A Doll's House Themes Flashcards
The individual and society
A doll’s character is determined by its owner and doesn’t have a role in public. Existentialism is the idea that a person is not born with innate characteristics but shapes a self through the choices they make. Nora’s identity is determined by others and eventually chooses not to ‘act out’ the role of mother and wife but to leave.
Death, disease and heredity
Helmer thinks Nora’s requests for money are hereditary and doesn’t waver from the Darwinism idea that physical and moral qualities can be inherited. Dr Rank does not feel anger at his father (unlike Nora who judges him ‘a horrible man’) and is surprisingly forgiving, angry only an the unjustness of hereditary disease. Helmer and Rank use the metaphor of corrupt behaviour as moral sickness. Helmer thinks it spreads around the home; Rank thinks that society should act with limited compassion with ‘moral invalids’; Mrs Linde argues society is responsible to care for those who are ‘sick’ in this way. The play has graphic images of death from Rank, Nora and Krogstad.
Theatricality
Ibsen told his actors to avoid ‘theatrical accents’ and to copy the life they saw around them. When Helmer and Nora are most conscious they are performing they express themselves and their relationship most clearly (e.g. the fancy dress party). Following the dance Nora is able to express the role performance has played in her life, her flirtatiousness and games mean she has hidden herself from her husband and doesn’t know who she is anymore.
Money
Nora borrowed twelve hundred dollars to save her husband’s life – it is represented by a piece of paper that shows her crime. Her criminal act bought her out of the domestic sphere and into the world of money, which belongs to men. Helmer is quick to condemn Nora because he is afraid of the power of money.
The Law
The contemporary judicial system was particularly male. Ibsen said “… with laws written by men and prosecutors and judges who regard feminine conduct from a masculine point of view.” Nora’s views on laws taking in to account motives is radical and feminist. The fact she suggests what laws should be like is revolutionary.
Morality
Ibsen undermines a didactic moral view and a didactic society (i.e. the protagonist should be punished for what they have done, but they aren’t). There are contradictions between the conservative and Christian idea of moral causality and the radical liberalism of the value system that Ibsen uses in the play.
