A Dolls House Critics Flashcards
What did radical contemporary critic Mona Caird say about the transactional nature of relationships and when?
• 1888
• Argues common respectable marriage is ‘the most hypocritical form of woman-purchase’
• Argues ‘the economical independence of a woman is the first condition of free marriage’
What does critic Hugh Stutfield say about the influence of the New Woman and when?
• 1891
• ‘the woman of the new Ibsenite neurographic is not only mad, but does her best to drive others mad too’
What does critic Max Nordau say about the influence of Nora’s rejection and when?
• 1895
• Nora’s ‘idiocy’ became the ‘gospel for the hysterical of both sexes’
What does Toril Moi say about how A Doll’s House questions the foundations of relationships and when?
• 2008
• A Doll’s House questions what it will take to build a relationship based on ‘freedom, equality and love’
What does Toril Moi say about how Nora and Torvald partake in melodrama?
• 2008
• Nora and Torvald are ‘starring in various idealist scenarios of female sacrifice and male rescue’
What did Ibsen say about the purpose of his plays and when?
Says they depend on the ‘demand for full ruthless truth to life’
1883
What does Terry Otten say about sex in the play and when?
• 1998
• ‘the play is elementally about prostitution’
What does conservative critic Clement Scott describe Torvald as
• 1889
• ‘sensual and egotistical’
What subjects did late 1870s naturalist drama start to explore?
Tabboo subjects - examining how character’s heredity and environment shapes and dooms them, questioning religion and exploring supernatural elements
What does Toril Moi say about the end revelation in A doll’s house and when?
• 2008
• ‘a moment of high melodrama’
• however, also subverted melodrama in the way Nora expects a ‘miracle’ but the conversation results in two people sitting at a table having a serious conversation
Critic quote about the double standards between Torvald and Nora
• Mahaffey 2010: Torvald’s refusal to save Nora reflects the ‘different codes under which they had been living’
What does Critic Toril Moi say about Nora challenging Torvald’s love
Nora ‘demands nothing short of a revolutionary reconsideration of the meaning of love’
Why does Nora reject religion at the end?
Critic Lavender: She recognises Torvald’s ‘inadequacy as her god’
What was Victorianism
The Bible was taken as the literal truth and was the foundation of moral behaviour
Torvald’s manipulation of religion
His appeal to religion to get Nora to stay is a mere ineffectual excuse of patriarchal power ( critic Langas 2005)
John Hathaway on Torvald as trapped
•Torvald is ‘blind to the limitations placed on him by society’
• Torvald is ‘unable to act outside of the confines of society’s strict rules and conventions’
John Hathaway on Nora’s intelligence
• Nora ‘deliberately plays the role of helpless female in order to achieve her ends’
• through her ‘ability to manipulate and keep secrets’
Ibsen’s interest in secrecy structurally
Ibsen was interested in inferiority, revealed through what he called ‘seemingly easy but concealing conversations’
Rolf Fjelde quote on marriage in a dolls house
‘to lay bare the anatomy of a marriage, where the wife was no more than a legal infant and her husband’s virtual slave’
Rolf Fjelde on inescapability of gender roles
‘Nora, the doll child of her father, the doll-wife of her husband, unthinkingly transmitting her doll-identity to her own daughter’
Rolf Fjelde on sided characters
The house and all its inhabitants are on trial, ‘tested by the visitors that come and go, embodying aspects of the inescapable reality outside’ - e.g rank, christine
Rolf Fjelde on set design
‘Through three consecutive acts the unchanging walls of the Helmer’s apartment take on the figurative quality of a prison’
Sense of confinement prepares us for Nora to break out act 3
Sandra Saadri on Nora’s dilemma
‘her dilemma would issue from the disparity between her innate sense of right and her society’s laws’
critic Bernard on Nora’s submissive nature
‘She controls him through her dependency’
‘Torvald was as emotionally dependent on Nora as she on him; at the end, it is he who cannot bear the thought of their separation’
