ADH Critical Interpretations

Ibsen’s Letter (1878)

• Norway - ‘prejudice and narrow mindedness.’

Ibsen’s Letter (1865)

• Norway - ‘the hollowness behind the self-created lies of our so-called public life.’

Ibsen’s Letter (1879)

• Europe - ‘freer and more refreshing, and larger.’

Errol Durbach (Helmer’s Household)

• ‘The comfortable home and the suffocating prison.’

Egil Tornqvist (Nora’s Costume)

• ‘Ibsen thought of Nora’s everyday costume as being a ‘simple, blue, woollen dress.’

Stephanie Boeninger (Nora’s Body)

• ‘The only area though which she exerts control over her husband.’

Joan Templeton (Nora)

• ‘Nora’s criminality is a silent, covert rebellion that looks forward to the final, noisier one.’

Ibsen and the Scandinavian Society (1878) (Women)

• ‘Who dares to claim that our women are inferior to us in culture, intelligence, knowledge or artistic talent?’

Ibsen and the Scandinavian Society (1878) (Men)

• ‘What I am afraid of is men with small ambitions and small thoughts.’

Knud Ibsen’s Bankruptcy (1835)

• ‘Quintessential declasse.’

Ibsen’s Notes for a Modern Tragedy (1878) (Gender)

• ‘There are two kinds of spiritual laws…one for men and one for women.’

Dr Robert Geyer (1902) (Nora)

• ‘The hysterical type, who lies pathologically, suppresses her emotions, and suffers from bad traits inherited from her father.’

Errol Durbach (1988) (Tarantella)

• ‘The fancy dress from Capri is all sex and sensuality… the costume represents the form of her martial existence…as a living sexual fantasy in the bourgeois bedroom.’

John Ruskin, Sesame and Lilies Lecture (1865) (Men)

• ‘The man’s power is active, progressive, defensive. He is eminently the doer, the creator, the discoverer, the defender.’

John Ruskin, Sesame and Lilies Lecture (1865) (Women)

• ‘Unless she herself has sought it, need enter no danger, no temptation, no cause of error or offense.’

John Northam (1965) (Nora)

• ‘Nora can get her own way only by cajoling, by teasing - and she has learnt no other way more self-respecting.’

Daniel Brooks - Krogstad

• ‘Krogstad is presented as morally corrupt but more in a manner of a man with a medical condition rather than someone who has a flawed character or shows bad judgement.’

Toril Moi (2006) (Nora)

• Their gaze de-souls her and turns her into a mechanical doll.’

Sally Ledger (1999) (Nora)

• ‘A theatrically forceful manifestation of Nora’s desperate plight.’

Errol Durbach (1988) (Mrs. Linde)

• ‘Mrs. Linde offers Krogstad not sacrifice, but alliance: a life of mutual support.’

Toril Moi (2006) (Helmer)

• ‘Helmer’s paternalistic attitude towards Nora reflects the pervasive male dominance of the era.’

Ibsen’s Notes for the Tragedy of Modern Times (1878) (Angel in the House)

• ‘The wife in the play ends up quite bewildered and not knowing right from wrong; her natural instincts on the one side and her faith in authority.’

Ibsen’s Notes for the Tragedy of Modern Times (1878)

• ‘A woman cannot be herself in contemporary society; it is an exclusively male society with laws drafted by men.’

Ibsen’s Notes for the Tragedy of Modern Times (1878)

• ‘She has committed a crime, and she is proud of it; because she did it for the love of her husband and to save his life. But the husband, with his conventional views of honour, stands on the side of the law and looks at the affair with male eyes.’

Ibsen’s Notes for the Tragedy of Modern Times (1878)

• ‘A mother in contemporary society, just as certain insects go away and die when she has done her duty in the propagation of the race… everything must be borne alone.’

John Northam (Rank)

• ‘Rank’s function is to act as the physical embodiment, visible on the stage, of Nora’s moral situation as she sees it… to symbolise the horror she will not talk about.’

Bjorn Hemmer (1994)

• ‘Helmer reveals himself as being a pitiable and egotistic slave of the male society of which he is so conspicuous a defender.’

Toril Moi (Nora and Helmer)

• ‘Just when Nora is finally ready to take off the masquerade costume, Helmer is more than willing to put it on.’

Sally Ledger (1999) (Nora)

• ‘Nora is a domestic woman, the Victorian angel in the house who finally casts her halo to the winds.’

Ibsen’s Letter (1880)

• ‘In this play there is a big, grown-up child, Nora, who has to go out into life to discover herself.’

Ibsen’s commentary on Women’s Suffrage

• ‘Needed a strong resolute progressive party, focusing on the statutory improvement of the position of women.’

Ibsen’s commentary on the petition in favour of property rights for women (1884)

• ‘To consult men in such a matter is like asking wolves if they desired better protection for the sheep.’

Ibsen’s Letter (1890)

• ‘A man shares the responsibility and the guilt of the society to which he belongs.’

Errol Durbach (1988) (Christmas Tree)

• ‘The Christmas Trees' transformation into a burnt-out, stripped-down repository of false illusions and evasionary tactics.’

Joan Templeton (2001)

• ‘The quintessential feminist work.’