A DOLL'S HOUSE

A Doll's House by Henrik Ibsen



A Doll''s House by Henrik Ibsen

A Doll's House has had dozens of problems propounded for it. We have heard them -- after the theatre: "Did Nora do right to leave her husband?" "Was their marriage an ideal one?" "Is a marriage that is not ideal a real marriage?" "Ought Nora to have deceived her husband?" "Was she justified in forging the note?" "Is one ever justified in breaking a law?" "Was Nora's conduct ideal?" "Does Ibsen believe in marriage without mutual trust?" "Ought married women to eat candy?"

The real problem of the play is perhaps a little more concrete than any of these and more universal than all of them. The conception of a problem play as one in which some problem of modern life is discussed by the characters and worked out in the plot is foreign to Ibsen, as to all great artists. His plays deal with situations and characters from modern life and are, in so far, allied to the problem play. But they do not present problems, in the ordinary sense of the word, nor do they solve them.

Joseph Conrad, in Youth mentions two kinds of tales, -- one, the meaning of which envelops it like a haze; the other, in which the meaning lies in the tale itself, like the kernel of a nut. To these might be added a third class, in which the meaning is partly within the tale and partly without -- a soft, alluring haze, mysterious, far-reaching, and suggestive, lit up, now and then, by gleams of light flashed upon it from within. Ibsen's meanings belong to this third class. The symbol is clearly given, and the plot; but around them and enveloping them is a meaning of which one gets glimpses, now and again, tantalizing and elusive.

The problem of A Doll's House, for instance, is not concerned with the marriage relations of Nora and Helmer, but with the character of Nora. The question whether she had a right to forge the note that saved her husband's life is of far less importance than the fact that she is what she is, and that as she is, she will face life and find herself. In so far as this is a problem, it might be the problem of any playwright, from Shakespeare to Bernard Shaw.

When the play opens, seven years after the ...