A Dolls House Critical Quotes

Question 1

Erics Bogh 1879
“a play so simple in its

Answer 1

action, and so every day in its dress”
-realist play
-surprisingly different

Question 2

review in social demokraten 1879
“there are thousands of such doll homes- wherethe husband treats his wife

Answer 2

as a child he amuses himself with […] it is this young woman’s duty. to leave this gentleman.”
-universal issue
-pro-Nora

Question 3

August Strindberg 1884
“marraige was revealed as being a far from divine institution, people stopped

Answer 3

regarding it as it as an automatic provider of absolute bliss”
-Ibsen stated conversation about marriage
-causes social change

Question 4

Ibsen 1898
“I have never written any play to

Answer 4

further a social purpose”
- saying not feminist manifesto
-more about interpretation than intention
-intentional fallacy

Question 5

Michael Meyer 1965
“The theme of a Dolls House was the need for every individual to find out the kind of person

Answer 5

he or she really is, and strive to become that person”

Question 6

Kate Millett 1971
“Nora confronted every convention and the chivalrous masculine prejudice that caged her within and childs toy structure, hoping to ensure that

Answer 6

she would remain a housepet and an infant there forever”

Question 7

“the things Ibsen writes mean it ceases to be about marriage and

Answer 7

money. These are universal anxieties”
Hattie Morahan (played Nora in 2013)
-2013 was an economic recession, play still relevant
-worldwide issue

Question 8

“[Helmer] holds rigid views, obsessed with the need to abide by

Answer 8

social, religious and moral code of the time, but he is not presented unsympathetically.”
Worrall, Commentary to A Dolls House 1985-victim of society

Question 9

Nick and Non Worrall, Commentary to A Dolls House 1985
“[Krogstad] is, in a superficial sense, the villain of the piece. Interrupting Nora’s

Answer 9

innocent game of hide-and-seek, he appears like the spectre at the feast- the malign influence who will destroy the family’s peace and happiness”
-link to his costume

Question 10

Nick and Non Worrall, Commentary to A Dolls House 1985
“There is also something common about [Dr Rank]. The detached scientific curiosity with which he regards

Answer 10

his own demise … suggests a macabre fascination with the process of illness and death”

Question 11

Nick and Non Worrall, Commentary to A Dolls House 1985
“[Mrs Linde] acts the role of motherly confidante,

Answer 11

alternately patronising and childing Nora”

Question 12

Charlotte Bronte’s authorial intervention in Jane Eyre
“women feel just as men feel”
“It is thoughtless to condemn [women], or laugh at them, if they seek to do more or learn more than

Answer 12

custom has pronounced necessary for their sex”

Question 13

“Torvalds love for Nora is depicted as intensely possessive, leading to a kind of affection between

Answer 13

the two characters that depends on a kind of power asymmetry”
Liam McNamara

Question 14

“gender is depicted as shifting between forms of Victorian womanhood, complying with and sometimes resisting

Answer 14

a hegemonic form of masculinity […] that is characteristic of the typical late-Victorian middle-class household”
Liam McNamara

Question 15

“It was he who first realised that the mundane daily life, replayed in completely naturalistic

Answer 15

language, contained within it all the ingredients of a tragedy.”
Theodore Dalrymple
-realist play

Question 16

“[Nora] was putting herself outside society, inviting insult, destitution and

Answer 16

loneliness. She went out into a very dark night”
Muriel Bradbrook
-became socially unacceptable
- prostitution likely