DOLL HOUSE BY HENRICK IBSEN

Doll House by Henrick Ibsen

Doll House by Henrick Ibsen

Introduction

A Doll House by Henrik Ibsen is a play about women's roles in society in the 19th century. Women are treated as lower beings, while the men are deemed as better. Ibsen presents the play's major character, Nora, as being a helpless child. Throughout the play she carries on like a child and the persons round her heal her as such. The topic of women's functions in humanity and how men heal women as helpless animals is illustrated through the development of the character, the setting, and through the use of symbolism.

The real difficulty of the play is possibly a little more concrete than any of these and more universal than all of them. The beginning of a difficulty play as one in which some problem of up to date life is considered by the characters and worked out in the plot is foreign to Ibsen, as to all large artists. His performances deal with positions and characters from up to date life and are, in so far, akin to the difficulty play. But they manage not present difficulties, in the commonplace sense of the phrase, neither manage they explain them. (Jennett, 1910)

Joseph Conrad, in Youth mentions two types of tales, -- one, the significance of which envelops it like a haze; the other, in which the significance lies in the tale itself, like the kernel of a nut. To these might be supplemented a third class, in which the significance is partially inside the tale and partially without -- a supple, alluring haze, secret, far-reaching, and suggestive, lit up, now and then, by gleams of lightweight burst upon it from within. Ibsen's meanings pertain to this third class. The emblem is apparently granted, and the plot; but round them and enveloping them is a significance of which one gets glimpses, now and afresh, tantalizing and elusive. One feels that there is a concealed meaning. He endeavors to find it by reading deeper into the text. But it eludes him. It is not there. The genuine difficulty will not be estimated till he examines out-of-doors the play itself, and then only as it is disclosed in blinks, by gleams hurled upon it, from inside, by character and plot and symbol. If one would realize a play, he should first realize the character about which the play rounds and he will not realize the character till he grabs the emblem that lies at the heart of it.

The difficulty of A Doll's House, for example, is not worried with the marriage relatives of Nora and Helmer, but with the character of Nora. The inquiry if she had a right to forge the note that kept her husband's life is of far less significance than the detail 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 difficulty of any ...