsley Hart. London 1971. Edition quoted: Puffin
Books, 1977.
The Sculptor's Daughter. Translated by Kingsley Hart. London 1969.
The Summer Book. Translated by Thomas Neal. London 1972.
"The Monkey." Translated by W. Glyn Jones, Books from Finland 14, no. 2 (1981): 62-63.
"Locomotive." Translated by W. Glyn Jones, Books from Finland 14, no. 2 (1981): 64-71.
Jones, W. Glyn. "The Doll's House." Tove Jansson. Boston: Twayne Publishers, 1984. 149-162. Rpt. in Short Story
Criticism. Ed. Jelena O. Krstovic. Vol. 96. Detroit: Gale, 2007. Literature Resource Center. Web. 28 Apr. 2013.
Document URL
Title:A Doll's House and Kramer vs. Kramer: objections to family law
Author(s):Bjarne Markussen
Source:Forum for World Literature Studies. 2.1 (Apr. 2010): p123. From Literature Resource Center.
Library links:
Full Text: COPYRIGHT 2010 Wuhan Guoyang Union Culture & Education Company
http://www.fwls.org/about
Abstract:
Ibsen's A Doll's House (1879) and Robert Bentons film Kramer vs. Kramer (1979) are two of
the most significant family dramas in western culture. Not only because they deal with
fundamental family relations, but because they challenge the legal boundaries for these
relations. It could be argued that both dramas have had an impact on western family law. The
article will compare A Doll's House and Kramer vs. Kramer with regards to both existential and
legal themes. Both Nora and Ted make existential choices. She chooses freedom before her
duties as a mother and wife. He gives up his personal freedom to be with his son. The ties
between them are strong, and being a "weekend daddy" is no longer an option. He chooses
love and parental duties before freedom, and his position is therefore more like Mrs Linde's,
who needs "someone and something to work for." Legally speaking, A Doll's House represents
a critic of several basic assumptions in nineteenth-century family law which subordinated the
wife to the husband. Kramer vs. Kramer, on the other hand, represents a critique of twentieth-
century child custody court which subordinated fathers to mothers as child carers. The common
target for these critical efforts is the enlightenment theory of motherhood.
Key words A Doll's House; Kramer vs. Kramer; family Law; law and literature
Full Text:
Law has always been an important literary theme, from the Greek drama, through Shakespeare
and Kafka, and finally in the modern crime novel. Since the twentieth century, film and television
have also revealed a great fascination of crime, investigation and court dramas. Ibsen is a part
of this tradition. A Doll'sHome is not only about freedom and emancipation of women, it is also
about crime and legal thinking, the kind of thinking that put women in a subordinated position in
nineteenth-century society. In his drama, Ibsen exposes the basic assumptions for the
nineteenth-century family law, and for this purpose Helmer plays an important role. He carries
with him an ideological structure, and every time he opens his mouth, small pieces become
exposed, connecting religious beliefs, moral standards, gender assumptions and aesthetic
ideals about law. As it turns out, Nora is not too impressed with the laws.
Many have asked the question; Where did Nora go? My question is : What did Helmer do after
Nora left? One hundred years later, in 1979, Robert Benton gave an interesting answer in his
film Kramer vs. Kramer, starring Meryl Streep and Dustin Hoffman. The film starts where Ibsen's
play ends, a wife leaving her husband and child. In her absence a close relationship builds
between Ted Kramer and his son Billy. Ted is a modern Helmer, except more sensitive, flexible
and intelligent. When he is left alone with Billy, he transforms himself into a devoted father and a
competent care person for his son. In the end, he has to fight in court to keep it that way.
Helmer also had a genuine interest in how children should be raised.
In my book Rettshistorier [Tales of Law], (1) I have argued that A Doll's House and Kramer vs.
Kramer are two of the most significant family dramas in western culture. Not only because they
deal with fundamental family relations (husband-wife, parents-children), but also because they
challenge the legal boundaries for these relations. In fact, it seems like both dramas have had
an impact on western family law. In the struggle to pass the 1888 Marriage Act [Lov om
Formuesforholdet mellem AEgtefoeller], Norwegian left wing politicians adopted both the
dollhouse metaphor and Noras rhetoric regarding equality between the sexes. A century later,
lawyers quoted Kramer vs. Kramer in legal disputes regarding child custody. According to the
professor of law, Andrew Schepard, the film may well have had a significant influence on the
changes in the child custody court the latter years. (2) It can therefore be said that both dramas
have had an impact on the western legal culture : The way we think about right and wrong, legal
and illegal, and law and gender. In this article I will compare the two dramas with regards to both
existential and legal themes.
Complementary Dramas
A Doll's House and Kramer vs. Kramer are complementary dramas. The first focuses on the
female character, the latter on the male. On the existential level, both Nora and Ted make
important choices. She chooses what she calls "[m]y duty to myself" before her duty to be with
her husband and children (Ibsen 105). She seeks the kind of basic personal freedom that is
necessary for an independent human being. Ted has this basic freedom, even though he is torn
between his employer and his son. But what is interesting, is that when Joanna returns and
wants sole custody, Ted refuses. He chooses to be with his son, even if his personal and social
freedom is limited. Being a "weekend daddy" is no longer an option. Ted chooses parental love
and duties before freedom, and his position is therefore more like Mrs Linde's in
A Doll's House, Nora's old friend who needs "someone and something to work for" (Ibsen 84).
On the legal level, A Doll's House represents a critique of several basic assumptions in
nineteenth-century family law which subordinated the wife to the husband. Kramer vs. Kramer,
on the other hand, represents a critique of the twentieth century child custody court which
subordinated fathers to mothers as child carers. The common target for these critical efforts is
the Enlightenment theory of motherhood, according to which the mother in virtue of her sex is a
better provider of care for her children than the father. "The earliest education is most important
and it undoubtedly is woman's work", Jean-Jacques Rousseau writes in his famous book Emile
from 1762. "If the author of nature had meant to assign it to men he would have given them milk
to feed the child" (Roussau 5, n. 1).
In Kramer vs. Kramer, Nora's project of emancipation is accepted and inscribed in the story of
Joanna's struggle to become a whole human being and to gain economic independence. Unlike
Helmer, Ted understands that Joanna had to leave her home, her husband and child, and that
their marriage did not give her enough room to fulfil herself. But what he will not accept is the
opinion that women are better parents than men. In the child custody trial at the end of the film,
Ted argues that a father can take as good care of his child as a mother can. In relation to Ibsen,
the play is now turned upside-down. The male protagonist struggles for equality between the
sexes, while the emancipated woman uses the old ideology of motherhood as a discursive
resource.
A Doll's House and the Norwegian Marriage Act
Let us take a closer look at the dollhouse metaphor and the Norwegian Marriage Act. In Ibsen's
play, Nora has committed a crime in order to save her husband's life. She has forged her
father's signature on an IOU (written acknowledgement of debt) to raise money so that the
family could go abroad and Helmer could get the recreation his health depended on. When the
play starts, he doesn't know about this, and he is looking forward to becoming the new manager
of a bank. The trouble starts when he decides to fire Krogstad, the very person Nora borrowed
the money from. Krogstad starts to blackmail her to get his position back, and the plot tightens.
In the final argument between Nora and Helmer, she realizes that he is not the man she thought
he was, and that their life together has been inauthentic. She is supposed to be his little skylark,
not an independent human being. She has not been happy, she says, just merry :
But our home's never been anything but a doll's house. I've been your doll-wife, just as I was
Papa's doll-child at home. And the children have been my dolls in their turn. I thought it fun
when you played with me, just as they thought it was fun when I played with them. That's been
our marriage, Torvald. (Ibsen 103)
The dollhouse is a metaphor for the bourgeois marriage. In the Marriage Act at the time, the wife
had no legal capacity in financial matters. The husband was his wife's guardian; she was a
ward. That is why Nora had to forge her father's signature in the first place. She was not allowed
to borrow money in a regular way. As a ward, she is inferior to her husband, and the roles of the
skylark and the doll-wife are well fitted for such a position.
Most interpretations focus on Nora's emancipation. But as I said, the play is also an
investigation and exposure of the ideological conditions for the 19th century family law. Helmer
carries with him an ideological structure, in which we find religious notions about husband and
wife, a moral system where respect for the law is essential, romantic gender ideals, and a
gender based anthropology, that says gender pervades the person. "Nora, Nora, you're a typical
woman," Helmer replies when she says she doesn't care about the creditors (Ibsen 11). Theses
ideals also correspond with a certain kind of aesthetics that Helmer cultivates, a late romantic
aesthetics called biedermeier. Helmer tries to make Nora into his little piece of bidermeier art,
but in her tarantella dance at the end of the second act she breaks the rules, and drives Helmer
out of his mind; "this is sheer madness," he says (Ibsen 78). It is this whole ideological structure
that Nora turns her back to in the final scene, when she says that her duty to herself is just as
sacred as her duties to her husband and children. "First and foremost you're a wife and mother",
Helmer reminds her. But Nora no longer believes him :
I believe that first and foremost I'm a human being, just as you are,--or at least that I must try
and become one. I know that most people will say you're right, Torvald, and that it says
something like that in the books. But I can't go on accepting what most people say and what is
says in books. I have to think things out for myself so that I'll understand them. (Ibsen 105)
Nora doesn't argue against the Marriage Act itself. She only questions the foundation for it. And
she creates a powerful metaphor to describe her life under the law.
In the same year the play was released (1879), a process has already underway to introduce a
new law regarding property of spouses. This process started in 1875 and was not finished
before 1888, and the reason why it took so long was that the left wing and the right wing could
not agree. The left wing struggled for equal rights, while the right wing wanted the husband to
administer the marriage property, unless a marriage agreement was made. In the end, a
moderate, left-wing bill was passed. Married women gained the same legal capacity as
unmarried women, with some exceptions. This law was in fact written by Ibsen's literary fans.
And we can see from the negotiations in the Parliament that a new kind of rhetoric gained
ground, a rhetoric in the spirit of A Doll's House.
A modern society cannot live with the image of the married woman as a doll. When a metaphor
like that is powerfully presented, society can only react in two ways. It can deny it, and
challenge it with other, idealized images. (3) Or society can accept and reproduce the image,
and finally change the law. This was the strategy of the left wing. Here are some examples from
the process :
1880 : Gina Krogh, a prominent person in the women's movement, reviews A Doll's House in
Aftenbladet. She internalizes and reproduces Ibsen's metaphor, encouraging women to face
"the miserable doll-life "["det elendige Dukkeliv" ] many of them were living (Krogh 1). She also
thanks Ibsen for the strict and stern judgement he had made. In fact, she pictures the author as
a judge.
1880 : In his book Kvindens Myndighed og formueretlige Stilling i AEgleskabet [On woman's
legal capacity and financial situation in marriage], Hagbard Emanuel Berner writes about the
injustice in "the many' Doll's Houses'" ["de mange' Dukkehjem'"] in Norwegian society (Berner
7). The book is about the Marriage Act.
1882 : In the Parliament the struggle continues. Two contradictory bills (right wing vs. left wing)
regarding property of spouses are given.
1884 : Ibsen, Bjornson, Kielland and Lie write a letter to the Parliament, arguing for equal rights
in marriage. The letter is sent on by H. E. Berner, who later became one of the architects behind
the new law.
1884 : The letter is quoted in a document where the left wing stops a right wing bill (Indst. O. Nr.
80).
1885 : A Doll's House is criticised by the priest M. J. Faerden in his book Kvindesporgsmaalet
[On the question of women's emancipation]. According to Faerden, Nora's travelling bag will
replace the wedding ring as a symbol of the woman's position in marriage.
1888 : A moderate left wing bill regarding property of spouses is introduced by H. E. Berner and
others. It says that married women shall have the same legal capacity as unmarried women,
with some exceptions.
1888 : In the Parliament debate, the left wing stresses the female perspective, criticises "the
male view" ["Mandfolkbetragtningen"] and the lack of interest for women's social position in
Norwegian literature (!). There are no explicit quotations from A Doll's House in the debate, but
some of the statements echo both the play and the letter. For example, the left wing politician
Viggo Ullman opposes the argument that the husband is the natural representative for the
spouses. He says : "For it is crystal clear, that in the marriage both husband and wife should be
equal representatives; and the only solid and reasonable thing is that they are given equal
status, and that both represents the marriage and what follows from it" (Storthings
Forhandlinger I Aaret 1888 140) (4).
Statements like this can be read as political responses to literature, responses to Nora's final
argument and her vision about marriage as something more than just a life together.
Kramer vs. Kramer and the Sole Custody Adversary System Paradigm
Kramer vs. Kramer does not offer a powerful metaphor. Instead, the film itself became a
metaphor--for a failing child custody court system. That is why the film has become a point of
reference in American family law.
The film starts with Joanna Kramer (Meryl Streep) leaving her home to become rehabilitated,
after five years as a mother and wife in a traditional family. Her husband and careerist Ted
(Dustin Hoffman) is left to care for their son Billy. Father and son develop a close relationship,
and build a new life together. A year and a half later, Joanna returns, now as a successful
designer of sports wear, wanting her son back. Ted denies, but the court decides in Joanna's
favour. Judge Atkins "went for motherhood straight down the line", we are told. (5) But when
Joanna comes to the take Billy with her, she realizes that he already is at home.
Aesthetically, Kramer vs. Kramer is a good example of what I use to call "the plot of the single
father", a plot developed in the 1860's with George Eliot's novel Silas Marner and Victor Hugo's
Les Miserables. In the plot of the single father, the mother is manoeuvred out of the story,
permanently or for a limited time, to create space for the development of a close father-child
relationship. (Not necessarily the biological father.) In this process, the father figure goes
through a metamorphosis. He becomes a primary care person for the child, and his values and
priorities change. This is exactly what happens to Ted in Kramer vs. Kramer. He becomes a
great father, he loves his son, and he also realizes that he has not been the kind of husband he
should have been. He accepts Joanna's interpretation of their marriage. But he does not accept
the idea that motherhood is superior to fatherhood.
In the film, the trial is a play-within-the-play, and it serves different goals. At one level, the
courtroom is a battlefield where custody and gender roles are at stake. At another level, the
legal theatre itself is questioned. Both lawyers play rough. They construct narratives and
concepts of the enemy that neither Ted nor Joanna can answer for. They have lost control over
they own conflict. "Did you have to be so hard on her?", Ted asks his lawyer. "Do you want the
child or don't you?", he replies.
But the courtroom is also a room for reflection and self-awareness. Ted and Joanna have to
listen to each other, and when they meet again at the end of the film, they have a different way
of looking at each other. Benton also uses the trial as a narrative device. Here stories are told
that the film doesn't show: the story of the marriage and the story of Joanna's new life.
In the legal argumentation, two principles govern : the principle of "the best interests of the
child" and "the tender years doctrine", that says that a child should follow the mother, at lest
when it is young. Ted's rhetorical strategy is to disconnect the tender years doctrine from the
principle of the child's best interests. Good parenthood is gender neutral, he argues. Joanna's
chooses the opposite strategy; she tries to strengthen the connection between the doctrine and
the best interesting principle. She speaks about "my child", not "our child". When she says "I'm
his mother", she is talking about something other than a genetically relation. It is an ideological
statement. Ted can never parry it with the corresponding "I'm his father". Ted's testimony goes
like this :
You know when you were talking before ... I mean my wife ... my
ex-wife ... when she was talking before about how unhappy she was
during our marriage, I ... I guess most of what she said was
probably true. There's a lot of things I didn't understand, there's
a lot of things I would do different if I could. Just like I think
there's a lot of things you wish you could change. But we can't.
Some things, once they're done, can't be undone. My ... my wife ...
my ex-wife says that she loves Billy, and I believe she does. But I
don't think that is the issue here. If I understand it correctly,
what means the most here is what's best for our son, what's best
for Billy.
My wife used to always say to me : "Why can't a woman have the
same ambitions as a man?" I think you're right. And maybe I've
learned that much. But by the same token, I'd like to know what
law is it that says that a woman is a better parent simply by
virtue of her sex?
You know ... a lot of time ... think about what makes someone a
good parent. You know, it has to do with constancy, it has to do
with patience, it has to do with listening to him, it has to do
with pretending to listen to him when you can't even listen no
more. It has to do with love, like ... like she was saying. And I
don't know where it is written that a woman has a corner on that
market, that a man has any less of those emotions than a woman
does.
Billy has a home with me. I've made it the best that I could.
It's not perfect. I'm not a perfect parent. Sometimes I don't have
enough patience, and I forget that he is just a little kid. But I'm
there. I get up in the morning, and then we eat breakfast, and he
talks to me, and then we go to school, and at night we have dinner
together, and we talk then, and I read to him, and ... and we built
a life together. And we love each other.
If you destroy that, it may be irreparable. Joanna, don't do

that, please. Don't do it twice to him.
At the end of the film, Joanna realizes that Ted is capable of taking care of her little boy, and
transfers the custody to him. It seems like we get a happy ending. But I don't think it is quite that
easy. Sole custody is not necessarily the best solution. Kramer vs. Kramer is more than an
attack on the tender years doctrine and its ideological foundation, the notion of motherhood that
arose in the Age of Enlightenment. It is also an attack on a certain legal paradigm for solving
conflicts. Andrew Schepard has called it "the sole custody / adversary system paradigm". Within
this, the parents meet as opponents, and the dispute is solved by awarding one parent sole
custody and the other visitation rights. Since 1979, the paradigm has been challenged. There
have been changes, and according to Andrew Schepard, Kramer vs. Kramer is partly
responsible for this. In his book Children, Courts, and Custody, he writes;
Because it is so well known and respected, Kramer vs. Kramer is a
useful place to begin in order to understand the rapid changes in
the child custody court from the time of the film's release until
today. Indeed, the movie may well have had a significant influence
on those changes, since it popularized and promoted the goals of
gender equality in custody determinations and the notion that
parents should forgo legal advantage, put aside their anger, and
reach their own agreements in their child's best interests. (8)
If the Norwegian law regarding property of spouses from 1888 partly was a response to
literature, the changes in American child custody court can partly be seen as a response to film.
From this we learn that literature and film have played an important role in the western legal
culture. But does A Doll's House and Kramer vs. Kramer still have any actuality left?
As long as the Enlightenment theory of motherhood still inflates our thinking, our social practices
and our laws about family life, these dramas will maintain their critical power. Women want an
equal share of the duties and pleasures of child care, which is founded in biology, so that they
can combine work with family life. While men want to spend more time with their children, no
matter whether the are living with the children's mother or not. And it is exactly these two groups
that lead the gender equality movement in Norway today.
[Works Cited]
Benton, Robert. Kramer vs. Kramer. Columbia Pictures 1979. DVD.
Berner, Hagbard Emanuel. Kvindens Myndighed og formueretlige Stilling i AEgteskabet. Aftyk af

"Dagbladet". Christiania: Steen, 1880.
Faerden, M.J. Kvindespogsmaalet. Gjennemseet og for/get Udgave af Redaktionsartikler fra

"Luthersk Ugeskrift". Kristiania: Steen, 1885.
Ibsen, Henrik. A Doll's House. Trans. Joan Tindale. Oslo: Solum, 2002.
Krogh, Gina. "Det vidunderlige sker ikke saadant til Hverdags". Aftenbladet 1(1880).
Rousseau, Jean-Jacques. Emile. Trans. Barbara Foxley. London: J. M. Dent, 1993.
Schepard, Andrew. Children, Courts, and Custody. Interdisciplinary Models for Divorcing
Families. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004.
[Notes]
(1.) Bjarne Markussen, Rettshistorier. Foreldre og barn i litteratur, film og lovgivning (Oslo:
UniPub, 2008).
(2.) Andrew Schepard, Children, Courts, and Custody. Interdisciplinary Models for Divorcing
Families (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 2004) 8.
(3.) In an article in Luthersk Ugeskrift, the priest M.J. Faerden called the wife "the priestess of
the hearth and altar of home." ["Prestinde ved Husets Arne og Alter"] (Faerden 32-33).
(4.) For further documentation, see Markussen 35-46.
(5.) All quotations from the film are based on my transcriptions.
Bjarne Markussen is associate professor in Nordic literature at University of Agder (Kristiansand

4604, Norway), specializing in law and literature. His Latest book is Rettshistorier; Foreldre og
barn i litteratur, film og lovgivning (Tales of Law: Parents and Children in Literature, Film and
Legislation). Email; Bjarne. Markussen @uia.no
Markussen, Bjarne
Markussen, Bjarne. "A Doll's House and Kramer vs. Kramer: objections to family law." Forum for World Literature
Studies 2.1 (2010): 123+. Literature Resource Center. Web. 28 Apr. 2013.
Document URL
%7CA287111974&v=2.1&u=txshracd2512&it=r&p=LitRC&sw=w
Gale Document Number: GALE|A287111974
Title:A Doll's House: Overview

Play, 1879
Author(s):D.C.R.A. Goonetilleke
Norwegian Playwright ( 1828 - 1906 )
Other Names Used:Bjarme, Brynjolf; Ibsen, Henrik Johan;
Source:Reference Guide to World Literature. Ed. Lesley Henderson. 2nd ed. New York: St. James Press,
1995. From Literature Resource Center.
Document Type:Work overview, Critical essay
Full Text:COPYRIGHT 1995 St. James Press, COPYRIGHT 2007 Gale, Cengage Learning
Full Text:
A Doll's House is a landmark in drama, but it is confined in its range of social setting to the
middle class. For Ibsen, this class denoted a community limited not only in its means of
livelihood but also in its outlook. It is preoccupied with work and money, leading to a reduction of
values from a moral to a material plane.
Torvald Helmer upholds these values because it is in his interest to do so. He knows that his
dominant quality, self-interest, will be protected by his adherence to conventional morality. He
imposes it on his wife, Nora, because it satisfies his vanity and makes her subservient to him.
To him the man is the superior being, holding the economic reins and thereby concentrating in
his hands all power and responsibility in the household, making the woman his slave. This
conventional view also applies to the attitude to sex; in the kind of relationship that exists
between Nora and Torvald, she is his plaything. Ibsen even adds a touch of perversity to
Torvald's character, who confesses that he likes to indulge in fantasies about his wife that will
enhance her erotic appeal. His purchase of a fishergirl's costume in Capri for Nora and his
insistence that she dance the tarantella in public manifest the same desire.
It is against conventional middle-class values that Nora rebels. Of course, she has been made
to believe that she was happy, that she was an ideal wife, and that her husband loves her, and
she was living with the belief that an ideal husband like hers would, if the necessity arose,
sacrifice his life to save her reputation. It is these illusions that are shattered at the end. In her
final revolt against her husband, we see the play as dealing with the subject of freedom for
women. It has been said that the banging of the door as Nora leaves the house was the first
action of women's liberation. (Ibsen was aware of the controversy surrounding his play, and was
obliged to provide an alternative happy ending for its German production where Nora melts at
the sight of her children. He described it as à barbaric outrage'.)
Ibsen himself tried to bring the controversy to an end. He said: Ì ... must disclaim the honour of
having consciously worked for women's rights. I am not even quite sure what women's rights
really are. To me it has been a question of human rights'. This, in fact, suggests the main theme
of the play. It is true that the rebel, trying to claim what she considers her legitimate rights, is a
woman, but Ibsen also conveys a more general theme of freedom from constricting
circumstances of life, often observing that those circumstances are social in character. Whether
they belong to his own century or to some other period, whatever the nature of the
circumstances, there has always been a conflict between the sensitive, intelligent individual and
social pressures and circumstances. Ibsen invests the topical and the contemporary with a
universal significance, succeeding because of the creative force of his play, projected mainly
onto the chief character, Nora. Her vitality is evident in the way she reacts to the life around her
and the changes she undergoes in the course of the play. In fact, the most fascinating aspect of
the play is Nora's consciousness, and an important theme is the development of a mature
sensibility.
At the beginning, Nora makes her energetic temperament subservient to her love for her
husband, but even at this stage her spirit of independence manifests itself as a kind of
irresponsibility, making her forge her father's signature and surreptitiously eat macaroons, which
Torvald has forbidden her to do. More remarkable is her deeply passionate and devoted heart.
Her crime, after all, was motivated by an unreflecting love for her husband: without his
knowledge and for his sake, she raises a loan by forgery. Nora also possesses a developing
intelligence which enables her to acquire a mature conception of freedom. These qualities
create a complex and many-sided personality and together constitute Nora's morality, fresh,
vigorous, and unorthodox, which is pitched against the conventional morality of Torvald. What
the play dramatizes is not a clash of characters but of values and of different ways of looking at
the world. In Torvald Ibsen portrays a character who is lacking in the vital qualities of the heart
and is a victim of social conventions. It is only gradually that Nora acquires a true awareness of
her husband's character and what he represents.
The explosive impact of the play tends to deflect attention from Ibsen's dramatic skill. The
construction has something in common with the `well-made play', but his technique is generally
richer and far more meaningful. Ibsen also employs his characteristic retrospective method
whereby he gradually lifts the veil over ominous events in the past, despite the resistance of the
main character. Nora conceals her crime from Torvald, but events beyond her control result in
his discovering it. She expects Torvald to take upon himself the responsibility for the past, but he
does not and is thus stripped of all his pretensions, while Nora is jolted into a realization that she
has been living in a doll's house.
Ibsen introduces a sub-plot centring upon two other characters, Mrs Linde and Nils Krogstad.
This is not handled as adroitly as the main plot, but is essential to the play. Ibsen's mode of
presentation is realistic, but he incorporates symbolism and visual suggestion, too. For instance,
when Nora dances the tarantella, the frenzied dance is an image of the torment in her mind.
Indeed, Nora's very language, though prose, is vibrant with emotion and acquires a poetic
intensity. The play confirms Ibsen's view: Ì have been more of a poet and less of a social
philosopher than people generally suppose'.
Goonetilleke, D.C.R.A. "A Doll's House: Overview." Reference Guide to World Literature. Ed. Lesley Henderson. 2nd ed.
New York: St. James Press, 1995. Literature Resource Center. Web. 28 Apr. 2013.
Document URL

Helmer. When did my squirrel come home?
Nora. Just now. (Puts the bag of macaroons into her pocket and wipes her
mouth.) Come in here, Torvald, and see what I have bought.
http://www.gutenberg.org/catalog/world/readfile?fk_files=3275005&pageno=2

Title

Enviado por

Dados do documento

Direitos autorais

Formatos disponíveis

Compartilhar este documento

Compartilhar ou incorporar documento

Opções de compartilhamento

Você considera este documento útil?

Este conteúdo é inapropriado?

Direitos autorais:

Formatos disponíveis

Title

Enviado por

Direitos autorais:

Formatos disponíveis

Title:A

Full Text: COPYRIGHT 2009 Philip Allan Updates

Between the lines

'It is no use lying to one's self'

References and further reading

Bradbrook, M. C. (1946) Ibsen the Norwegian: A Revaluation, Chatto and Windus.

Ibsen, H. (1992) A Doll's House, Dover Publications, Inc.

Meyer, M. (2005) Ibsen, Sutton Publishing.

Source Citation (MLA 7th Edition)

Gale Document Number: GALE|A196227179

Full Text:COPYRIGHT 2004 Gale, COPYRIGHT 2007 Gale, Cengage Learning

Source Citation (MLA 7th Edition)

Source Citation (MLA 7th Edition)

Gale Document Number: GALE|H1420014978

Title:An overview of A Doll's House

Source Citation (MLA 7th Edition)

Gale Document Number: GALE|H1420002305

Full Text:COPYRIGHT 2013 Gale, Cengage Learning

Source Citation (MLA 7th Edition)

2013. Literature Resource Center. Web. 28 Apr. 2013.

Gale Document Number: GALE|H1420002303

Title:The Doll's House

Full Text:COPYRIGHT 2007 Gale, Cengage Learning

A tragicomedy, this story is nevertheless compelling and thought-provoking. The drama

Source Citation (MLA 7th Edition)

Gale Document Number: GALE|H1420075414

A Doll's House and the Norwegian Marriage Act

probably true. There's a lot of things I didn't understand, there's

a lot of things I would do different if I could. Just like I think

My wife used to always say to me : "Why can't a woman have the

same ambitions as a man?" I think you're right. And maybe I've

law is it that says that a woman is a better parent simply by

virtue of her sex?

good parent. You know, it has to do with constancy, it has to do

with patience, it has to do with listening to him, it has to do

with pretending to listen to him when you can't even listen no

don't know where it is written that a woman has a corner on that

there. I get up in the morning, and then we eat breakfast, and he

talks to me, and then we go to school, and at night we have dinner

a life together. And we love each other.

If you destroy that, it may be irreparable. Joanna, don't do

Because it is so well known and respected, Kramer vs. Kramer is a

useful place to begin in order to understand the rapid changes in

on those changes, since it popularized and promoted the goals of

gender equality in custody determinations and the notion that

reach their own agreements in their child's best interests. (8)

Benton, Robert. Kramer vs. Kramer. Columbia Pictures 1979. DVD.

Berner, Hagbard Emanuel. Kvindens Myndighed og formueretlige Stilling i AEgteskabet. Aftyk af

Faerden, M.J. Kvindespogsmaalet. Gjennemseet og for/get Udgave af Redaktionsartikler fra

Rousseau, Jean-Jacques. Emile. Trans. Barbara Foxley. London: J. M. Dent, 1993.

(4.) For further documentation, see Markussen 35-46.

(5.) All quotations from the film are based on my transcriptions.

Bjarne Markussen is associate professor in Nordic literature at University of Agder (Kristiansand

Source Citation (MLA 7th Edition)

Gale Document Number: GALE|A287111974

Title:A Doll's House: Overview

Source Citation (MLA 7th Edition)

Gale Document Number: GALE|H1420004208

mouth.) Come in here, Torvald, and see what I have bought.

Você também pode gostar