Revelatory Realism in Ibsen’s "A Doll's House"

[Author's Note: this article is an analysis of a play by Henrik Ibsen. It can be found here: A Doll's House.]

During the mid-19th Century, the literary world was loosening its embrace of Romanticism, with its idealized and emotional view of the world. A new literary movement was afoot in Europe, which came to be known as Realism. Within the field of drama, Realism involved “the direct observation of human behavior…to deal with everyday life and problems as subjects” (Trumbull 2009). Though Realism was birthed in France and later took a strong foothold in Russia, one of the primary innovators of Realism in the theater was a Norwegian playwright, Henrik Ibsen. Having shed the limitations of Romanticism, Henrik Ibsen utilized Realism in his play, A Doll’s House, to lay bare the social mores of his era that dictated the status of women. Written in 1879, A Doll’s House is one of a series of “problem plays”, so named “because of their engagement of social issues such as women’s place in society” (Kennedy and Gioia 2016).

P. Emeka Nwabueze calls Ibsen’s writing “a marriage of art and life” (2008), which also serves as a fairly sound, if brief, definition of Realism. In A Doll’s House, this figurative “marriage of art and life” is employed on stage to examine the marriage of Ibsen’s primary characters, Torvald Helmer and his wife, Nora. The setting of the play is the Helmer’s townhouse apartment and opens during what has become one of the most quintessential dates of Victorian literature, Christmas Eve. At the onset, Nora has returned home with packages and a Christmas tree, admonishing the maid, Helene, to “make sure the children don’t see it till it’s decorated this evening” (Ibsen 1876).

For modern readers, A Doll’s House begins on what likely seems to be a bright and cheerful note that might easily have been plucked from the work of Charles Dickens. Henrik Ibsen is no Charles Dickens; however, and it is soon seen that there is more at hand than the typical Victorian dynamic. Indeed, from the first moments of the drama, when Torvald calls out, “is that my little lark twittering out there?”, the nature of the Helmers relationship starts to be carefully unfolded (Ibsen 1876). Lines such as, “when did my squirrel come home?”, may sound startlingly condescending to the modern ear, but perhaps not as much so to a contemporary audience of Ibsen’s time (Ibsen 1876). It is no accident, though, that Ibsen uses such phrases over and over again in his work. This very sort of condescension, inherent in Torvalds’s relationship to Nora, ultimately, proves a key factor in the undoing of their marriage.

Viewing A Doll’s House through the prism of the 21st Century, it is tempting to see the drama as a sort of proto-feminist statement and, although that may be so, it can just as easily be seen as part of Ibsen’s larger “campaign for moral reform by exposing the hypocrisy of the middle class” (Nwabueze 2008). Realism is aptly suited for such crusading, having dispensed with romanticized notions of what should be and, instead, taking an acute look at what is. During Ibsen’s lifetime, Willa Cather declared that “Realism is a protest against lies” (1892). Speaking more specifically about Ibsen’s dramatic work, including A Doll’s House, she opines that “it maintains that marriages are contracted on the most frivolous and fleeting impulses and that these impulses have been idealized and lied about by poets and romancers under the name of love” (Cather 1896). Standing alone, such a statement has a ring of cynicism, but Ibsen gives us convincing evidence of the Helmer’s unraveling marriage. Fictitious though it may be, it is equally realistic. “Nora’s actions may have been very shocking to the Victorian audience”, but that does not mean that they could not see the truth in the Helmers’ failed marriage (Trumbull 2009).

It has been posited that A Doll’s House is “categorical in its rejection of the notion of ‘woman as the servant of society’” and it does seem that Nora is a “servant to society”, in the sense that she certainly has a secondary, or subservient role in her household (Farfan 2002). In another sense, it may be more accurate to cast her as mere window dressing, rather than simply being servile. Of course, in 19th-century European society, women did not enjoy the same authority and privileges as men, but to focus too much on these broadly feminist aspects does an injustice to Ibsen’s theme of the hypocrisy of a contrived marriage. A reading of Ibsen’s work indicates his broader concerns for the role of women in society, but the unpleasant matters being revealed within the Helmer household are more particular than that. The character of Mrs. Linde, for instance, is not treated with the same level of casual disregard, or condescension, as Nora. Quite to the contrary, there is little hesitation on the part of Torvald Helmer to offer Mrs. Linde employment at the bank in a position of relative importance and responsibility. He tells Mrs. Linde that she is “very sensible” (Ibsen 1876), which is a far cry from how he speaks to his wife, or as he calls her to her face, his “helpless little creature” (Ibsen 1876).

Ibsen pulls the veil back on women’s societal status, but he does so in a very particular manner and that is within the confines of that most basic of traditional female roles, that of wife and mother. In fact, during the final unraveling of Act III, Torvald exclaims to Nora, “first and foremost, you’re a wife and mother” (Ibsen 1876). These roles, in his estimation, are Nora’s “most sacred duties”, but she has come to believe that “first and foremost I’m a human being, just as you are” (Ibsen 1876). If this sort of dialogue was seen as scandalous to Victorian sensibilities, it is not surprising, given the prevailing attitudes of the day. Still, despite the heralding of A Doll’s House in modern times as a triumph of feminism, there are bound to be more than a few people who are still taken aback by Nora’s willingness to not only jilt her husband but to abandon her children. Not many modern women, however equal and independent they may feel, are likely to consider child abandonment as a positive mark of distinction.

Within the context of Ibsen’s play and of the society in which it is set, the callous detachment shown by Nora in choosing to leave her children behind is not quite as startling as it might seem at first glance. For that matter, it is not an issue that is distinct from the overall family dynamic in her home, or by extension, to the family dynamics that were common among certain classes of people of that era. For the middle class, as well as the wealthy, the role of the wife/mother in a household was very much a supporting cast in the husband’s life story. There was status to be had and appearances to be kept, which required not only a “proper” wife but also a covey of well-groomed and well-behaved children. Again, the wife might be little more than window dressing in such arrangements. Nora herself was primarily raised by the nursemaid Anne Marie, who in turn was raising Nora’s children. When Nora asks, “do they ask for me much?”, it only underscores the level of participation, or lack thereof, that both parents have already exhibited throughout the play, in regards to rearing their children (Ibsen 1876). If parents can be so detached from the lives of their children, while living under the same roof, it becomes less of a leap of imagination to believe that Nora could walk away from them as easily as she walks away from Torvald. What is seen here is yet another moral deficiency of society that Ibsen has brought to light, with broader implications, but still tied to the role of women in the so-called polite society of the day.

There is no heroic conclusion, or happy ending, to A Doll’s House. Much is left unresolved, as Nora disappears into the night, leaving her eight-year marriage and family behind. In discussing Realism, Cather refers to the presence of “cynicism and misanthropy” in Ibsen’s work, but she also reminds us that “No literature that amounts to anything is ever a bookish affectation. But it is the result of anguish and travail of spirit” (1892). At the conclusion of A Doll’s House, “the heavy sound of a closing door is heard from below” (Ibsen 1876). Nora’s final act of departure has been called “the slam heard round the world” (Trumbull 2009). Before the advent of Realism, not every work of literature, or drama, ended with a happily ever after scenario, but there is nothing at all tidy about the way Ibsen wrapped up A Doll’s House, nor is there any reason to believe he intended to do so.

If the closing of the play marks the opening of the feminist era, it certainly does not do so by neatly putting the finishing touches on the previous era. Instead, it is like ripping the bandage off of an unhealed wound. The wound is revealed with a sting, but nothing is magically made better by having done so. There is no sense of optimism, for either Nora or her family. Whatever sense of triumph there is in Nora’s self-enlightenment and breaking free is offset by the knowledge that none of the characters are likely to enjoy a better life in the foreseeable future as a result, not her and not her family. This, as much as anything, heralds Ibsen’s leaving behind of literary Romanticism. As Nora tells her husband, “now it’s all over” (Ibsen 1876). There is a finality, but little resolution.

Kennedy and Gioia contend that “Ibsen’s real concern [is] an examination of the complexities of human personality and psychology, especially those aspects of our natures that are hidden or repressed because of society’s expectations” (2016). Society’s expectations for women, at least in the Victorian era, are made unpleasantly clear in A Doll’s House. Having laid bare the social mores that dictate the status of women; however, he does not oversimply the matter. No matter how unfair Nora’s lot in life may have been, she is not completely absolved from her complicity in perpetuating her circumstances in the first place. The issues of personality and psychology are, indeed, complex and Ibsen makes no great pains in trying to deny that fact. His moral opposition to the subservient lot of women is real enough, but by utilizing a Realist approach to his drama, rather than engaging in Romanticism, Ibsen is under no obligation to neatly solve the problems that he has brought to light.

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Works Cited

Cather, Willa. “Willa Cather on Henrik Ibsen's Realism: The Protest Against Lies.” American Literary Realism, edited by Douglas J. Colglazier, vol. 33, no. 2, 2001, pp. 99–103. JSTOR, JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/27747014.

Farfan, Penny. “Reading, writing, and authority in Ibsen’s ‘women’s plays’.” Modern Drama, vol. 45, no. 1, 2002, p. 1+. Literature Resource Center, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A97755082/GLS?u=tel_a_apsu&sid=GLS&xid=3ea11592. Accessed 11 Apr. 2018.

Ibsen, Henrik. “A Doll’s House”. Backpack Literature: An Introduction to Fiction, Poetry, Drama and Writing, edited by X. J. Kennedy and Dana Gioia, 5th ed., Pearson, 2016. pp. 859-917.

Kennedy, X. J., and Dana Gioia, editors. Backpack Literature: An Introduction to Fiction, Poetry, Drama, and Writing. 5th ed., Pearson, 2016, pg. 857

Nwabueze, P. Emeka. “Ibsen’s marriage of art and life a lucid examination.” Journal of Comparative Literature and Aesthetics, vol. 26, no 1-2, 2008, p. 15+. Academic OneFile, http://link.galegroup.com.ezproxy.lib.apsu/apps/doc/A335627887/AONE?u=tel_a_apsu&sid=AONE&xid=130aee70. Accessed 11Apr. 2018.

Trumbull, Eric W. “Realism.” Introduction to Theatre, Northern Virginia Community College, 16 Jan. 2009, novaonline.nvcc.edu/eli/spd130et/realism.htm