Ibsen AO5

Question 1

Mona Caird (love and possession)

Answer 1

• ‘common respectable marriage’ was ‘the most hypocritical form of women-purchase.’
• Victorian marriage is ‘a vexatious failure’ ‘the economical independence of woman is the first condition of free marriage.’

Question 2

Henrik Ibsen

Answer 2

ADH is ‘really a domestic family drama, dealing with contemporary problems in regard to marriage.’

Question 3

Contemporary Radical Writers (love and possession)

Answer 3

Contemporary radical writers: Helmers relationship is transactional and economic

Question 4

Toril Moi play (freedom)

Answer 4

‘a play that asks what it will take for two modern individuals to build a relationship based on freedom, equality or love.’

Question 5

Toril Moi melodrama

Answer 5

“a moment of high melodrama”

Question 6

Alisa Solomon

Answer 6

Tarantella is ‘not a concession to the old effect-hunting, but an appropriation of it”

Question 7

Toril Moi hero/ine (disappointment)

Answer 7

N+T “starring in various idealistic scenarios of female sacrifice and male rescue”

Question 8

Breaking A Butterfly

Answer 8

• By Henry Arthur Jones and Henry Herman
• Torvald forgives and shields Nora’s forgery, becoming the hero that Ibsen’s Nora did not get
• The Times: allowed ‘happiness to be restored to the troubled home.’

Question 9

German Ending

Answer 9

• Actress Hedwig Niemann-Raabe refused to perform ending as she would never leave her own children
• Ibsen forced to write alternative ending to avoid pirating
• Torvald forces Nora into nursey, where she sinks to floor overcome with maternal guilt.
• Ibsen: ‘barbaric act of violence’ against the play

Question 10

Erik Vullum (Selfishness and Vanity)

Answer 10

Nora’s departure was “unnatural” and”artificial”

Question 11

William Archer (conflicts arising from misunderstanding)

Answer 11

The misunderstanding of Nora’s character, of husbands to wives, and to people in society, is a major theme in the play

Question 12

Unesco’s Memory of the World Register (Freedom)

Answer 12

Nora is ‘a symbol throughout the world, for women fighting for liberation and equality’

Question 13

Hans Neuenfel, 1972 (conflict arising from misunderstanding)

Answer 13

• The characters moved like puppets without strings, turning to the audience rather than to one another as if it was a waste of time trying to gain understanding within the marriage.

Question 14

Lateran (Morality)

Answer 14

“A walking encyclopedia of bourgeois virtues” (Torvald’s Virtues)

Question 15

Colay (Morality)

Answer 15

“Ranks illness is a product of his morally corrupt father”

Question 16

Oswald Crawford (Selfishness and Vanity)

Answer 16

• Nora is ‘unprincipled’ ‘false’ ‘greedy’ ‘lies without compunction’

Question 17

Egen, 1972 (The Outsider)

Answer 17

Krogstad ‘cynical social pariah’

Question 18

Emma Goldman (Truth)

Answer 18

Nora ‘is surely not aware of the true character of her idol’ [torvald]

Question 19

Copenhagen review of ADH (Truth)

Answer 19

Ibsen ‘wanted to show where thoughtlessness and lack of truthfulness can lead an otherwise charming human being’ (NORA)

Question 20

Brian Johnson (The Outsider)

Answer 20

[Christine is] the world’s insulted and injured who have lived through the ‘sorrow’ that Nora wants her world to be “free of”

Question 21

Strindberg

Answer 21

Ibsen ‘the promoter of the equality mania’

Question 22

Gail Finney

Answer 22

‘virtually inventing the emancipated women’

‘allies him with feminist thinkers’

Question 23

Max Beerbohm

Answer 23

‘The New Woman sprang fully armed from Ibsen’s brain’

Question 24

Emma Goldman

Answer 24

‘there is nothing more degrading than to live with a stranger’

Question 25

2008 Post Feminist Production

Answer 25

• Nora is ‘wildly neurotic’ from the beginning

- Regardless of Ibsen claiming not to be for solidarity, that was how contemporary/modern critics see him

Question 26

Otto Heller

Answer 26

‘A writer could not well be farther from feminism than Ibsen was’