Skip to main content

A Doll’s House


Conventions can be painfully oppressive if you are a superior mind. Conventions are good for the mediocre minds that hate independent thinking and love to follow the herd. Henrik Ibsen’s play, A Doll’s House, shows the eminence of a woman’s mind and how that mind is held captive by a conventional social system.

Nora is a very conventional wife at the beginning of the play. Her husband, Torvald Helmer, loves her very much. It appears so, at least. He calls her “my little lark”, “my little squirrel”, and so on. He works and earns for the family. Nora is a housewife. A few years ago, Torvald was ill and needed treatment in Italy. But they did not have the money. So Nora borrows the money, a large amount, from Krogstad and tells a lie to her husband that the money was given by her father. Torvald would not have allowed her to borrow the amount, particularly from Krogstad. Italy saves Torvald’s life and Nora pays off the debt by saving whatever she could from the money given to her for the kitchen. She also does some odd knitting and stitching jobs.

When Torvald is appointed as the boss of a bank, the problem begins. He is going to dismiss Krogstad who is not only an immoral person but also an off-putting personality. Krogstad threatens to blackmail Nora unless she pleads with her husband on his behalf. He wants her to ask Torvald not only to reinstate him but also to give him a higher post. Torvald refuses Nora’s request bluntly. Nora wonders what place she holds in her husband’s life.

Krogstad had taken a surety from Nora when he lent her the big sum. The surety was signed by Nora’s father. The truth is Nora had forged her father’s signature and the date she put was a day after her father’s death. Though Nora had paid almost all the money back and there was just one more instalment left which she would definitely pay on time, Krogstad threatens to inform Torvald about the forgery.

Nora passes through the hell. She wonders why the world is like this. Whatever she did was out of love. She borrowed the money out of love for her husband. The money saved his life. She forged her father’s signature because she didn’t want to trouble him when he was not well. She loved her father. She repaid the debt in regular instalments. She has been a good woman. She is a good mother too. She is a good wife, a good daughter. It is love that prompted her to do what she did. What’s wrong then?

She realises that she has been living merely like a doll, a puppet. Before marriage, she was her Papa’s doll, and after marriage, she has been her husband’s doll. But now, when Torvald comes to know about the forgery, she becomes “a hypocrite, a liar – worse, worse – a criminal” in the words of her husband who finds what she did “unutterably ugly”.

Krogstad repents what he did because it’s Christmas after all. He returns the bond as well as the forged signature. As soon as Torvald receives those documents, he transforms once again into the conventional husband who loves his wife dearly. What’s more, he is willing to forgive her for what she did.

Nora thanks him for his forgiveness but adds that she cannot live with him anymore. “You have never loved me,” she says. “You have only thought it pleasant to be in love with me.” She was just a domestic pet for him and nothing more. Before marriage, she was not entitled to any of her own opinions. “When I was at home with Papa he told me his opinion about everything, and so I had the same opinions; and if I differed from him I concealed the fact, because he would not have liked it. He called me his doll child, and he played with me just as I used to play with my dolls. And when I came to live with you…”

Live with you. She doesn’t say when they married. “I have been your doll wife, just as at home I was Papa’s doll child.” She doesn’t want to be a doll anymore. “I believe that before all else I am a reasonable human being just as you are – or, at all events, that I must try and become one.

 She tells her husband that if he had genuine love for her, instead of blaming her for what she did, he would have taken up the blame on himself. That is love. Sacrifice yourself for the beloved especially when you know that she was sacrificing herself for you. She refuses to accept Torvald’s explanations, hollow words coming from hollow conventions, hollow morality, hollow religion. Even the immoral Krogstad is a better human being.

Ibsen lived and wrote in the 19th century when questioning conventions ran the risk of being targeted by the society. Ibsen made his heroines question the conventions which was worse than making men do that job. He made people think of the worth of certain conventions and the hypocrisy we practise in the name of those conventions. He shook the very foundations of people’s unthinking attitudes.

PS. This is part of a series being written for the #BlogchatterA2Z Challenge. The previous parts are:
Next to come on Monday: England, My England


Comments

  1. Though A Doll's House was written years ago, it is is more relevant than ever! Love the themes that have been explored in this play!

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Yes, the themes are still relevant especially in our country.

      Delete
  2. Tom, this story is relevant in the Indian society even today. The west has changed a lot and women are reasonably independent but in India a woman in a father's property before marriage and a husband's property afterwards. There is a custom in Hindu marriages called Kanyadhan where the father hands over his daughter as dhaan or gift to the groom. It makes my blood boil every time I see this ritual performed in a marriage.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. One reason I chose this book is precisely its continuing relevance in our societies. Sometimes I wonder why women accept the subordination so willingly. For example, how women protested the Sabarimala verdict in Kerala. It shows how women love to fetter themselves especially when it comes to religious conventions.

      Delete
  3. This unthinking nature still persists in many households, and that is very saddening. Kudos to Ibsen for publishing the play at that time.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Ibsen was a genius of the time. Many later dramatists including Shaw were inspired by him.

      Delete
  4. This seems like a very interesting book and so true to today's world too. Most of the men even want their daughters or wives to be dominated by them. Enjoyed reading your post

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. It is relevant today too. That's why I brought it here.

      Delete
  5. Great to read the story. You have shared it so nicely!
    This is relevant even in the present age.
    This is a classic. Would like to read this book.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Glad you liked it. Yes, Ibsen can delight any intelligent reader even today.

      Delete
  6. This was in the 19th century and still relevant today.Nothing much has changed in India...I think some sets of people still live in that regressive state..I know and went through this patriarchal thinking. It is shocking the things I had to endure as a young widow! Thanks for sharing such lovely insights in the play.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. I understand your feelings. Ibsen's Norway has changed significantly, but our India has regressed in spite of all the slogans about progress that we were given.

      Delete
  7. I'm going to share my story here. Please bear with me. It's long. I was in class 9 and due to take part in a drama elocution. My teacher showed me the library and said choose. I shuffled from one book to the other. And then I found this. I spent the evening reading Norah. At that time I couldn't really understand what made her say ..I've been greatly wronged Torvald, first by my father and then by you...
    Years later I picked up the play again and I knew why. Ibsen was so ahead of his times. I still have a battered copy of the play...Very old but I wish to let it be just like that.
    You just made me open a can of memories...

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Thank you for sharing your personal experience here and thus being a part of this.

      Delete
  8. I must read it as soon as possible. Loved the way you have presented the story.

    ReplyDelete
  9. To certain extent many women till date live in the Doll's house. That makes me appreciate Isben's vision and his courage to question the conventions way back, around century ago!

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Ibsen was a genius. People didn't like him much because his views were ahead of the times.

      Delete
  10. Unfortunately the women who are subjected to follow such conventions do not get to read these books or plays.... And the one's who do don't generally (majority) follow these conventions... Just my personal opinion!

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. The first part is right. Your second observation may be right with respect to treatment of women. But silly conventions still continue to oppress a lot of people.

      Delete
  11. Really i appreciate the effort you made to share the knowledge. This is really a great stuff for sharing. Keep it up . Thanks for sharing. free online astrologer chat

    ReplyDelete
  12. Perfectly written articles, Really enjoyed reading through. Please visit my web site jellyfishkids.com. Best Micro Scooters Cyprus service provider.

    ReplyDelete
  13. Perfectly written articles, Really enjoyed reading through. Please visit my web site jellyfishkids.com. Best Micro Scooters Cyprus service provider.

    ReplyDelete
  14. The Indian chapter of the Kidzgem story is quite amazing. Kidzgem has become the most loved Toys for kids in India. Today, you can go online and enjoy the trademark Kidzgem experience. All products sold on the Kidzgem website are certified for the highest quality of materials and child safety.

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Adventures of Toto as a comic strip

  'The Adventures of Toto' is an amusing story by Ruskin Bond. It is prescribed as a lesson in CBSE's English course for class 9. Maggie asked her students to do a project on some of the lessons and Femi George's work is what I would like to present here. Femi converted the story into a beautiful comic strip. Her work will speak for itself and let me present it below.  Femi George Student of Carmel Public School, Vazhakulam, Kerala Similar post: The Little Girl

Don Bosco

Don Bosco (16 Aug 1815 - 31 Jan 1888) In Catholic parlance, which flows through my veins in spite of myself, today is the Feast of Don Bosco. My life was both made and unmade by Don Bosco institutions. Any great person can make or break people because of his followers. Religious institutions are the best examples. I’m presenting below an extract from my forthcoming book titled Autumn Shadows to celebrate the Feast of Don Bosco in my own way which is obviously very different from how it is celebrated in his institutions today. Do I feel nostalgic about the Feast? Not at all. I feel relieved. That’s why this celebration. The extract follows. Don Bosco, as Saint John Bosco was popularly known, had a remarkably good system for the education of youth.   He called it ‘preventive system’.   The educators should be ever vigilant so that wrong actions are prevented before they can be committed.   Reason, religion and loving kindness are the three pillars of that syste...

Coffee can be bitter

The dawns of my childhood were redolent of filtered black coffee. We were woken up before the birds started singing in the lush green village landscape outside home. The sun would split the darkness of the eastern sky with its splinter of white radiance much after we children had our filtered coffee with a small lump of jaggery. Take a bite of the jaggery and then a sip of the coffee. Coffee was a ritual in our home back then. Perhaps our parents believed it would jolt our neurons awake and help us absorb our lessons before we set out on the 4-kilometre walk to school after all the morning rituals at home. After high school, when I left home for further studies at a distant place, the ritual of the morning coffee stopped. It resumed a whole decade later when I completed my graduation and took up a teaching job in Shillong. But I had lost my taste for filtered coffee by then; tea took its place. Plain tea without milk – what is known as red tea in most parts of India. Coffee ret...

The Real Enemies of India

People in general are inclined to pass the blame on to others whatever the fault.  For example, we Indians love to blame the British for their alleged ‘divide-and-rule’ policy.  Did the British really divide India into Hindus and Muslims or did the Indians do it themselves?  Was there any unified entity called India in the first place before the British unified it? Having raised those questions, I’m going to commit a further sacrilege of quoting a British journalist-cum-historian.  In his magnum opus, India: a History , John Keay says that the “stock accusations of a wider Machiavellian intent to ‘divide and rule’ and to ‘stir up Hindu-Muslim animosity’” levelled against the British Raj made little sense when the freedom struggle was going on in India because there really was no unified India until the British unified it politically.  Communal divisions existed in India despite the political unification.  In fact, they existed even before the Briti...

Relatives and Antidepressants

One of the scenes that remain indelibly etched in my memory is from a novel of Malayalam writer O V Vijayan. Father and little son are on a walk. Father tells son, “Walk carefully, son, otherwise you may fall down.” Son: “What will happen if I fall?” Father: "Relatives will laugh.” I seldom feel comfortable with my relatives. In fact, I don’t feel comfortable in any society, but relatives make it more uneasy. The reason, as I’ve understood, is that your relatives are the last people to see any goodness in you. On the other hand, they are the first ones to discover all your faults. Whenever certain relatives visit, my knees buckle and the blood pressure shoots up. I behave quite awkwardly. They often describe my behaviour as arising from my ego, which used to be a oversized in yesteryear. I had a few such visitors the other day. The problem was particularly compounded by their informing me that they would be arriving by about 3.30 pm and actually reaching at about 7.30 pm. ...