• “There are two kinds of moral laws, two kinds of conscience, one for men and one, quite different for women. They don’t understand each other, but in practical life, woman is judged by masculine law as though she weren’t a woman, but a man.” - Ibsen

  • Ibsen originally thought of the play in a cafe in Rome in 1878 jotting down the plot under the title “Notes for a Modern Tragedy”

  • Ibsen was travelling Italy with his wife, little money and self-imposed exile from Norway

• Ibsen was a playwright, journalist, director and artistic director at Norway’s National Theatre in Norway

• Started to write the dialogue of play in 1879 and finished writing in in Amalfi, southern Italy

• Published in Copenhagen in 1879 and sold out first run of 8,000 copies.

  • Became most successful play published in Scandinavia

• Before writing A.D.H, started writing The Pillars of Society which was his first play with a contemporary setting and emphasis on contemporary problems

  • A.D.H was second social problem play

  • Described as naturalist plays

    • “The play’s effect is dependent, to a large degree, on the audience members thinking that they sit and listen and watch something which is happening out there in real life — the spirit and tone of the play will be understood, respected and reproduced without any concession to the demand for full ruthless truth to life” - Ibsen in a letter to a Swedish actor

    • Naturalism is truth to life, reality effect

    • Before being applied to theatre it meant “a secular non-religious approach to life”

• Determinism - the idea that people are determined by their genetics and their environment, writer had to depict life as realistically as possible ( realism)

• Naturalism unlike realism is always contemporary in setting, and specifically applies the discoveries and methodologies of science to literature

  • How genetic, psychology, and environment determine character

• Inspired to write A.D.H by contemporary events

• Laura Petersen wrote a novel, sent it to Ibsen and they became friends. She was attractive and Ibsen nicknamed her the Skylark, one of the nicknames that Torvald gives Nora in A.D.H. She visited him for two months then again with her husband Victor. Victor later developed Tuberculosis and the doctors told Laura that he would die without a trip to a warmer climate, like Torvald in A.D.H. Laura paid for their travels with a loan which she couldn’t pay. In desperation she wrote a novel very quickly and sent it to Ibsen begging for it to be published. He refused saying it was inferior and Laura was panicking so forged a check to clear her debts. When the bank found out, Laura was forced to tell Victor who went mad, He incarcerated her in an insane asylum, threatened to divorce her and wouldn’t let her see her children for two years.

  • These events were playing out when Ibsen was writing A.D.H

  • Laura distressed by her association to the play because unlike Nora, Laura never wanted to leave her children but had them taken by force

• Norwegian professor Frederik Peterson wrote two articles attacking the play after it was produced because “Society needed divine ideality, needs faith in the idea of the good and the beautiful to survive”/”One does not leave this play in the uplifted mood, which already in the time of the Greeks was regarded as an absolute requirement for any artistic or poetic work”

A Doll’s House on the Victorian Stage

• Felt like the most controversial play ever staged

• Strindberg wrote later that A.D.H “Marriage was revealed as being a far from divine institution”

• Dominant theatrical form in 19th century was melodrama, highly charged sensational plots with stock characters who clearly embodied vice or virtue, a strong musical element, spectacular visuals and climactic endings that resolves the plot. Often radical plays, about working class oppression or using ambitious technology and visual effects. All emotion externalized.

  • Ibsen’s play broke away from this, his dramatic style being described as “Beyond memory since a play so simple in its action and so everyday in its dress made such an impression of artistic mastery” - anti-melodramatic and very naturalistic

  • Ibsen interested in characters interiority, wants more ambiguity

• Stage directions, Nora is consistently centre stage, dominating the action - unusual for the time

• A.D.H doesn’t finish with resolution and a cleared stage but more questions

• A.D.H has melodramatic tropes, revelations and secrets, a fatal letter that is concealed then read, a woman with a past and a blackmailer

• Tarantella sequence in Act 2, Nora’s hair falls down when she dances, in melodramatic acting, loose dishevelled hair indicated a woman’s sexual availability. Nora wants to act like a melodramatic heroine by putting love before legality.

• Torvald melodramatic, cast himself as hero

  • Act Three “Do you know Nora, often I wish some terrible danger might threaten you so that I could offer you my life and my blood, everything for your sake”

    • Torvald tells Nora to “stop being theatrical” after he finds the letter

• Ibsen’s plays populated with middle-class characters, this is who would have attended the play, with their wives - lawyers, bankers etc.

• Majority of Ibsen’s plays in the 1880’s and 1890’s in England premiered at matinees, where women outnumbered men by up to 12 to 1.