Ibsen context cards

The ‘New Woman’

•Increased awareness and advocacy for women’s rights in Europe and the USA

•‘New woman’ emerged in 1894– a radical view that woman could be self sufficient, challenge tradition, have more opportunities, education and employment, financial security, no sole focus on domestic tasks

•Faced backlash by critics as she ‘threatened the status quo of marriage and motherhood’ as well as a threat to order and mortality

Rise of the middle class - the bourgeoise

•Norway less industrialised than other European countries

•Still, rise of industry created the bourgeoise, which was a socially mobile middle class with unsecured prosperity

Ibsen’s family’s bankruptcy

•Ibsen’s family were prosperous until his father’s business went bankrupt when he was eight years old

•Family tried to hide their fall in status but struggled financially

•Secrecy and shame about financial struggles inspired storyline for Doll’s House

Realism

•Ibsen referred to as the ‘father of realism’

•Term first used in 1850s

•Rejected melodrama and idealization in favour of authentic settings, ordinary characters, vernacular language – focus on contemporary life, not heroic storylines

•Uses detailed/authentic sets, natural acting, psychological depth

Civic law

•Women were not legally allowed to borrow money without husband’s consent (as mentioned by Mrs Linde in conversation with Nora)

•Divorce meant husband would have custody of the children, although legal was a relatively new concept and generated controversies over the morality of divorce

The ‘well made play’

•Common in Norwegian theatre, supposedly based on real life

•But characters had no nuance or depth, all reduced to extremes of ‘good’ or ‘bad’

•Characters were stock types – villain, good guy, noble woman, etc

•Plots overly intricate and dramatic

‘Angel in the House’

•Derived from a poem by Coventry Patmore

•Concept that wife should be submissive, charming, passive, powerless, self-effacing and conform to husband’s desires

•British audiences would have been very familiar with this idea

Laura Kieler

•Ibsen knew a woman (Laura Kieler) who had forged her husband’s signature to borrow money in attempt to help him

•When discovered, her husband committed her to a mental asylum and took the children away from her

•Inspired Nora’s storyline