IBSEN CONTEXT

Personal Life [5]

• Born in 1828

• Father went bankrupt at 8 → poverty

• Married Suzannah Thoreson

• Close friends with Camilla Collett

• Wrote ‘A Doll’s House’ while not in Norway
  - Allow criticism for Norway when not there
  - Faced criticism in professional and social life, hence why he left

A Doll’s House [4]

• Deliberately written to reflect Middle-Class Traditional Norwegian Family - deliberate and detailed stage descriptions

• Written 1879

• Based on Laura Kieler

• “Realist drama” → unique genre for the time → Ibsen considered the father of realist drama

Political Climate [5]

• 19th Century Europe

• First Wave of Feminism in Norway

• Women lack of legal rights: inability to own property, take loans, limited work prospects

• Place was in the domestic sphere, being a housewife

• No legal custody if kids if a wife left

Ibsen Views [3]

• “A woman cannot be herself in contemporary society”
  - Notes for a Modern Tragedy

• “My task has been the description of humanity” → Denying being a feminist outright

• Humanistic Didactic → Believed in individualism over all else

Reception [4]

• Norwegian Women’s Rights League: Ibsen’s 70th Birthday Banquet in his honour

• So controversial → German 1880: alternative ending where Nora stays → Female lead refused to play original

• Fredrik Peterson → “Ugly” and immoral play, a “real wife” would have accepted Torvald’s forgiveness and stayed

• Micheal Billington → “About domestic revolution”, “timeless study of the need for domestic honesty” 2012