LEAVING CERT ENGLISH - HONOURS
A DOLL'S HOUSE
A Doll’s House: Henrik Ibsen
Key Quotations:
Nora: “When I lived with papa, he used to tell me what he thought about everything, so I never had any opinion but his……he called me his little doll. Then I came here to live in your house….I passed from Papa’s hands into yours….I performed tricks for you, and you gave me food and drink.”
“I must educate myself. And you can’t help me with that. It’s something I must do by myself. That’s why I’m leaving you.”
“You’ve always been very kind to me. But our home has never been anything but a playroom. I’ve been your doll wife, just as I used to be Papa’s doll child.”
“I’m no longer prepared to accept what people say, and what’s written in books. I must think things out for myself, and try to find my own answer”
Torvald: “”Is that my skylark twittering out there?”
“When did my squirrel come home?
“Has my little squander-bird been over-spending again?”
“My little songbird mustn’t droop her wings. Is little squirrel sulking?”
“The squander-bird’s a pretty little creature, but….it’s incredible what an expensive pet she is for a man to keep.”
“Ah, Nora, you don’t understand what goes on in a husband’s heart. There is something …wonderful and satisfying for a husband in knowing that he has forgiven his wife….It means that she has become his property…She is now not only his wife but his child”
The action of the play takes place in a single room, symbolising the sense of imprisonment and entrapment of the “doll’s house”. To find true freedom and dignity as a mature human being, Nora must escape from the doll’s house. The door slamming at the end of the play reminds us of Nora’s flight to a new world.
Nora is a wife-child, exercising power over her husband by seduction, teasing, wheedling. She dresses up to dance the Tarantella. Torvald helps her with the dance. She acts her part, just as she plays the part of a meek, submissive wife.
But Torvald holds the real power. Nora must wheedle and tease in order to get the money from Torvald which she needs to pay Krogstad.
Nora must shore up her husband’s authority by many small and large deceptions—hiding the macaroons, lying about borrowing the money, etc.
Mrs Linde explains the hard choices of a woman’s life. She must care for her mother and brothers. She must enter a loveless marriage for financial security. She must beg a favour—a job—from her friend.
When “A Doll’s House” was first performed it was highly controversial, and Ibsen wrote a different ending to the play. It was considered a scandal that a mother would contemplate leaving her home and children
Nora questions the assumptions of her society, and rebels against its norms. In the end she rejects the rules and constraints of her society. She contemplates suicide as she waits for Torvald to read Krogstad’s letter. But in the end she chooses personal responsibility, independence and freedom.
The play was an agent for change, and opened up new possibilities for theatre. When the play was written at the end of the 19th Century, Norway was undergoing a transformation. It was becoming a more open, industrialised, urban society.
Nora’s action reminds us of what is to come in the new century---votes for women and the working class, new freedoms for women, a radical re-thinking of the meaning of marriage and women’s position within it.
Key Quotations:
Nora: “When I lived with papa, he used to tell me what he thought about everything, so I never had any opinion but his……he called me his little doll. Then I came here to live in your house….I passed from Papa’s hands into yours….I performed tricks for you, and you gave me food and drink.”
“I must educate myself. And you can’t help me with that. It’s something I must do by myself. That’s why I’m leaving you.”
“You’ve always been very kind to me. But our home has never been anything but a playroom. I’ve been your doll wife, just as I used to be Papa’s doll child.”
“I’m no longer prepared to accept what people say, and what’s written in books. I must think things out for myself, and try to find my own answer”
Torvald: “”Is that my skylark twittering out there?”
“When did my squirrel come home?
“Has my little squander-bird been over-spending again?”
“My little songbird mustn’t droop her wings. Is little squirrel sulking?”
“The squander-bird’s a pretty little creature, but….it’s incredible what an expensive pet she is for a man to keep.”
“Ah, Nora, you don’t understand what goes on in a husband’s heart. There is something …wonderful and satisfying for a husband in knowing that he has forgiven his wife….It means that she has become his property…She is now not only his wife but his child”
The action of the play takes place in a single room, symbolising the sense of imprisonment and entrapment of the “doll’s house”. To find true freedom and dignity as a mature human being, Nora must escape from the doll’s house. The door slamming at the end of the play reminds us of Nora’s flight to a new world.
Nora is a wife-child, exercising power over her husband by seduction, teasing, wheedling. She dresses up to dance the Tarantella. Torvald helps her with the dance. She acts her part, just as she plays the part of a meek, submissive wife.
But Torvald holds the real power. Nora must wheedle and tease in order to get the money from Torvald which she needs to pay Krogstad.
Nora must shore up her husband’s authority by many small and large deceptions—hiding the macaroons, lying about borrowing the money, etc.
Mrs Linde explains the hard choices of a woman’s life. She must care for her mother and brothers. She must enter a loveless marriage for financial security. She must beg a favour—a job—from her friend.
When “A Doll’s House” was first performed it was highly controversial, and Ibsen wrote a different ending to the play. It was considered a scandal that a mother would contemplate leaving her home and children
Nora questions the assumptions of her society, and rebels against its norms. In the end she rejects the rules and constraints of her society. She contemplates suicide as she waits for Torvald to read Krogstad’s letter. But in the end she chooses personal responsibility, independence and freedom.
The play was an agent for change, and opened up new possibilities for theatre. When the play was written at the end of the 19th Century, Norway was undergoing a transformation. It was becoming a more open, industrialised, urban society.
Nora’s action reminds us of what is to come in the new century---votes for women and the working class, new freedoms for women, a radical re-thinking of the meaning of marriage and women’s position within it.