ibsen critics Flashcards
Emma Goldman
Emma Goldman argued that the play inspired discussions about women’s emancipation and the need for gender equality
- clear solution is unnecessary as it is more important to reach a point where people are willing to see the importance in finding a solution.
- a hope flashes accross (helmer’s) mind/a hope strikes him
- The sound of a door shutting
“I’ve been your doll-wife, just as at home I was Papa’s doll-child”
“nice little dolly children”
sophie duncan - name of nora
nora is short for eleanora (scandinavian diminuitive) - name denies her a full identity
helmer - “my sweet little Nora”
- ibsen had that her ‘real’ name was eleanora but that she had been called nora from childhoos
argues that dolls house within which nora lives functions as a microcosm for contemporary patriarchal society - she lived ‘like a pauper from hand to mouth’
sophie duncan - dr rank
examining how the characters heredity and environment shapes and dooms them’ - social environment/expectations shapes identities into becoming a product of society
‘Because an atmosphere of lies contaminates and poisons every corner of the home. Every breath that the children draw in such a house contains the germs of evil.’
first introduction - “But he’s got a terrible disease”
- parent ability to destroy their children via heredity and the sexual double standard
krogstad - “…those who are morally diseased…”
michael meyer - theme of play
the plays theme is ‘the need of every individual to find out what kind of person’ they are, and to strive to develop that identity despite any imposititions
- no more about womens rights than ghosts is about syphilis
‘I must educate myself’
- in the literary search for the self, which transcends and obliterates mere biological and social determinations
R.M. Adams - real theme has nothing to do with gender, talks almost as much about money as it doesn about marriage
torvald - reputation - “Do you expect me to make a laughingstock of myself”
‘But no man would sacrifice his honour for the one he loves.’
nora- “I’m no longer prepared to accept what people say and what’s written in books.”
Clement - tarantella
the tarantella’s origins in Southern Italy, where it serves as a form of hysterical catharsis, permitting women to escape temporarily from marriage and motherhood into a free, lawless world of music and uninhibited movement.”
- detox, get rid of poison
“Not so violently, Nora!”
“this is the way”
“you are dancing as if your life depended on it.”
“so it does”
“the performance was a trifle too realistic”
‘And then the tarantella will be finished’ in 31 hours - her life as she knows it
‘Taking off my fancy dress!
brian johnson - christmas tree
parralels between nora and tree - prevented from full growth, and then decorated in a domestic setting
“Hide that Christmas Tree away”
christmas secrets “will all be revealed tonight when the Christmas Tree is lit”
‘The Christmas tree must be beautiful. I’ll do everything that you like, Torvald. I’ll sing for you, dance for you’
tornqvist - in ibsens playtext the danish word nora uses to describe the tree as decorated is the same that christine uses to describe nora ready for her tarantella performance
At the beginning of Act Two, the tree has been stripped and the candles burned out; the stage directions dictate that it should look “bedraggled.” This represents the end of Nora’s innocence and foreshadows the Helmer family’s eventual disintegration.
Royal Dramatic Theatre
nora’s daughter hilda stand on stage as she watches her mother leave
- severe repercussions of this reckless decision
- noras choice to abandon her ‘most sacred duties’ are obscene and dispicable
2011 an africans dolls house
chose to change the ending so that nora takes her children with her
2023 broadway production
nora can be seen stepping out on to the streets of new york, looking around in bewilderment, and then returning back into the theatre
sophie duncan - money
access to money is highly gendered - nora has a gendered conception of appropriate work for women, disoguising her copying as it is ‘almost like being a man
and emphasising her ‘fancy work, crocheting, embroidery’
Terry Otten - play is about prostitution about the ‘wilful selling of oneself to gain some advantage’
- nora mrs linde and anne marie all sacrifice themselves to work for others (for torvald, family and brothers, and as a fallen woman after having a daughter)
breaking a butterfly
rewriting in 1884 saw torvald shielding noras forgery and becoming the hero that nora expects and does not get - praised for allowing happiness to be restored to the troubled home
Hermann Weigand
childish door slamming is meant as a comedy
- erratic behaviour at the curtain’s fall leaves us laughing as she will inevitably return to her role as songbird
two noras - childish expectant and broken-hearted nora vs unfeeling woman who coldly analysing the flaws of in her marriage - psychologically unconvincing and wholly unsympathetic
