Ibsen - AO5 critics

SOCIETY: Birch

‘A Doll’s House’ challenged “deeply embedded concepts of marriage, the relationship between …

the sexes and our responsibilities to each other”

SOCIETY: Caird

“The economic independence of woman is the first condition to free marriage. She ought not to be …

tempted to marry, or to remain married for the sake of bread and butter”

NATURALISM: Clement Scott

“We do not honestly believe that those theories as expressed in ‘The Doll’s House’ would ever find …

favour with the great body of English playgoers”

FEMINISM: Birch

“His women were not idealised. They are …

fully realised human beings and sometimes, indeed, very destructive human beings”

FEMINISM: Ibsen

“I must decline the honour to have consciously worked for the cause of women. I am not even quite clear what the cause of women really is. For me it has always appeared to be the cause of …

human beings. My task has always been to portray human beings”

OUTCOME: Duncan

“Ultimately, both Nora and Torvald are …

victims of the society that created them”

TORVALD: Duncan

“Torvald’s accusation that Nora has inherited her father’s faults …

bookends the play”

CONTEMPORARY RESPONSES: Halvdan Koht (Ibsen’s biographer)

“exploded like a …

bomb”

CONTEMPORARY RESPONSES: Ibsen (regarding the revised ending for German actress, Hedwig Niemann-Rabbe)

“a barbaric act of …

violence against the text”

MODERN RESPONSES: Tore Rem

“the ‘slamming of the door shut’ is really a key …

turning point in European theatre history”