User:Modern-day-minstrel/Contemporary criticism of A Doll's House

Henrick Ibsen’s 1879 play A Doll(‘s) House caused considerable controversy for its highly complex portrayal of marriage, morality, and the role of women in society. In an era marked by widespread, whirlwind technological and philosophical progress, Ibsen’s oeuvre explores the microcosm of a family in turmoil, while also exposing the pervasive attitudes and behaviors that characterized relationships between men and women of the rising bourgeoisie. A Doll(‘s) House was met with nigh-universal awe at the author’s audacity, but far less uniformity in approbation. Contemporary critiques of the work represent a panoptic variety of viewpoints, from anger to dismissal to praise, with each appraisal of the play clearly influenced by the authors’ and publishers’ social, political, and ethical beliefs.

Title page for the original manuscript of A Doll('s) House

About Ibsen

Early Life

Henrick Ibsen was born on March 20, 1828 in Skien, Norway to Marichen Altenburg and Knut Ibsen. Although the Ibsen lineage was considered highly respectable, Knut Ibsen’s imprudent financial speculation caused the family to lose their fortune. Their subsequent struggle for fiscal stability highly impacted the Ibsen parents’ marriage, as well as their children’s schooling. Ibsen left school at the age of fifteen and began to work grueling hours in order to support his immediate family and later his illegitimate son, but also undertook an equally rigorous regimen of self-teaching to supplement his limited education. He studied for university matriculation exams in various subjects, but failed to make the marks that would qualify him for entrance.

Ibsen left school at the age of fifteen and began to work grueling hours in order to support his immediate family and later his illegitimate son, but also undertook an equally rigorous regimen of self-teaching to supplement his limited education. He studied for university matriculation exams in various subjects, but failed to make the marks that would qualify him for entrance. However, his autonomously-conducted scholarship was not without advantage; Ibsen wrote his first play, Catiline, after studying Catiline and Cicero in preparation for the Latin examination. The play received several good reviews, but sold few copies, so Ibsen and his friends sold the remaining scripts as scrap paper in order to buy food.

Faced with further failure after continual attempts at university admission, Ibsen sought other ways to expand his education. His methods included keeping company with cultural and political radicals such as Bjørnstjerne Bjørnson, Georg and Edvard Brandes, and feminist pioneer Camilla Collett, though Ibsen himself only participated in a singular act of overt political demonstration, the signing of a petition in support of a radically-regarded play, Harro Harring’s Testamentet fra America (the American Will).

Career

Ibsen’s career prospects took a turn for the better when he became the resident playwright for Det Norske Theatre in Bergen, although his initial commissions proved mediocre. In an attempt to remedy this, the theatre’s artistic staff sent him on a lengthy tour of distinguished artistic venues in Hamburg, Copenhagen, and Dresden, allowing him to experience a wide breadth of high-quality writing and performance. This tour also served as Ibsen’s inaugural exposure to the work of William Shakespeare, and his most Shakespearean play, the Pretenders, published and performed in 1864, became his first categorical masterpiece.

A happy marriage to Susannah Thorsen and an unhappy situation at another theatre in Christiania inspired Ibsen to apply for a government-sponsored travel grant, which permitted him to spend a year abroad in Italy. His finite term cultural immersion became a permanent expatriate relocation, and he summoned his wife and their young son to join him, first in Rome, and later in Dresden and Munich, Germany, as well. Spurred on to artistic improvement by these international inspirations, Ibsen’s fortunes flourished following the completion of an epic tragedy entitled Brand. The piece earned him a profitable publishing contract with a respectable house and an author’s pension courtesy of the Norwegian government. Nonetheless, with the exception of two brief visits, Ibsen did not return to Norway until the last years of his life. He once again took up residence in Christiania, where he died in 1906.

Ibsen and Women

The crafting of A Doll(‘s) House was the culmination of a lifetime of profound influences in both the social and domestic life of Henrick Ibsen. As much as the play and its characters seemed to be a commentary on the general state of the society around him, they were also a meditation on and tribute to the women in Ibsen’s life and the many ways in which those personalities and perspectives influenced him as a person and playwright. Ibsen was well-known for keeping the company of some of the foremost feminist thinkers of the time, and was candid in confirming the effect their philosophies and lives had on his work.

Marichen Cornelia Martine Altenburg Ibsen

Ibsen’s mother, Marichen Altenburg, has been described by her daughter as “...a quiet, lovable woman, the soul of the house, everything to her husband and children. She sacrificed herself time and time again. There was no bitterness or reproach in her.” After the financial ruin of his father, Ibsen’s home life became somewhat tumultuous, and the storminess of his father was balanced out largely through the quiet strength of Marichen, whose silent, resilient suffering is an obvious parallel to many characters in his later works.

Hedvig Ibsen Stousland

Henrik’s sister Hedvig, to whom he was very close as a child and well on into his later years, was a frequent correspondent of his and is widely believed to have been the model for the character who shares her name in Ibsen’s play The Wild Duck. Though her own beliefs are not well-documented, her son grew up to be a liberal politician.

Suzannah Thoresen Ibsen

Foremost amongst Ibsen’s colleagues and companions was his wife, the highly intelligent Suzannah, who was herself a writer--as evidenced by her translation of a German play for the Christiania Norwegian Theatre, of which Ibsen was Artistic Director. Family apocrypha passed down via his great-granddaughter suggests that in an early draft of Doll(‘s) House, Nora stayed with Helmer. Suzannah insisted that either she or Nora must leave, and Henrik changed the ending

Anna "Magdalene" Kragh Thoresen

The Thoresen family matriarch, Magdalene Kragh Thoresen, was a widely (though often anonymously) published poet, novelist, short story writer, and playwright whose acquaintance with Ibsen came chiefly through the staging of her plays at the Det Norske Theatre, and later through his marriage to her step-daughter Suzannah. Thoresen’s household was the site of frequent and regular salons for writers and actors, and it was here that Ibsen and Suzannah met and became acquainted. Previously, due to her anonymity and the place of women in the theatrical history of Norway, Thoresen’s contributions were largely overlooked, but she is today recognized as a notable figure in their literary canon.

Laura Kieler

Ibsen met one of his most significant influences and closest friends, the author Laura Kieler, whilst travelling through Europe. Often referring to her as his “skylark,” it is widely accepted that Ibsen closely and intentionally modeled Nora after Kieler’s experiences. Much like Nora, Kieler took out an illegal loan in order to send her tubercular husband to Italy to save his life, but could not pay it back. When the secret came to light, her husband disowned her and forbade her from seeing her children. Her subsequent mental breakdown landed her in an asylum for a period of time, until Kieler’s husband, relenting, insisted she return home to mother her children. She afterwards lived out the remainder of a very unhappy marriage.

Camilla Wergelend Collett

One of the female thinkers cited most frequently by Ibsen was his contemporary, Camilla Collett, a woman known colloquially as “the first Norwegian feminist.” She was also the author of one of the first and most important sociopolitical realism novels in Norway, a book called Amtmandens Døtre (The District Governor’s Daughters) which was published anonymously in 1854 and 1855. It is said that Collett dedicated a majority of her work to “denouncing the typical role in which women were cast as self-effacing, self-sacrificing saints.”

Norway, Sweden, and Denmark in the Late 1800s

Tantamount to the rest of Europe, Scandinavia’s Victorian Era was characterized by rapid, radical progress. Social, scientific, and cultural breakthroughs were hallmarks of Ibsen’s daily life, and are clearly reflected in his portrayals of the rising middle class. The advent of the industrial revolution also saw the rise of the labor movement and the formation of unions among working class citizens, whose desire to join the ranks of the “bourgeoisie” compelled them to fight for higher wages, better treatment, and fair representation.

Answering the call of these emerging sociopolitical movements, government-sponsored benefits such as old age pensions, unemployment, and family benefits were established in Denmark in 1890s. Jacob Estrup, Denmark’s prime minister and leader of the newly solidified Conservative parliament, campaigned in favor of railroads and other improvements to the nation’s infrastructure, as well as initiating budget reforms. However, following a failed assassination attempt, Estrup tightened the reigns on freedom of the press and freedom to own and bear arms, angering the Liberal Venstre party and eventually leading to Estrup’s deposition.

Meanwhile, as the power of the Danish monarchy waned in favor of a fully democratic system, Norway and Sweden were united under one royal government from 1814 until 1905. At the time of Ibsen’s work on A Doll(‘s) House, the reigning monarch King Oscar was newly ascended, and had proclaimed himself devoted to “the Welfare of the Brother Peoples” of Sweden and Norway. Of these two “Brother Peoples”, Norway was generally more liberal, while Sweden was more conservative.

However, the Scandinavian women’s movement did make significant headway throughout the last decades of the 19th century. In 1879, the same year A Doll(‘s) House received its premiere, the first national Flickskolemöte (Girl School Meeting) to reform female education was summoned by Hilda Caselli, a Swedish educator and reformer. This meeting was the feminine counterpart to the Läroverksmöte (Grammar School Meeting), an already-established series of discussions regarding conventional, or rather, male-centered, educational progress, and initially focused on curricular reforms, particularly the incorporation of foreign language requirements into female schooling.

In the two years leading up to the debut of A Doll(‘s) House, the Svenska Federationen was founded with the purposes of improving the lives of “public women” by deregulating prostitution and offering health care, spiritual support, and other services to working girls. The organization also questioned the double standards that plagued Victorian sexual morality, inspiring widespread debate that came to be know throughout Scandinavia as the Sedlighetsdebatten (the Morality Debate). The Sedlighetsdebatten divided Ibsen’s peers; the Brandes brothers thought women should have sexual freedom equitable of that granted to men prior to marriage, while Bjørnstjerne Bjørnson instead proposed that men should remain completely celibate until their weddings, as was demanded of women.

Contemporary Thoughts

Socialism

A prevailing political philosophy in Scandinavia in the 1880s, social democracy informed and influenced a wide variety of thinkers and artists, particularly in the empowerment of the working class and the awareness of socioeconomic inequality. Social democracy adhered to the motto “from each according to his ability, to each according to his need,” and encouraged the emancipation of oppressed individuals, furthering concepts of social equality.

A reviewer from the Social-Demokraten, a paper obviously named for its political stance and adhering to the precepts of “Liberty - Equality - Fraternity”, was highly complimentary of the original production of A Doll(‘s) House in 1879, seeming to feel that it was a work both well-presented and exceptionally relevant. In particular, the social democratic perspective elevated Nora as a representative of repressed peoples as a whole, and challenged viewers to see the play without being affected by its themes.

“This play touches the lives of thousands of families; oh yes there are thousands of such doll-homes, where the husband treats his wife as a child he amuses himself with, and so that is what the wives become.”

“Go and see this play, you mighty supporters and defenders of morality. You clerical gentlemen and chaplains; and let us cordially speak further about these things with these images of life in mind! Or would you enjoy this play on a purely aesthetical level? Hopefully it will not give you a restless night afterwards; because here there are plenty of dolls’ homes.”

National Liberalism

Denmark’s National Liberalism movement rose to prominence in 1842 and remained an influential political party for the next forty years. Supporters of the National Liberalist philosophy were highly nationalistic, as the name implies, and particularly distrustful of their southern neighbor, Germany.

The National Liberal Party opposed Denmark’s absolute monarchy, and did eventually succeed in establishing a parliamentary system, as well as instituting liberal economic reforms. Although the party was comprised primarily of the cosmopolitan middle class, the newly formed parliament was largely controlled by wealthier, land-owning families, leading to further political struggles between the upper and working classes.

The party was quietly dissolved in 1882 after it failed to satisfactorily resolve a long-standing land dispute with Germany, known as he Schleswig-Holstein Question, and its members were absorbed into the Conservative Party, which was often in opposition to the Socialist Democrats. Nonetheless, the party’s reforms and ideologies left a lingering impact on Scandinavian politics and culture, partially in thanks to its powerful press presence that included such publications as Kjøbenhavnsposten (The Copenhagen Post) and Fædrelandet (The Country or The Fatherland).

Fædrelandet and A Doll(‘s) House

In 1879, A Doll(‘s) House was anonymously reviewed by the National Liberal Party’s primary publication, Fædrelandet. “Anonymous” presents the Helmer marriage as perfectly content, if somewhat shallow, describing Nora as a “young, beautiful and lively woman, who apparently has lived in the happiest and jolliest, albeit somewhat temporal, marriage, waited on hand and foot and humoured in every wish by her besotted husband”. The reviewer’s view of Nora’s as consummately dependent upon Torvald is highly and repeatedly emphasized, particularly when faced with the consequences of her financial indiscretion: “…she is utterly entrenched in her belief that he will take everything upon his own shoulders”.

This particular critic views Nora as a childlike being, not only in her more obvious sweet-eating flights of fancy, but in the very essence of her morality, stating, “She has had no clear concept of the illegal aspect of her action, although giving it some reflection would surely have made her better informed…” Sympathy for Torvald continues: “what it is most difficult to forgive [Nora], and to understand, is that she fails to conquer her cowardice and find a moment to confide her torment to her husband”. Her initial act is portrayed as childish folly, and subsequent deceit a mark of willful ignorance and fear.

Although Anonymous cedes that Torvald has a share, if not an equal one, of culpability in the family’s troubles, referring to the Helmers as “this mutually guilty married couple”, he or she also considers this portrait of marriage unrealistic: “This reflection upon marriage, in which Mr. Ibsen shows himself to be in accordance with his countryman and colleague Mr. Bjørnson, is false.”

Anonymous extends this verdict to the whole of the play, unknowingly verifying Ibsen’s status as champion of the Realism school by vilifying the playwright’s willingness to portray the bleak, variegated side of life. “There is nothing uplifting, no one at all who stands on a higher and more assured level,” the reviewer despaired. “One leaves with a despondent feeling of common human frailty, of what is hollow and disappointing in much of so-called human happiness.” Issue was also taken with the purportedly sermonizing, instructive aspects of the work: “Certainly, [Ibsen] has an ethical comprehension of human life; however, his own feeling does not always dictate to him the moral law, which in each single case must and should be applied.” However, the nameless critic’s final word on the subject takes greater issue with style than substance: “Besides, as far as the present work is concerned, the effect of the resolution is weakened by the fact that the final scene is too long.”

Conservative Liberalism

Beginning in the 1880s, the dominant political party in Scandinavia was the liberalist movement, known collectively as “venstre” (translated as “left”) and formally organizing in 1884 as the Venstre party proper (capitalized) with a platform of radical liberalism dedicating to deposing the conservative incumbent government. However, before this point, the venstre movement as a whole was a fairly centrist liberal government working largely around agrarian ideals and the interests of farmers, peasants, and revolutionaries against the landowning elite.

Emil Poulsen as Torvald in the original production of A Doll('s) House at the Royal Copenhagen

Reviewer Edvard Brandes, a venstre party member, wrote a review of Doll(‘s) House in 1880 that was among Ibsen’s favorite responses to the work. Source The review appeared in the paper Ude og Hjemme (Abroad and at Home), a publication whose chief editor, Otto Borchsenius, was a fan of Ibsen’s work and personally solicited the author for one of his poems to be published.

Brandes commented particularly on the realist nature of Ibsen’s play, noting that “[a]mong the repertoire’s motley swarm of entertainment plays, art-industry-drenched dramas, and classic court plays, Henrik Ibsen’s new play appears as something cold and serious, taken from a different world.” Brandes was evidently familiar with Ibsen’s previous work, making reference to his earlier poem “Et Rimbrev” in the comment “"Corpse in the cargo", those words about which Ibsen has written a strange poem, could stand as a motto for "A Doll’s House".”

Most notably, Brandes’s review takes a remarkably forward-thinking approach to the analysis of the marriage between the Helmers. He observes many of the extremely realistic problems that persist in Nora and Torvald’s relationship:

“So why is their life together not a marriage? I believe that, to put it succinctly, the bond of friendship is lacking...there is no exchange of thoughts and opinions.”
“Nora is the mirror that reflects back to him his own splendour; she is his willing doll, his subservient slave, never his friend.”
“Helmer has never felt a demand placed on him that he and she should participate together in a spiritual life, and she has never either heard from him or read in books, that she and "the boring society" have anything to do with each other. But their indifference brings its own punishment, a single puff of wind blows down the house of cards.”

The aforementioned “indifference” to the truth of the world seems to be, in Brandes’s opinion, the cardinal sin of the Helmers, and the fundamental crux of their difficulties. Remarkably, he--unlike many other critics of the time--was not interested in the morality of Nora’s actions; in fact, he seems to be against anyone trying to have the final word on morality:

“I’m not discussing the moral side of the action; the moralists have to investigate whether Nora has the right to leave home and children, if they find this tempting.”
“One then becomes precociously mistrustful, and not least towards those who daringly named themselves the official representatives of morality.”
“A Doll’s House" is a contribution in the strife between the reactionaries in Denmark-Norway and progressive literature. It is a strike against those who believe that they can confine poetry within the barriers of conventional morality.”

In part, this disinterest in the moral schema of the play is due to the fact that the reviewer does not consider Nora morally culpable for her actions. He states “Nora has never committed the slightest transgression, neither by borrowing money nor by signing her father’s name. One must remain extremely rigorous to believe her to be morally culpable, and even if a Danish court would judge her, a French jury would immediately acquit her.” However, this acquittal of Nora’s responsibility is because Brandes also thinks her an empty vessel, who has lacked the education and experience to grant her the agency to make mistakes. “[Torvald’s] brain is crammed full of conventional bits and pieces of thought, [Nora’s] is empty. She has never learnt anything, never had an independent experience, but has been a plaything for her father as well as her husband. She is self-centred, like her husband. She is the family egotism from a feminine angle, so to speak…”

From an aesthetic standpoint with regards to the formal construction of the play, Brandes felt that Nora’s transformation was unrealistically abrupt, noting that the “childishly animated” Nora “suddenly changes and raises herself up to gain an authority of soul and a clarity of spirit which only a very few women possess.” He felt that “Ibsen lets Nora grow into a woman in one night, as she develops a pathos of truthfulness, which seems incompatible with Nora’s character...Nothing is as natural to her as lying. Therefore one doesn’t quite believe either her imperious speech or her decision.”

Overall, the review centered much more on the actual production values, performances, and construction of the play as a literary work than on the elsewhere controversial themes and concepts which raised so much discussion. While Brandes did not accurately predict the play’s legacy, he rather aptly summed up Ibsen’s intentions in one particularly keen observation:

“I still dare to predict that "A Doll’s House" will not become a box-office success. It is too serious. Our aesthetic audience will praise the Helmerian views, and find the play unlovely and immoral. Henrik Ibsen must console himself with the fact that he has created a powerful work of art of a shocking truth.”

Temperate Conservatism

Scandinavia’s temperance movement began to gain ground in the 1860s, emulating similar campaigns throughout Victorian Europe. Not so much a political party as an ideological standpoint, the temperance crusade preached a variety of theories of sobriety, ranging from moderation to outright abstinence from any form of alcohol. Though many temperance supporters possessed conservative political leanings, the movement did have a basis in “rights for all peoples” and was aimed at the working class. Espousal of Darwinism also characterized the movement. As with other sociopolitical factions of the era, the temperance societies relied upon the press to spread their messages, establishing papers such as Blå Bandet (Blue Ribbon), Norrsken (Northern Lights), an annual Christmas magazine, and Afholds Basunen (Temperance Trumpet).

A publication titled Folkets Avis (The People’s Paper) presented a complicated publication history; it was founded as a successor to Afholds Basunen, but was “regarded as heretical” circa 1885. Edited in part by Erik Bøgh, a Danish playwright, the paper was considered a tabloid, but was aimed at the same working-class audience as the greater temperance movement, and promoted philosophies and developments relevant to that audience, including Darwinism.

Folkets Avis and A Doll(‘s) House

Folkets Avis’s take on the premiere production of A Doll’s House was came courtesy of M. V. Brun, who also authored a biography of Scandinavian actors, Fra min ungdom og manddom: smaating oplevede og fortalte (From Youth to Manhood: Small Things Experienced and Told).

To a contemporary sensibility, Brun’s review is perhaps the most blatantly sexist of the Doll(‘s) House reviews, presenting a very narrow view of Nora, and the actress portraying her: “In the first and second acts she gave us such a lovely, natural and beautiful picture of the young, inexperienced, naive and joyful wife and mother, that we sat and veritably envied Helmer the treasure he owned.” He stands aghast that Nora did not more proactively seek her husband’s forgiveness and aid, stating, “…you would really think that she knew which road she should follow, that she will throw herself in her husband’s arms and say: I made a mistake, but I made it unknowingly and out of love for you, save me!" and her husband would then have forgiven her and saved her.”

Betty Hennings, the original Nora Helmer

Along with his general condescension towards Nora’s position as the protagonist, Brun also found fault with the play in its entirety, calling it a “pathetic mishmash of bourgeois realism”. Brun seems uncomfortable with the primary tenets of realism, saying, “[Ibsen] has unfortunately succeeded well…so well that all the enjoyment he offers us in the first acts evaporates in the third, and we are left there in the most embarrassing ambience, almost revoltingly affected by a catastrophe, which in the crassest way breaks with the common human qualities to celebrate the untrue, the in every aesthetic, psychological and dramatic respect distressing.”

Much like the Anonymous reviewer of Fædrelandet fame, in spite of having correctly conflated Ibsen’s plot elements and tone with the school of Realism, Brun finds the play completely unrealistic. Of Nora’s character arc, he lamented, “...the transformation of her character, which the playwright forces to happen, is so untruthful, unattractive and unmotivated, that we are surprised that a playwright like Ibsen will admit paternity.”

That this view comes as a result of observing A Doll’s House through the unfortunately patriarchal lens of the late 1800s is further clarified by Brun’s call to arms against the slander of Scandinavian womanhood: “I ask openly: is there a mother among thousands of mothers, a wife among thousands of wives, who would act as Nora acts, who would leave husband and children and home so she herself first and foremost can become "a human being"? And I answer most decidedly: No, absolutely not!”

The Arts

While the reviews of politicians and philosophers offer a certain insight into the effects of Doll(‘s) House as a thinkpiece, it is also important to consider the perception of artists. A paper called the Illustreret Tidende (the Illustrated News), which focused chiefly on international news, literature, and entertainment, prided itself on being "...a weekly report on important events and contemporary celebrities, novels, stories, traveller's stories, and other contents from science, literature, art and industry" source In 1879, the Illustreret Tidende published a review by C. Thrane reflecting on the messages and emotional gravity of the play--perhaps unsurprising, as the paper’s primary audience seems to have been young, disenchanted academics and forward-thinkers looking to diverge from the status quo.

Thrane introduces his review by stating that “[t]he play is both entertaining and suspenseful and interesting, but these descriptions badly suit a work, whose ethical gravity is so very prominent.” The reviewer seems almost atypically aware of the place of women in the home and in the theatre, as well as the “truth” of the domestic situation which few others acknowledged in their critiques of the show, at one point referring to the apparent bliss of Nora and Torvald in Act I as “what seems to be a rare moral happiness.” Furthermore, he notes the unique position into which Betty Hennings, as the original Nora, was placed: “Mrs. Hennings, who in her capability as an ingénue so often has had to play less important roles or characters, which distinguished themselves as not being characters, has as Nora been given one of the most arduous roles.”

Overall, the young artist generation for which Thrane is speaking seems to have responded to Doll(‘s) House primarily as a call to action, an exposition on the underlying issues of the home life situation prevalent in Scandinavian society. Thrane even goes so far as to say “[Ibsen] stands like a clergyman and holds the mirror up to his congregation,” forcing the audience into a position where “...it has to be admitted, that even if there is something about the ending, which opposes one’s immediate emotion, even if what happens causes a swarm of doubts and objections, he has twisted the threads in such a way that one bows to them almost against one’s wishes.”

Doll(‘s) House and Gender: the Dagbladet Reviews

In the 19th century, Dagbladet was affiliated with the aforementioned Norwegian Vestre party. Though identified as a tabloid from its first edition in 1869, Dagbladet (The Daily Magazine) remains in print today and continues to profess views bordering on radicalism to this day.

Erik Vullum

Following the first publication of A Doll(‘s) House, Dagbladet published two reviews of the play, authored by Amalie Skram and Erik Vullum, the latter of whom became the paper’s editor in 1880. Vullum was a journalist, writer, and liberal politician who authored multiple biographies of other politically relevant figures from his time, as well as history book enumerating the establishment of Norwegian independence. Much like Ibsen, he spent a great deal of time in the 1870s travelling mainland Europe, cultivating a far-reaching cultural awareness. His extensive observations of literature and theatre while living as an expatriate were published back home in Dagbladet, and by the end of the decade he was considered one of the nation’s most highly regarded and influential writers on myriad subjects.

Vullum’s Review

Vullum’s review was issued in two parts, the first of which includs a detailed synopsis of the play in order to give his readers “an idea of what Ibsen has targeted, and how he has done it”. However, “With which artistic means this is accomplished, what there is in our society justifying such a work, and which effects a play like this last one from Ibsen will have on us, demand an article of its own.”

In discussing these “artistic means”, Vullum is very vehement about the symbolism of Nora and Helmer, stating, “His characters are each independent people; but at the same time they are a common expression of society at a given point…Helmer is an expression of external, vacuous authority, Nora is the opposition who breaks with this external authority.” Vullum contends therefore that Nora’s actions at the play’s conclusion are similarly symbolic, albeit on a broader scale than a realistic representation of gender relations within Victorian society. “The individual’s fight against society is the same,” he writes, choosing to view Nora as a universal symbol of struggle, rather than one particularized to women.

Masculine traits are ascribed to Nora in Vullum’s limited commentary on her character, which deemphasizes her femininity: “[She] saves as much as she can, but especially when it comes to things for herself, to make the repayments. She stays up late in the winter nights with copy writing to earn money for the repayments, and tells her husband that she is preparing for Christmas, and doing this work makes her feel like a man.” It is Nora’s specific act of rebellion against a system, rather than the reasons which drive her to rebel, that captured Vullum’s attention.

His lack of interest in analyzing Nora as an individual stem from a strong opinion that Nora is merely a mouthpiece for her author’s opinions. Critiquing Ibsen’s authorial technique, Vullum expresses, “In more than a few places [in the last scene], what is being said is closer to Ibsen’s thoughts than to those of the characters he has written. He has stepped outside the frame to preach his own view of society. The thoughts themselves have got the upper hand with the philosophical writer.”

While aspects of the form were evidently a disappointment to the ideologically supportive Vullum, the style of delivery is met with considerably more praise: “His brewing, towering thoughts are rendered with clarity and artistic harmony.” Vullum also makes clear that he believes Ibsen has fully realized the purpose of theatre, which aligns with a “to teach and please” neoclassical philosophy. “We now acknowledge that only he is a true author who writes from a clarified philosophical standpoint or from a social comprehension with a particular longing, not only to give delight and joy, but to reform and criticize, and merely through being a reformer and critic, to offer joy and refinement.”

Amalie Skram

Authoress and feminist Amalie Skram was a pioneer of “Det moderne gjennombrudd” (the Modern Breakthrough), the Norwegian naturalism movement. Her bibliography includes several “marriage novels”, as well as treatises on mental illness, plays, children’s stories, and literary criticism. Skram’s work was highly praised by Edvard Brandes, a close friend of Henrick Ibsen, and 1893 play Agnete was deemed a “pessimistic sequel” to A Doll(‘s) House. Detailing the trials and tribulations of divorced women in Victorian Scandinavian society, Agnete drew not only on the experimentally feminist concepts and characters explored in many Ibsen’s plays, but on Skram’s own life.

Divorced from her much older husband following the disintegration of their marriage and her mind, Skram was diagnosed with “melancholy” and confined to a mental institution. Following her release, she was awarded custody of her two sons and remarried, though this second attempt at wedlock ended in another divorce and further mental health struggles that would plague her until the end of her life.

Skram’s Review

Self-styled as a reflection, rather than a review, Amalie Skram’s commentary on A Doll(‘s) House appeared in Dagbladet shortly after Erik Vullum’s critique. Skram is immensely complimentary of Ibsen’s skills as a dramatist, calling the play, “a masterpiece of the highest perfection”. She also acknowledges the functional power of the “serious, strict and poignant lecture”, further terming it an “exceedingly important and strange work”.

Like Vullum, Skram recognizes the story of Nora and Torvald as a metaphor for a larger struggle, stating, “The Helmers of this world, who are bourgeois society’s individualised incarnation of self-righteous mercilessness, will continue to throw stones at the Noras throughout history, and society’s mob will likewise always probably assist them.” However, she also explains the symbolism as applying more specifically to the efforts of women to assert their equal position in society: “When the woman wakes and gains full consciousness of her human dignity, when she rightly has her eyes opened to all the wrongs which have been done to her throughout history, then she will arm herself against the one she was given to assist her, and she will break asunder all bonds, cross all the walls which society and the institutional authorities have build up around her.”

Nora’s place as a reflection of society is also given focus in Skram’s examination of her character as a human being. “Nora’s whole behaviour is therefore like a mirror,” she elucidates. “Which in rich reflection throws back the picture of the treatment which she has received.” No doubt seeing Nora as a mirror for her own life as well, Skram is highly sympathetic to Ibsen’s heroine, stating, “She, who is conscious of the noblest and purest motives, cannot understand that the laws should not ask for those, and believes, with superior independence, that they must be some very bad laws then.” This is then related back to Nora’s position as a symbol in society: “She has acted out of her heart’s natural commanding need on the basis of the immediate moral law of her own feelings, without asking if there is something general, adopted by society, fully accepted, which offers a gauge and a limit to the individual.”

Skram does consider Nora’s final exit as a morally viable action, if not easily laudable. She attributes the haste and forcefulness of the decision to the previously suppressed condition of Nora’s intellect and soul, which, once released, can hardly help but vehemently revolt against its suppression, “Because her inner human being has been lying idle and slumbering, all possibilities have lain hidden in there,” Skram writes. “Now it has woken up and it rises with force, steeled and armed with the simultaneously awakening and strengthened understanding of all the injustices that have been carried out against it.” Morally right or wrong, Skram supports Nora’s prerogative to personal autonomy and agency: “So she breaks with her doll-life, leaves her doll-home and her doll-children, to whom, like everything else in her existence, she fails to relate, that is, to feel responsible for or have an obligation to, and seeks out on her own to try to become a human being.”