A Doll's House

A Doll's House is a play that was written in 1879 by Henrik Ibsen. I read it yesterday, translated by Michael Meyer. Very interesting, especially in comparison to Hedda Gabler, also written by Ibsen.

So this play is about a married couple, Nora and Torvald, who are very happy together, but whose happiness hang with a balance of secrecy and reasonable social behavior. See Nora had borrowed some money from Krogstad, whose a bad and manipulative guy. A bunch of trouble emerges from this, threatening the couple's relationship. Beyond this are spoilers. Remember though, it i the writing that matters. Oh, yeah, and the characters.

So, the characters are the most important aspect of a book. Here we've got Nora, Torvald, Krogstad, Dr. Rank, and Mrs. Linde. Nora is by far the most interesting, I think. This is because of the way Ibsen unrolls her character. It starts out at the very surface and then goes deeper and deeper. See, so in Hedda Gabler, there are very many characters with many underlying motives that make them deceptive and speak with subtle hints and manipulative lies, especially Hedda. Only Tesman, Hedda's husband, really said what he believes very clearly and naively. However, in A Doll's House, the characters speak far more directly.

Ibsen must have a thing about intelligence and husbands. He has whatever anti-feminists for women are but for men. Tesman is a great guy. He is genuinely kind and wonderfully generous and loving. He has bits of panic and fear with true emotion, but other than then, he is very level and amiable. Same goes for Torvald.

So then now we are even right? Between the two plays. But then we have the doctor versus the Judge in Hedda Gabler. So the judge is a very conniving, intelligent and awful person, what with his love triangles and trains and all. But then there's the Doctor. Now I'm comparing these two because they both have a secret crush on the leading lady. Dr. Rank's love though, is not very aggressive. He comes and sees her ever day and Nora is always oblivious, but he enjoys her and quietly holds his love. It's very sweet really, and he gets a bit carried away (which you could tell because his form of address changes from Mrs. Helmer to Nora) but well, it's not like he's blackmailing her like the judge did. He hides the love, says he'll do anything for her, and plus, he's dying. You have to give him some leeway for that. So basically, we have another good guy for A Doll's House.

Mrs. Linde and Mrs. Elvsted. They were both old friends of the leading ladies and both very nice people. They are both little points of jealousy for the leading ladies. Elvsted wrote a book with Eilert, and feels very accomplished and has a nice set motive in her life: to help Eilert. Hedda has no such motive, she is just very bores, and at that, bitterly. Christine (Mrs. Linde), has a set motive too, to support herself financially in the real world. She struggles, but in the end, is proud of her accomplishments and hard work. Nora is married and has no such experience. She is very much a kept woman, a doll. So Hedda and Nora are both married to men that love them dearly but see in their old friends a life they could not have, a life of independence. Both the sub characters are genuinely good people. They are innocent. They look out for the best for their friends. Elvsted allows herself to love Hedda and does her no harm and trusts her. Christine goes a bit further, consoles Nora, and actually accepts Krogstad to spare her friend his vehemence. Then again, though Krogstad pulls back on the evil a bit by returning the I.O.U, when he offers to take back the letter, revealing Nora's scandal to Torvald, Christine tells him not to. I'm not sure Elvsted would have done this. Christine doesn't just do what Nora thinks would be best for her. She does what Christine herself believes is best for her friend. She turns out to be right, and so seems pretty wise, maybe wiser than Elvsted. Anyways, so we have another
good person for A Doll's House.

One more short point about Christine is that her motives somewhat match Auntie Juju's. She is a widow who has no one to care for. She doesn't accept Krogstad just for Nora, but also because she wants more purpose in her life than to work for herself alone, as Auntie Juju feels after Miss Rena dies. She says "I must work if I'm to find life worth living. I've always worked, for as long as I can remember. It's been the greatest joy of my life - my only joy. But now I'm alone in the world, and I feel so dreadfully lost and empty. There;s no joy in working just for oneself. Oh, Nils (Krogstad), give me something - someone - to work for." This could be connected to how Hedda feels too, I guess, in the end of Hedda Gabler, when she is alone but for Brack who is blackmailing her. She shoots herself then. Christine, instead, turn to Nils, and in doing so, also helps her friend. This having no one to work for, and that being awful, and the awfulness of loneliness is quite the interesting contrast to Nora's decision in the end to go off and find herself. That's what Christine had already done, and she finds she'd rather fulfill her "sacred duties" as Torvald says, as a woman. Nora, on the other hand, find that she'd rather deal with loneliness rather than lead a false life with people she does not love. Something to think about. Very different views on what is awful and what is bearable. A good example of the book's message on how to find meaning in life and living.

So then we have Krogstad, who I suppose can be compared to Judge Brack on the basis of blackmailing, and also because he associates separately with Nora and her husband, as Brack does to Hedda and Tesman. Krogstad is a strange character though, Id think the most unrealistic character in this book. See Krogstad was a disappointment for me in this book. He is the antagonist, but is a very unfulfilling one. The antagonist in Hedda Gabler was great because it was also the protagonist, and as the play goes on, Hedda is revealed to have vulnerabilities that make her evil crack to greater evils, and so in the end comes the very fulfilling climax of Hedda going out in such dramatic ways. Hedda is an antagonist, and we readers who have moral sense don't particularly like what she does, but we do enjoy it with the justification that the play is fiction. And so, in the end, when Brack starts pulling her down and her evil acts catch up to her, rather than feeling victory as the antagonist is being pulled down and justice is being served by the judge, instead, we readers forget about all the awful things she did, saying it's just her way, and then we feel sorry for her. When she finally ends her life beautifully, according to her criteria of suicide, we feel not exactly happy for her, but it was just meant to be that way. Proud of her would do, since people usually don't do such things and all.

HOWEVER, Krogstad is simply an antagonist.Hedda's justification for evil is that she's bored, she's smart, and she finds watching people squirm amusing; she enjoys power. Tat is a very intriguing reason because it's just so evil, it's so confident and taunting, and we can kind of relate to it. Krogstad's justification is barely explained. It's just something work-related. He wants a promotion. What a lame excuse, right? So boring, and then he goes about this blackmail in the weirdest way. I guess it must make more sense then, but in modern day, well, reading it, it just doesn't seem so bad, borrowing money. It's not a scandal. Then again, Krogstad does have the power to write scandalous news to ruin Torvald, but still, lame. A piece of paper in compared t a smoking gun is disappointing, really. Anyways, then, he turns out to be such a softy! Ew, I mean, come on, nobody likes a reformer. When Christine says that she'll be with him, he' so happy and suddenly says sweet words of love that are completely not befitting an antagonist. Nobody changes that quickly. Nobody gives up their year long ambitions at a drop of a hat and proclaim love and saintliness. Krogstad does though. Nils...Come on, really. Wow. Total downer. Well anyways, he drops out of the play quick; he's a useless character. Oh gosh, I could go on ages about him. Whatever, well there's a lukewarm character for A Doll's House.

So then there is Nora. We have good characters and a lukewarm one, a maid that is a nice person and children that you feel sorry for because their mother is at flight-risk. Then there's Nora. She's interesting. AT the beginning of the book. I read a bit and then said "Gosh, I hate Nora, she's such a childish greedy spoiled character" Then a few pages later, she started to change, explaining her motives to Christine. Then I felt bad for judging her so quickly and was proud of her for working so hard for her husband and happy for her for being so proud of herself for having a motive. There's a contradiction from before. Nora isn't completely kept and at loss of purpose in life. She is working on her debt. She is working independently. She is enjoying this pressure and enjoying her success. When she said she made copies and I realized Torvald thought this was when she was working on flowers, I was so glad, you know. This change in character is very interesting because you get to see for a moment what Torvald sees. You also see how good an actress Nora is. Nora has two faces. She is the doll for her husband and she is the independent woman for herself. That's always interesting. That is very Hedda of her, and Brack, I guess. But she is not Hedda. She is not evil. She is very good, actually.

When things start going wrong though, she starts panicking. That part with her and the kids is very hard to read. She has to reassure her kids that she's alright and she has to hide them from her troubles and the kids are hurt by it. Then when she talks to the maid about leaving them, that is very difficult to read too. You start thinking how together she is s a mother. No mother, in my opinion, should very be able to leave their kids. Maybe if you're like Fantine, it's justifiable, but with Nora, she only is thinking about herself. She's not a bad person. She's not with a purpose to serve her kids in leaving. She should not be able to leave. I find that the most disagreeable thing with this character.

Anyways, moving on, her and her dad. When she describes her relationship with her father and with Torvald to the doctor, it is iffy again how much she really knows about her situation. You really start questioning how clearly she sees herself during the play. When she does the acts to Torvald, switching so quickly from angst with Christine over the debt to pleasantry to the Doctor and stupidity to Torvald, it's sort of disturbing and sick. How can she stand that he sees her as stupid? How can she stand being intentionally dumb? It's frustrating, really, very. The whole songbird. squirrel stuff? Really? It's so belittling and dense. I hate it. Around her husband, all she talks about is prettiness. Torvald is an idiot, really. It's creepy too, how turned on he is by her dancing. It's very much blind. She really has a blind spot in her brain on what she looks like. Oh gosh. It's unbearable.

Well, then there's the climax. Very very shocking. So it's an absolute explosion at one point with huge blocks of words from Torvald It's the only time a character speaks so much, and it's really harsh. He doesn't acknowledge the fact that Nora does this for him at all. But then another letter comes and all the problems go away and it's so quick. Then Torvald is suddenly very happy, proposes that they forget it ever happened and proclaims that he forgives her, like he's such a saint for that. It's very frustrating and then she goes through this change. It happens, I think when she stands up and quietly leaves the room, it's so calm, frightening and then she comes out in day clothes, and you know something's different. Nora then has a serious talk with Torvald, their first one ever, and then she tells him very bluntly that she doesn't love him, that she's leaving, she immediately leaves, and then she's gone and the play ends. She finally realizes all that we've been seeing, that she's Torvald's doll, and she is leading a very controlled life, that her husband does not really love her for who she really is, and that she has to find herself. It's all very feminist and very reasonable. But then again, she leaves her children. It's so wrong. personally, I think once a woman has kids, she herself is still very important but her children must always come first. It's very wrong, her leaving, but it's very interesting sill, how Ibsen unrolls the plot. This is a constant plot, where Torvald ends up being the well-meaning antagonist, and it's all very tragic for him. He must be so confused. But it's just great that this thing, this miscommunication had been occurring this entire time, and only when the fabricated reason for Nora's life, the debt, and the threat that brings her excitement explodes and falls does she realize this issue. The fact that this revelation and resolution comes so quick to Nora is somewhat unrealistic, and the probability that it actually would stick is pretty low. But it is interesting how the twist occurs and how all this climactic momentum disappears to reveal a further more intimate issue with a far more interesting resolution then avoiding a scandal.

So there are finally themes and I realize now just how absurdly long this blog had gotten. SO tired. Ok, so first there is boredom. People keep saying their bored. Look out for it. It's very Hedda Gabler. There's the morals of society. Lies and laws and all. Then there is the focus on society and what the people would think. This goes with Hedda too. Then there's the issue of suicide again. The famous "People don't do such things" comes up, and though you don't actually come t that, it's pretty interesting still. There's the issue of duty and responsibilities that come with relationships, like with kids and husbands. Same with Hedda. And last there's the purpose of life, particularly for women. Very Hedda. They do address things about religion near the end. It's just kind of thrown in. It may be more Ibsen than anything else, since it's so sudden and disappears so quickly. What is religion? It doesn't seem to mean very much, actually, it doesn't affect judgment or action much.

Last thing, remember to take notice to those little side conversations Ibsen throws in, like Torvald telling Christine how to embroider and how it's better than knitting. You notice sometimes how he intentionally puts this stuff in to show how the personalities and opinions of a character and a character's relationship with others it revealed by these little conversations without motive, only small unfocused, unfiltered, unplanned personal thoughts.

K finally, the quotes.

Christine: But surely it's the sick who need care most?
Rank: (shrugs his shoulders) Well, there we have it. It's that attitude that's turning human society into a hospital.

Krogstad: The law does not concern itself with motives
Nora: Then the law must be very stupid.

Krogstad: People don't do such things, Mrs Helmer

Torvald: Well, we've got rid of her at last. Dreadful bore that woman is!

Torvald: (quietly, annoyed) Oh, what does he want now? (Calls.) Wait a moment. (Walks over and opens the door.) Well! Nice of you not to go by without looking in.

Torvald: There's a black cross over his name.

Torvald: I shall regard the whole business as a dream.

Nora: He called me his little doll, and he played with me jst the way I played with my dolls.

Nora: I must stand on my own two feet if I am to find out the truth about myself and about life.

Torvald: Have you thought what people will say?
Nora: I can't help that. I only kow that I must do this.

Nora: I have another duty that is equally sacred
torvald: You have not. What on earth can that be?
Nora: My duty towards myself.
Torvald: First and foremost you are a wife and a mother.

Rank: I shall be invisible.

Nora: I've learned now that certain laws are different from what I imagined them to be; but I can't accept that such laws can be right. Has a woman really not the right to spare her dying father [ain, or save her husband’s life? I can’t believe that.

Nora: I must try to satisfy myself which is right, society or I.

Torvald: But no man can be expected to sacrifice his honour, even for the person he loves.
Nora: Millions of women have done it.

Nora: We must both be quite free.

Read folks, Read.