Ibsen Context & Criticds

Banuch

A rehabilitated Eve who has the courage to leave the garden

Millett

Nora confronted every expectation

Cron

The message of the play is much less political than it is about human nature

Finney

In closing the door on her husband and children, Nora opened the way to turn-of-the-century women’s movement

Ronald Gray (1)

Nora uses sexual power over Torvald and Dr Rank

Ronald Gray (2)

Helmer’s faults are too exaggerated to be fruitful

Hagemann

Ibsen’s society regarded women as bondservants of their husbands

Wright

It is Mrs Linde who is in a renewed position of repression, while Nora steps forward into the freedom of the unknown

Ledger (1)

Mrs Linde acts as a catalyst for Nora’s rebellion

Duncan

Nora puts love before legality

Ledger (2)

Rank symbolises the degeneration of the family

Westgate

The ending shook the foundations of the fin de siecle domesticity

Millett (3)

Convention caged her within a child’s toy structure

Tarantella

Italian folk dance derives from Tarantism - hysteria caused by a spider bite - and symbolises Nora’s frenzy and panic

Laura Kieler

Family friend of Ibsen who secretly took out a loan after her husband developed TB to finance a recovery trip to Italy, was forced to tell her husband and suffered a mental breakdown and put in a mental hospital.

Women’s Rights in Norway

Women could not vote, file for divorce, or take out loans withoit permission. Women were property of their father until marriage, when they became their husband’s property.

Napoleonic Code 1804

Women could not engage in financial transactions making them children in the eye of the law

Nora embodies…

…the new woman

‘Ibsen’s drama is interrogative rather than declarative’

It raises many uncomfortable questions about society, marriage, masculinity, sex, and motherhood without resolution at the end