A Doll's House

Henrik Ibsen’s play A Doll’s House lends itself to a feminist reading. A feminist literary critic would be interested in the relationship between the protagonist, Nora, and her husband, Torvald. Nora begins the play without an identity because the men in her life have suppressed it, but throughout the play she manages to develop into an individual and can only complete the metamorphosis by leaving the husband who has kept her subservient.

The play opens in the family living room as Nora is humming. Her husband asks, “Is that my little sky-lark chirruping?” He proceeds to call her “a little squirrel.” By using childish terms of endearment for Nora, Torvald asserts his dominance over her. Nora accepts her role in this relationship by responding with childish diction, such as saying “teeny-weeny.” In this scene, Torvald accuses Nora of eating candy while in town. Nora responds with her typical docile, childlike subservience and says, “I would never dream of doing anything you didn’t want me to.” Nora’s friend Mrs. Linde comes to visit, and Nora relates her father’s death in the early years of her marriage, referring to him as “Daddy.” A feminist literary critic would probably be interested in analyzing this relationship, arguing that Nora went from being one man’s property to another’s, as most women did in the time of Ibsen’s plays.

During the course of the play, Torvald is blackmailed, and Nora procures a loan to save him but cannot reveal her actions because it was illegal for a woman to take out a loan without her husband’s approval and because Torvald will probably not accept a woman’s intervention. Nora says that she won’t be “free” until she repays the debt, but as she deals with the ramifications of her secret, she comes to realize that true freedom would be the ability to pursue her own identity. Feminist critics would point to familial ties that strain a women’s independence, which are illustrated throughout the play. For example, Mrs. Linde had to leave Krogstad, her true love, because he was poor and married a wealthier man instead, in order to support her mother and brothers.

Nora’s path of ndependence begins when she denies Torvald sex. Torvald immediately protests, “Am I not your husband” but at this point Nora no longer responds with subservience. Once Torvald discovers the truth about the loan, Nora uses their conversation as an opportunity to point out that he has not treated her as an individual. “Eight whole years,” she says, “and never have we exchanged one serious word about serious things.” Torvald argues that he was sparing her due to her gender, “What did you want me to do? Get you involved in worries that you couldn’t possibly help me bear?” Nora declares that she has been greatly wronged by both her father and her husband. “You two never loved me. You only thought how nice it was to be in love with me,” she says. “I passed out of Daddy’s hands into yours.”

The play closes when Nora says she is leaving Torvald because she “must take steps to educate” herself. Torvald argues that she has a “duty” as a “wife and mother” but Nora reminds him she has a duty to herself. “I believe that first and foremost I am an individual,” she says. Feminist literary critics would look at the examples of suppression of women's identities in the play. Torvald practically summarizes the notion of the ‘Eternal Feminine’ when he dictates Nora’s role as a wife and mother. It is interesting that such a feminist text was authored by a man. A feminist critic might wonder if the text would have received such notoriety if it had been written by a woman.