Detailed Study Notes on A Doll's House & A Streetcar Named Desire

A Doll's House & A Streetcar Named Desire - Authorial Choices

Background (Writer / Publication Date / Social Context / Genre)

• A Doll's House (Henrik Ibsen):
  • Published in 1879 by Henrik Ibsen, a Norwegian playwright.
  • Based on events in Ibsen’s own life and society.
  • Social context: male-dominated society where women had lesser roles than men.
  • Nora is based on Laura Kieler, Ibsen's friend who had taken a loan.
  • Laura was sent to an asylum when her husband found out.
  • Ibsen wrote the play while his friend was in the asylum.
  • Time period: Victorian Era.
• A Streetcar Named Desire (Tennessee Williams):
  • Published in 1947 during reformation of the Old South.
  • The play was written after World War II.
  • Cultural tensions were high in America.
  • The Old South (including New Orleans) was reforming, ideologies against the aristocracy.
  • Blanche is based on William's sister, who struggled with mental problems following a lobotomy.
  • Stanley's loathing for Blanche’s prim attitude was inspired by William's father's aversion to his mother's Southern airs.
  • The Desire Line ran from 1920-1948 in New Orleans.
  • Time period: Post WW2.
  • Plastic Theatre: staging and theatrical effects to create a 'theatre of gauze' making audience self-conscious of play experience, using lighting, music, colour, sound.
  • Expressionist features: music, lighting to represent protagonist’s inner mind and allow audience and experience psychic condition of central character.

Subject Matter / Content

• A Doll's House:
  • Power play between men and women.
  • The quest for individuality.
• A Streetcar Named Desire:
  • Ideals of the Old South compared to post-World War 2 American society.
  • Feminism, love, and mental illness.
  • Old culture of the South vs. new culture.
  • Gender conflict.

Narrative Structure

• A Doll's House:
  • Three Acts.
  • Exposition/Climax: Torvald reads Krogstad's letter.
  • Important events (forgery) occur before the exposition.
  • Haunting memory that drive the play forward/ her transition to liberalisation.
• A Streetcar Named Desire:
  • Eleven Scenes.
  • Exposition: Scene 10 (Stanley rapes Blanche).
  • Important details revealed before the exposition (Alan/promiscuity).

Timeline / Sequence

• A Doll's House:
  • Linear play over three days (Christmas).
  • Many events underlying the play occur in the past and are revealed through dialogue.
• A Streetcar Named Desire:
  • Seven months.
  • Blanche is an unwelcome guest; tension rises throughout the play.
  • Blanche gradually loses her sanity.

Dramatic Techniques / Mise-en-scène

• Sets - A Doll's House:
  • Living room at Helmers’ house represents a doll’s house or confinement, creating claustrophobia.
  • Everything occurs in the living room, which shows a lack of privacy.
  • The domestic sphere is for display; the crux of marriage is for show.
  • The setting underlines the transactional relationship.
• Sets - A Streetcar Named Desire:
  • All scenes set in the Kowalski's shabby two-room apartment in the working-class district, which creates a sense of imprisonment for Blanche and adds to conflicts.
  • During the rape scene or distress: the walls disappear, and the outside (New Orleans, reality) comes inside.
  • Atmosphere: Scene 1 focuses on city rather than house, gives a sense of time period and city.

Music - A Streetcar Named Desire

• Symbolizes emotions/indicates Blanche’s state of mind/the character of New Orleans/reality.
• Blue Piano: heightening action, Blanche unsettled, reality of New Orleans/Stanley's violence.
• Varsouviana: Blanche's past/Alan's death/trauma/gunshot.
• Clarinet: make up between Stella and Blanche.
• Jungle Cries: Blanche losing touch with reality or her loss and regress.
• Paper Moon: illusions and delusions.
• Wein, Wein, nur du allein: Poker night/dissonant brass and strings/ messy scene with primitive men.

Dialogue

• A Doll's House:
  • Turn-Taking/Enjambment: highlights the power dynamic (monosyllabic vs. verbose dialogues).
  • Helmer's dialogues are longer than Nora’s; he berates her with monologues.
  • Variance in dialogues shows Helmer’s desire to control her.
  • Act 3: Nora > Torvald; Nora addresses Helmer as an equal and demands respect.
• A Streetcar Named Desire:
  • Turn-Taking: Stella and Blanche: Blanche's commentary on Stella’s body and the appearance of the apartment draw a contrast between the physical life that Stella has chosen and the dream world that Blanche desperately wants to inhabit.
  • Double Entendre: 'blood on fire' his anger for seeing her express her individuality as well as his sexual desire for her --> the two-fold desire helmer shares for nora, the desire to overpower and the desire of her physical beauty.
  • Double Entendre: 'in bed with your polak'

Symbolic Nicknames/Epithet - A Doll's House

• “Little songbird”, “squirrel”, “lark”, “little featherhead”, “little skylark”, “little person”, and “little woman”.
• It is the playful conversations between her and Torvald that help us see Nora's manipulative personality.
• The continuous nicknames he gives her, such as "squirrel" and "singing bird", reflect back to the fixed depletion of worth that Torvald has set for her, yet Nora flirtatiously uses them to get her way.
• Modifier “little” before the names usually followed by the possessive “my” when he calls Nora
• Act III when Nora teases his gaze at her, “Why shouldnʼt I look at my dearest treasure?—at all the beauty that is mine, all my very own?”
• Zoomorphism: 'ape' othering him --> two establish blanche's position in the household and in city/ establish a power dynaic, servant-master/ flip this dynamic

Pronoun

• A Doll's House:
  • Act 1: Nora: I was I who saved Torvald's Life: loose sentence: emphasis on I (Act 1) - Nora's autonomy/independence/ability to make decisions/upper hand in relationship/reverse the master-slave dynamic.
  • Act 3: Torvald: You have destroyed all my happiness. You have ruined all my future: his self--centredness, true reality, honour over all, final crack in the glass for the marriage -- > epiphany for Nora.
  • Highlights what Nora means to Helmer and that to Helmer honour is above all (ironic as Nora literally means honour).
• A Streetcar Named Desire:
  • Scene 1: when Blanche talks about loss of Belle Reve "I stayed and fought whereas you were in your bed with your polak."

Paradox & Tone

• Paradox: 'Wonderful Thing' / 'Miracle'; happy marriage is a utopian concept that cannot be achieved in the dystopian world of the Victorian era.
• Invective: 'polak'; Blanche's attempt to undercut Stanley's worth, to create a distance between the different classes, and hence in her sister's marriage ground herself in the kowalski household instead pushes Stanley to find her secrets and kick her out of the house
• Tone Act 1: Torvald: come along mrs linde, this place will only be bearable for a mother now
  • Torvald's condescending nature/attitude towards women/defining Nora's responsibility/highlights his role as a father too

Enallage & Speech

• Enallage: Stanley's broken language. Scene 1: Stanley: 'where you from'.
• Speech: all characters speak in prose and natural language (realism approach of the play).
• Soliloquy: Blanche's self-obsession.

Metaphor

• The "Miracle".
  • As Nora is leaving Helmer says: He looks up with sudden hope, saying: “the miracle of miracles?". The play ends with the sound of the door slamming shut.
  • Nora’s capacity for hope has already been destroyed, as shown by the fact that she says she no longer believes in miracles. Meanwhile, the devastated Torvald has one final moment of hope at the very end of the play; however, the decisive slam of the door brings this moment to an abrupt end, finally shattering the illusion of his and Nora’s marriage.
  • This overall paints the concept of marriage in the Victorian society as 'utopian'.
• Nora's reference to her forgery as a "miracle".
  • Highlights the extreme measures she took to protect her husband and family. This metaphor suggests that, within the context of societal expectations and gender roles, a woman's actions could be seen as extraordinary or miraculous when she deviated from the norm. It also underscores the deception inherent in the Helmer marriage.
• Code-Switching: Blanche (Scene 6) Blanche expresses promiscuous words only in french and by making french references, as she knows that Mitch will not understand them.
  • Clearly a sign that she wants to tell Mitch everything about her promiscuous past, but can't yet bring herself to do so, thus using a French-language literary reference.

Visual Imagery in Speech - A Doll's House

• "ACT 3 - Helmer: And when we are leaving, and I am putting the shawl over your beautiful young shoulders—on your lovely neck—then I imagine that you are my young bride and that we have just come from the wedding, and I am bringing you for the first time into our home—to be alone with you for the first time—quite alone with my shy little darling! All this evening I have longed for nothing but you. When I watched the seductive figures of the Tarantella, my blood was on fire; I could endure it no longer, and that was why I brought you down so early."
• In this speech we see that Torvaldʼs love and desire for Nora relies more on a fantasy than an appreciation for who she truly is as a person. He talks about his sexual desire for her with no consideration of whether she is feeling the same way at the moment; indeed, when she tells him that she doesnʼt want to be with him that night, he dismisses her feelings by saying she must be playing a game. In reminding her that he is her husband, Torvald is suggesting that their marriage means Nora does not have the right to refuse sex with him, a commonly held belief at the time.
• Speech: to etch characters in social/cultural context and show differences in societal status/education
  • Stanley's speech often comprises non-grammatical, coarse, often slangy.
  • Blanche's, in contrast, high-flown rhetoric which often rings false (as it is meant to), and never lets us forget that she was a teacher of English. There is a lyrical quality in her words, emphasising their emotional Content.
  • When Blanche is moved: uses figurative language: Scene 5 ‘Have got to be seductive — put on soft colours, the colours of butterfly wings, and glowʼ. Scene 6 she describes loveʼ as being like ‘a blinding light on something that had always been half in shadowʼ; and in Scene 10 she speaks of the paddy-wagon picking up drunken soldiers ‘like daisiesʼ.
  • Stella: speaks correct English, but in a mostly unemotional tone, except when she speaks of her love for her husband.
  • Mitch: efforts at speaking properly are marred by grammatical slip-ups as much as by his genteel circumlocutions (‘I perspireʼ, never ‘I sweatʼ). He cannot follow or match Blancheʼs flights of fancy, and is acutely aware of this.
  • Eunice and Steve: set firmly a rung or two below Stanley on the class ladder, again by their use of language as much as by their drunken public quarrels.

Metaphor - A Streetcar Named Desire

• 'coloured lights' by Stanley in Scene 8:
  • Describe the ecstasy of passion is startling and evocative, Stanley explains to Stella how he “pulled [her] down off them columns”, meaning the pristine, white columns of Belle Reve to be at his lowly commoner level. This reveals Stanleyʼs main interest with his own wife is the primitive passion they have for each other; itʼs almost violent. Evidently, sex is the most important aspect to their relationship – they indulge in their lustful practices as a means to reconcile conflict.
• 'that worn-out Mardi Gras outfit, rented for fifty cents from some rag-pickerʼ in Scene 10: contemptuous description of Blancheʼs evening gown and tiara - indication of seeing through her illusion
• Tone: Stanley reveals Blanche's past to Stella in a smug tone: Stanleyʼs revelations show both Blancheʼs hypocrisies and Stanleyʼs cruelty in their ugliest lights. Stanley does not try to sympathize with Blanche, but instead relishes the most sordid, scandalous details. He enjoys asserting his power over her.

Symbolism

• Macaroons: defiance against Torvald/indiscretions/deceit forbidden fruit secrecy, lies and childishness. unfaithfulness (Act 1 and Act 2 (when rank is expressing feelings) Nora to rebel/revolt against Torvald who controls every aspect of her life.
  • She lies to Dr. Rank about having been given some by Mrs. Linde, and after giving a particularly tempestuous performance of the tarantella asks that macaroons be served at dinner, indicating a relationship between the macaroons and Noraʼs inner passions, both of which she must hide within her marriage.
• 'Red Hot': (Scene 1) intermingling of different classes, can only be done through passion/desire and when it does happen, red hot presents the violence of it all.
  • The tamale vendor yelling “Red-hot!” symbolizes the power of the red-blooded physical world over lost dreams of the past. Stella bears the promise of new life into the dying DuBois line.
• Symbolic Nicknames (squirrel, skylark, spendthrift, featherhead) - throughout mostly Act 1 “little songbird”, “squirrel”, “lark”, “little featherhead”, “little skylark”, “little person”, and “little woman”. He admonishes her, and patronises her, using more symbolic names like little-lark, and little-bird, patronising her as something that is to be protected. His way of overpowering her by patronising her, almost as though she is intellecutally inferior and not intellecutally capable of grapsing or engaging in conversations about finances
• Meat: stanley's manhood and sexuality (Scene 1)
  • Exhibitionistic nature.
  • Sexual innuendo is how Stanley, Stella, and other women are just a piece of meat or desire.
  • Tossing the package of meat symbolically captures Stanley and Stellaʼs sexual relationship: he hurls himself physically at her, and she accepts delightedly. Raw physical lust forms a vital part of the life-blood of New Orleans, and of their relationship.
• Torn Dress (Act 2) (Neapolitan fisher girl). Act 3: before talking to Helmer: symbolizes the flaws and weaknesses of her marriage and feelings about it.
  • Shows the role that Helmer wants Nora to play, but the dress represents how that role is a farce due to the cracks in their marriage.
  • Removing her fancy party dress and putting on her everyday clothes.
• Bathing: (Scene 2, Scene 8 (Paper Doll), Scene 11) moonlight swim cleansing of guilt, allows Williams to ‘discussʼ Blanche without her leaving set, adds to claustrophobia of apartment.
  • Attempt to wash away her past life.
  • Attempt to forget reality Blanche also seeks rejuvenation, as though the bathwater were a Fountain of Youth.
  • Temporary respite Contrast: men dunk Stanley in the shower to sober him up so that he face the real world/reality.
• Ornaments (ACT 1) Nora's independence - financial prowess/intelligence/ meticulous financial planning
  • Represents Nora internal fantasies: 'I felt like a man'.
  • Decorate the tree -> hide true identity of the tree, similar to how the excuse of making the ornaments masks Nora's true reality from Helmer.
• Paper Lantern: hide Blancheʼs vulnerability. represents Blancheʼs attempt to mask both her sordid past and her present appearance
  • The lantern diffuses the stark light, but it’s only a temporary solution that can be ripped off at any moment.
  • Scene 3: Brings the lantern (asks mitch to put it on): Mitch hangs up the lantern, and Blanche is able to maintain her pose of the naïve Southern belle with him, but it is only a façade.
  • Scene 9: Tears off the paper lantern.
  • Scene 10: Stanley further tears off the lantern
• Christmas Tree: life/family spirit/love, luxury and harmony/happiness/unity. The joy Nora takes in making her home pleasant
  • Symbolizes Nora's position in her household as well as her mental state Act 1: happiness and merriment as well as a harmonious married life of Nora.
  • Act 1: Nora orders Christmas tree and insists to hide it until it is completely decorated. This symbolizes that Nora is the keep of appearances. --> nods to the contrast between appearance and reality in Nora's life.
  • Act 2: the Christmas tree has been stripped and dishevelled and its candles are also burned to their sockets - broken and barren tree symbolises the destruction of the life-force, the happiness and spirit of Nora's mind. The burning out of the candle also suggests a parallel decrease in the light and energy in the mind of Nora.
• Red Satin Dress: passion/attraction (Scene 2) whore's/promiscuous colour (madonna-whore complex); Red is the colour of desire, sexuality, lust, and love. Satin is artificial silk
  • The first time that her outer appearance actually matches her intentions. She is meeting Mitch in this scene, and her dress certainly shows the seductress in her.
  • Mitch refuses to marry her because of her past, and after that, in scene ten, she wears a white satin evening gown, which implies that she returned to her habit of soft colours in order to underline her pureness and virtuous nature.
  • Blanche wears this robe as Mitch confronts her about her past of “intimacies with strangers” and despite her truth, it is with wrong intentions of manipulating Mitch to love her. She grows more and more desperate to find security and ultimately finds it with Mitch, but this isnʼt true love; it is artificial, fabricated.
  • This is results in Blanche associating truth with rejection and loss. Mitchʼs label of Blanche as an “unclean” woman forces her to perpetuate her illusion of Shep Huntleigh to create a false sense of security to live in.
• Money (THROUGHOUT): symbol of power. Torvald manages all finances, thus has the upper hand in the house. Therefore, Nora taking up a loan, earning her own money reverses the power dynamic in their transactional relationship, serving as a direct challenge to Torvald's authority
  • However, Torvaldʼs tight grip around the families funds lead Nora to lie about what she uses their money for, creating tension and dishonesty in their marriage and, ultimately, influencing Noraʼs decision to leave the house.
  • Instead of valuing money as a concrete object exemplifying solidity of character (like her husband), she uses money only as a tool to better her familyʼs existence, having signed an agreement fallaciously with the lawyer, Krogstad, in order to save Torvaldʼs life.
  • Krogstad has power of Nora because of money as well as he gave it to her

Phallic Symbols & Society's Treatment - A Doll's House

• Truffles (Rank's father) (ACT 2): MORALITY symbol of immorality and engaging in unethical activities/in indiscretions
  • Symbolises the ideology that parent's mistakes and are borne as problems by the child: foreshadowing Torvald's ideology which eventually pushes Nora to leave.
  • Society's treatment of immorality/non-conforming behaviour as an illness/disease.
• Radio: power/control/disdain for anyone else's pleasure (Scene 3) throwing it outside the window: destroying any pleasure the woman wants, because Stanley is driven by desire and in his view, the only pleasure Stella can attain is through him or else it is a challenge to his masculinity
• Keys to the letterbox (control/power) (ACT 2) Torvald holds the key to the letterbox, indicating his immediate upper-hand in decisions outside/inside the house
  • His control over communication into and out of the house indicating that he is incharge/accountable of the appearance of his house in society/his marriage/his honour/familial life
• Zodiac Signs (Scene 5)
  * virgo the virgin
• Letterbox (secrecy) (ACT 2): No, nothing in the letterbox; it is quite empty. [Comes forward.] What rubbish! of course he canʼt be in earnest about it. Such a thing couldn’t happen; it is impossible—I have three little children.
  • Symbolizes the confinement of women's voices and lack of agency.
  • Foreshadows the revelation of Nora's forgery and her struggle for independence.
  • Reflects the limited options available to women in a patriarchal society.
  • Represents the consequences of societal norms and secrets.
  • Serves as a visual metaphor for the hidden conflicts within the household.
  • Using her maternal role as a form of protection, yet she wants to move away form it. this is the protection linde seeks
• Spilt Coke on White Dress (Scene 5)
  • Stain in her illusion Her harsh reaction: reflects hear fear of her secrets being revealed/her losing her last chance of any character evolution/shot of life.
  • The facade she puts on has holes --> foreshadow.

Letter & Fragile Nature - A Doll's House

• Letter to Torn Letter: (ACT 2 AND 3); The letter is the linchpin of the drama and its movement has put the characters into different positions and constituted their subjectivity
  • The letter also serves as a ticking time bomb, symbolizing the inevitable revelation of the truth.
  • Shows fragile nature of the facade of a happy marriage symbolises the unequal expectations of Nora and Helmer in the relationship - deeming relationship as tore and unfixable
  • Torvald tears apart assuming it is the end of the problem to their marriage, however to Nora is is a realisation of their different priorities.
    • Nora recognizes that the letters have done more than expose her actions to Torvald; they have exposed the truth about Torvaldʼs selfishness, and she can no longer participate in the illusion of a happy marriage.

Light & Door - A Streetcar Named Desire

• Light: Reality (THROUGHOUT) Blancheʼs aversion to light Her reaction to light can be regarded as an attempt to hide her true nature as well as her vanishing beauty and youth. By hiding from the light she tries to escape reality, for light clearly represents reality in this play. The first time that Blancheʼs aversion to light becomes obvious is in scene one: “And turn that over-light off! Turn that off! I wonʼt be looked at in this merciless glare”
  • In scene six, she takes Mitch home with her and says, “Let’s leave the lights off”. Blanche thinks of Mitch as a future husband, and therefore she does not want him to know her past or her true age, and the best way to hide her age is to stay out of bright light where he could possibly see her wrinkles and fading youth in her face. Later in that scene, Blanche tells Mitch about her husband Allan: ‘When I was sixteen, I made the discovery – love. All at once and much, much too completely. It was like you suddenly turned a blinding light on something that had always been half in shadow, thatʼs how it struck the world for meʼ (Williams 182).
  • Therefore, in her past, light used to represent love, but now it represents something destructive for her. Allanʼs suicide erased the light or love, and thus she now does not believe in it any longer and tries to escape from the light and therefore escapes reality: “…electric light bulbs go on and you see too plainly”. This again shows her fear of light since for her it represents reality, and in scene nine this becomes even more obvious. When Mitch tears off the paper lantern in order to take a closer look at her in the bright light, “she utters a frightened gasp” Then she tells him: ‘I don’t want realism…I’ll tell you what I want. Magic! Yes, yes, magic! I misrepresent things to them. I don’t tell the truth. I tell what ought to be truth. And if that is sinful, then let me be damned for it! – Don’t turn the light onʼ. This is Blancheʼs first statement concerning her true intention and nature, and it is probably the only time where she ever confesses that she builds up an illusory image of herself.
  • Stanleyʼs affection for light—opens shutters, lets light (the future, present, reality) into apartment. Stanley has a different attitude concerning light and reality. He is very down to earth and realistic and displays this with his brutal honesty.
  • He can only accept a literal truth, which can be experienced by his fanatic investigation of Blancheʼs past: “You showed me the snapshot of the place with the columns. I pulled you down off them and how you loved it, having them coloured lights going”. In this passage, Stanley tries to remind Stella of the fact that when they met she was just like Blanche, but that he made her face reality again. As already mentioned above, light is the opposite of darkness and therefore the opposite of ignorance.
• Poker game played in harsh, bright light. Blanche always in shadow, covers light. Mitch forces Blanche under the lights.
  • Light as a symbol for truth and reality:

Door & Utensils - A Doll's House & A Streetcar Named Desire

• Door + Locked Door: Act 3: Before Nora's exist, the door of the hail hall is left open -- foreshadows her departure/shows that she has already made up her mind
  • Act 3: Final door slam - closing this chapter of her life. Nora's slamming the door shut behind her and her exit into the dark outside symbolizes the New Woman's leaving behind of the male-made homes and society, male-made traditions and laws, and male-made values and mentalities like that of Helmer.
  • When Nora slams the door of her doll's house, shutting herself out of the only world she has known and stepping into a future that is unknown and therefore both promising and threatening,
  • The play begins with a door opening, and it ends with a door slammed shut. The imagery of the doors throughout relates to themes of caged and free animals. It relates to open possibilities and to closed possibilities; it relates to the possibility of change and the impossibility of change; it relates to a sense of choices made freely and it relates to choices determined by heredity and by social compulsions
• Utensils/Dishes (Scene 7): Stanley's anger/control Blanche's presence ruining Stella and Stanley's relationship - -> Stanley is physically fighting for his marriage.
  • Symbol of his dominance in the household
• Black Crosses (ACT 2) While going away, Doctor Rank leaves his visiting cards with the black crosses over his printed name. The black crosses here are symbolic of Doctor Rankʼs death which is now imminent.
  • Dr Rank's disease: symbolises the deteriorating social norms of society and the insecurity one can feel while living in it
    • there is a connection between the death of Dr. Rank and the breakup between Nora and Torvald, which is the death of the relationship between the two
  • Helmer's reaction: The momentary distraction of the appearance of Dr. Rankʼs symbolic visiting cards builds suspense for Torvaldʼs eventual discovery of the letter from Krogstad. Torvaldʼs reaction to learning that he will

Silk Pyjamas & Doll - A Streetcar Named Desire & A Doll's House

• Silk Pyjamas (Scene 10): symbolize Stanleyʼs sexual prowess his dominating nature especially in a sexual setting wears these pyjamas on special occasions: wedding night, birth of his son, raping Blanche --> his final dominance over the upper class/ further supported by him saying 'it's gonna be a red-letter night for both us'
• Doll (THROUGHOUT): Nora shows Torvald the dolls she bought for her daughter, and says that the fact that they are cheap doesn’t matter because she will probably break them soon anyway. This is interesting as it suggests that Nora is raising her daughter for a life similar to Noraʼs own, yet simultaneously foreshadows Nora breaking up her family life by leaving Torvald
  • Act 1: Nora refers to her daughters as "my little dollies" Nora's and other women's role in society, treatment by male figures in life (father/husband).
  • Nora’s comments about being a doll-wife suggest that every marriage in which the wife is in some way controlled by the husband is comparable to a dollʼs house, a daring assertion at the time. It is significant that Torvald does not disagree with her, but rather agrees and yet sees nothing wrong with the idea of having a doll-wife. This reveals the extent to which such relationships were accepted and even encouraged by society as healthy and normal.
• Cries and noises of the Jungle (Scene 10) symbolise Blanche's trauma - from the rape + experience at New Orleans/how it is bounded by numerous senses: highlighting its intensity

Stove & Clothes - A Doll's House & A Streetcar Named Desire

• Stove: warmth/comfort (ACT 1 AND 2) moves over to stove whenever she is insecure, flirts with Rank, eats/hides macaroons etc.
  • The Stove symbolizes Nora's emotional and physical warmth.
  • When Krogstad comes to have a talk with Nora, she keeps the door half open. She goes across the room and touches the stove. Actually there is no cause of doing so. Her action of making up the fire is the remedy of escaping from her fear of Krogstad's visit and the discomfort of her mind. She wants to keep the secrecy of loan from Helmer
  • Likewise, when Dr. Rank declares his love to her, she walks over the stove. Here, too the stove symbolises her mental disturbance caused by Rank unexpected declaration of love to her, which she would not like.
• Primary coloured clothes (Scene 3): representing that they are strong men "at the peak of their physical manhood, as coarse and direct and powerful as the primary colors."
  * symbolises primitive nature these bright colours are a foil to Blanche's association with white, rendering her out of place, indicating she does not belong in New Orleans/
• Birds (THROUGHOUT) extended symbolize possessiveness of Torvald Helmer towards Nora.
  • When Nora feels excessive happy, he calls her "skylark" or "songbird". When she is frightened, she is his "dove."
  • When he is unhappy, Torvald scolds Nora, referring to her in terms of birds, such as “A songbird must have a clean beak."
  • Birds represent Torvaldʼs view of Nora as a creature meant to entertain and delight him, whom he must protect.
  • They also represent Noraʼs flight to freedom, as she is like a bird in a cage, singing for her keep in the beginning of the play, but escaping by the end.
• Blanche's soiled/crumpled gown and scuffed silver sandals (Scene 10)
  *broken illusion/ how blanche's secret/illusions are out in the open her appearance is deteriorating just like her charatcter in society foreshadows the upcoming rape

Shawls & Shadows - A Doll's House & A Streetcar Named Desire

• Shawls (ACT 2 AND 3)
  • Multi-coloured Shawl: during Tarantella rehearsal: exuberance of life and her multiple dreams and desires. (ACT 2)/represents a desire to cling to the many delights of life in the midst of the Tarantella which is a dance of life and death.
    • Black Shawl: (ACT 3) after last dance at the ball upstairs, she wears a black shawl which she consciously links with death when she talks to Dr. Rank about death. symbolizes Noraʼs death-wish: she picks up the black shawl and gets ready to rush out of the house in order to commit suicide. symbolises Nora's transformation from being an innocent woman to a devious one
• Shadows (Scene 10) represent the dream-world and the escape from the light of day/Initially, Blanche seeks the refuge of shadows and half-light to hide from the harsh facts of the real world: When Blanche first sees Stella, she insists that Stella turn the overhead light off.