A Doll’s House By Henrik Ibsen: A Hard Search For A New Self

Compared to the dramas in Ibsen’s 1890 play Hedda Gabler – alcohol abuse, sexual blackmail, destroyed works of art, unwanted pregnancies, suicide, etc – the decidedly quieter theme of defiance in his earlier play A Doll’s House, may, initially, appear a little underwhelming.

Were the heroines of the two plays somehow able to appear on the same stage together, Nora Helmer wouldn’t last five minutes against Hedda Gabler before being sent scampering into the wings with boxed ears and mussed-up hair. Hedda is a woman who spends the entire length of her play systematically destroying lives Nora, to a fault, is hopelessly devoted to protecting her husband Torvald from any hint of scandal. That said, the two characters do share a number of striking similarities. Both are attractive young wives, brought up by domineering fathers, and held back from realising their full potential by bourgeois conventions.

But where Hedda is cold and calculating, Nora is frivolous and naive. Where Hedda bristles with rage at her wifely responsibilities, Nora is more than happy to slip into the role of her husband’s little “squirrel”, “spendthrift” or “squanderbird”. Where Hedda has a pair of her father’s pistols to fool around with (yes, both go off by the final curtain), Nora has her children to play hide-and-seek with – and a bag of macaroons to surreptitiously scoff. Crucially, though, both women keep secrets from their husbands. And it is the revelation of Nora’s big secret that leads to her climactic act of defiance – an act just as shocking and, arguably, even more affecting than that of Hedda’s.

First published in 1879, A Doll’s House opens with Torvald and Nora emerging from an extended period of financial trouble. It is Christmas, and Torvald has recently become manager of the local bank. Some years earlier, Torvald suffered a breakdown, and was prescribed with a recuperative holiday paid for by Nora – ostensibly with money from her dying father. However, it is soon revealed that Nora really borrowed the money behind Torvald’s back – and worse, the person she borrowed from will now be one of her husband’s employees. Worse still, said employee knows that Nora forged her dead father’s signature to secure the loan. With the revelation of her secret looming, Nora lives in nervous expectation of “a miracle” that will save her marriage from destruction – namely, that when her secret is revealed and she threatens to commit suicide to save her husband’s honour, Torvald will do the right thing and save her by taking full responsibility for her crime.

Suicide is the dark thread that runs throughout both A Doll’s House and Hedda Gabler, albeit tempered somewhat by the unconvincing refrain that “one just doesn’t do that sort of thing!” But while Hedda takes her own life, Nora’s grand act of defiance sees her abandoning a life but not leaving it altogether. She realises that a “great wrong” has been done to her by the men in her life: she has only ever been a daughter, a wife and a mother, but never truly herself. This epiphany will have drastic repercussions for her husband and children.

It is perhaps no accident that Ibsen chose to set A Doll’s House over Christmas: a period of excess and laxity, after which, as the new year dawns, one turns one’s thoughts to sober reflection and self-improvement. As Nora herself is finally able to articulate:

"I believe that I am first and foremost a human being … or, anyway, that I must try to become one … 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."

Ultimately, A Doll’s House offers no easy answers. Rather, it tells of the difficult, and yes, defiant, choices one must make before one is able to start asking questions.