DOLLS HOUSE

Dolls House

Dolls House

A Doll's House is asserted to be Ibsen's first try in Dramatic Realism. The little symbolism which there is in the play - and I propose to talk about if it can be understood such - arrives right at the end of the play, with the stage direction: "the road doorway is banged closed downstairs". This could be understood in the play (and has been in some productions) like a blaring bang, nearly like a gunshot. If we address this gunshot symbolism with an extract from one of his critics:

This extract I accept as factual is especially applicable to the play, for Nora and Torvold's difficulty appears an unsolvable one, and Nora commits what is nearly communal suicide in alignment to make sense of her world which has failed to come-up with her miracle (Ibsen 1965).

A Doll's House begins apparently as far from realism as a play can get, with both Nora and Torvald being distinguished nearly stereotypically. Torvald performances the patriarchal male number to Nora's little-girl wife, who, actually needs the guidance of a shrewd mature individual man to assist her through life's little difficulties - for example not frittering all her cash away on sweets and biscuits(!).

This noise uncannily like the recount of Ibsen's paradox recounted earlier: 'a perpetual confrontation of truths', but Nora and Torvald's individual realities confrontation because they are founded on non-reality. Is this non-reality - the misreading of each other's desires - the supreme reality Ibsen strives to display in the play? For such a paradox to stand-firm, customary spectacular structure would be untenable. If the extract for Ibsen is fundamentally factual then - and I wish to display that it is - straightforward Realism would not be insufficient to bypass 'institutionalizing his revolt'. True, there 'appears' a structure in A ...