I am on a new quest into Norwegian Literature after recently discovering works by Henrik Ibsen, a 19th century playwright and theatre director, in my university library.

I just finished reading Ibsen’s “A Doll’s House” (1935 edition) with an Introduction by H. L. Mencken, and, for this blog, will be referencing The Modern Ibsen, A Reconsideration, by Hermann J. Weigand, who was Assistant Professor of German at University of Pennsylvania at the time of this publication, in 1925.

Ibsen’s work is very popular in France, and I will also be referencing Ibsenà Europe: revue littéraire mensuelle, a book of literary criticism I found at the Gibert Jeune Librairie in Paris last February [see my post].

In Ibsen: revue littéraire mensuelle, Maerli argues that a core of Ibsen’s work is recognizable in all languages. The core is found in his counterparts such as Sophocles, Euripides, Molière, Racine, Goethe, and Chekhov. It presents itself to us as an enigma, a strict rationality in the description of the world that seems rational. Only a small number of writers and playwrights have mastered this form (Ibsen mensuelle, my translation from French to English, 151).

This core is also seen in A Doll’s House, where Ibsen takes Kierkegaard’s thought seriously and shows, through his plots, what direction life takes when an idea is, in practice, pushed to its extreme consequences. Life is not alive when an idea governs a human being’s actions down to the smallest detail (154).

In the Introduction to Four Plays by Ibsen, H.L. Mencken observed that at the turn of the century, Ibsen was “hymned and damned as a symbolist, seer, prophet, necromancer, maker of riddles, rabble-rouser, cheap shocker, and spinner of gossamer nothings. He was nearly done for in the fog of balderdash” (vii). However, at the time of the publication of Four Plays, he was ready to be examined and enjoyed as a first-rate journeyman dramatist, “perhaps the best that ever lived” (vii).

Mencken argued with high praise that Ibsen believed in all things that the normal, law-abiding citizen of Christendom believes in, “from democracy to romantic love, and from the obligations of duty to the value of virtue”(viii). Throughout his career, claimed Mencken, Ibsen’s chief interest was not the propagation of ethical ideas, but the solution of æsthetic problems. In “A Doll’s House”, for example, Ibsen was able to express absolute reality (xii).

It is interesting, however, if Mencken is referring to the “realty” in Norwegian culture or universal reality. In the literary review I examined in my last blog about Ibsen, a French literary critic claims that Ibsen’s works, or “reality”, reach across all languages and cultures.

A Doll’s House

In the four decades I have read literature and watched movies and plays, I can recall only a few movies in which a wife leaves her husband and children. Kramer vs Kramer comes to mind. It is typically the man who leaves. Hence, I was particularly intrigued that, in the context of the late nineteenth century, a playwright would construct a female protagonist who would challenge social norms by leaving her husband and family. What led her to this decision?

Hermann J. Weigand, in his critical essay, The Modern Ibsen: A Reconsideration, sheds light on this query. Beginning in the 1870’s, Ibsen shifted away from verse dramas and historical plays toward works that depict ordinary people facing everyday social, moral, and psychological problems.  Plays like A Doll’s House, Ghosts, and An Enemy of the People focus on realist domestic settings and contemporary social issues instead of “romantic idealization” (18).  As I stated earlier in this blog, was this a reality of Norwegian culture or all cultures?

 “When Nora leaves Torvald, who sits with his face buried in his hands; when the dull thud of the great door below is heard, we are profoundly shaken by the domestic tragedy we have seen enacted” ( The Modern Ibsen, 26). 

What factors contributed to Nora’s decision to leave her family?

Weigand states that in analyzing the character of Nora, one must look both forward and backward. Nora is treated more like a possession than a partner. Her husband, Torvald, expects obedience and treats her as a delicate ornament, rather than a full human being.

In the gender restrictive norms of the 19th century, she cannot borrow money that she needs to help her husband recover from a grave illness. Therefore, she must forge a document to acquire these necessary funds.

Nora now has a secret; this secret is necessary to protect her husband, Torvald’s, reputation. Nora is very extravagant in taste, but must be frugal in acquiring these lovely things to pay back the secret loan. She saves as much as she can with her husband’s knowledge. We know the secret and must follow her journey as observers unable to help her.

When Torvald gives her money for clothes and household necessities, she must put back ½ to pay off a loan she has taken to protect him, while at the same time presenting herself as beautifully dressed to keep up the ruse. Nora must sacrifice her vanity year after year fulfill the irksome obligation to repay the loan.

In time, however, Nora’s little secret has become a childish adventure to keep hidden. This secret made her feel important, so much like a man. In “Doll’s House”, Ibsen critiques the Victorian ideal of marriage, according to Weigand. As Torvald provides a loving, stable home, his “love” depends on Nora’s obedience and performance as his little doll (31). As a Norwegian housewife in the 19th century, there wasn’t much that a woman could do to feel important or to be seen for her worth.  Many marriages were superficial and unequal.

When Krogstad confronts Nora about the forgery, Nora decides to tell Torvald the truth. Since she knows that Torvald will most sharply disapprove of her forgery and lying, even though she can justify it, her thoughts run to suicide. She is “scared stiff” of the idea of having to face Torvald’s wrath, his anger bursting upon her. In addition, if she commits suicide, Torvald would be so overwhelmed by this extreme token of her devotion that her image would live radiantly in his memory. Nora would basically make a widower of Torvald and orphans of her children for the sake of being adored after her death as a heroine.

It is time to tell the truth to Torvald. Nora has made sure that Torvald is in the best possible humor. Nora hopes Torvald will take responsibility and show his love by defending her actions of forgery to obtain a loan. Instead, Torvald reacts with outrage at the idea of forgery insisting it is a crime, irrespective of motives, and that the forger should go to prison, even if the crime is committed by a Mother.

“Now you have destroyed all my happiness…I must sink to such miserable depths because of a thoughtless woman”(A Doll’s House 81)!

Torvald’s reaction has left Nora stunned. Nora had hoped that Torvald would take responsibility and show his love by defending her actions.

He quickly moves to the next steps. “You shall remain in my house…but I shall not allow you to bring up the children; I dare not trust them to you. All that remains is to save the appearance—“(82).

The next day, the threat of exposure of the forgery is gone, and Torvald quickly forgives Nora and expects things to return to normal. Weigand explains that Nora finally sees clearly that Torvald does not truly love her; he loves the idea of her. Realizing she has lived her life as a doll-like figure in a male-dominated society, she decides to leave Torvald and their children to discover her own identity.

Weigand reveals that Ibsen was an ardent champion of women’s rights before and after writing “A Doll’s House” (74). He was an “apostle of freedom and individualism” and felt that organized society was trying to keep women in a state of virtual slavery. “His uncompromising idealism originally dictated the rupture between husband and wife”. Furthermore, Ibsen’s idealism was balanced by just as radical a skepticism on the score of man’s ability to meet the demands of the ideal, and this skepticism must be taken into account to understand the final form of “A Doll’s House”(75).

Works Cited

Ibsen, Henrik. Four Plays of Henrik Ibsen. Introduction by H. L. Mencken.Modern Library (Random House), 1935.

Terje Maerli. Ibsen in Europe: revue littéraire mensuelle. Paris, Avril 1999.

Weigand, Hermann J. The Modern Ibsen: A Reconsideration. Henry Holt and Company, 1925.