A Doll’s House​ ​Relevancy 

 
 
Instructions​:​ Read the article and annotate all the thoughts, questions, or musings you have.
Then, answer the questions that follow. 

Why A Doll's House by Henrik Ibsen is more relevant

than ever
Three major productions in just over a year, one to be revived for the second time next week –
why is this play about a Norwegian housewife so enduringly popular?

Susanna Rustin​ ​Sat 10 Aug 2013 First published on Sat 10 Aug 2013

Hattie Morahan and Susannah Wise in A

Doll's House at the Duke Of York's Theatre in
London. Photograph: Tristram Kenton

W​hen, next Wednesday

evening, Hattie Morahan picks
up an armful of Christmas
shopping and steps on stage to
open a run of Ibsen's A Doll's
House, it will be for the third
time in just over a year.

Morahan first starred as Nora,

the 1870s Norwegian wife and
mother who realises her life is a sham, ​at the Young Vic last July​, but such is the production's
popularity that this is its second revival. Moreover, two other, brand new productions have
been seen in recent months: in May an adaptation by Bryony Lavery received rave reviews at
the Royal Exchange in Manchester, and in April Zinnie Harris's version, set in Edwardian London
and ​first seen at the Donmar Warehouse​ in London with Gillian Anderson in the lead role, ​was
staged by the National Theatre of Scotland in Edinburgh​.

Three such high-profile productions in the space of a few months is unusual. Morahan
has already won the Evening Standard and Critics' Circle awards for her performance and was
unlucky to miss out to Helen Mirren at the Oliviers. But the combination of the play's brisk and
thriller-like plotting, and the sense shared by everyone involved that the play still speaks to
audiences in ways that feel fresh and interesting, means there is no fear of overkill.

In fact, Morahan, speaking to me just before Thursday's dress rehearsal, says she feels
"liberated" to be occupying the role again, while director Carrie Cracknell says that even the last
few days of rehearsals have thrown up new insights into Ibsen's endlessly complex characters.
"There is something timeless about it," Morahan says, "which is what's so shocking. You try to
keep it in its box of 19th-century Scandinavia, but the things Ibsen writes mean it ceases to be
about a particular milieu and becomes about marriage (or partnership) and money. These are
universal anxieties, and it seems from talking to people that it resonates in the most visceral
way, especially if they are or have been in a difficult relationship. Someone said to me the other
night, 'That's the play that broke my parents' marriage up.' It shines a very harsh light on the
messy heart of relationships, and​ how difficult it can be to be honest with another human being
even if you love them."

The play, hugely controversial when first published and performed in Copenhagen in 1879, is
about the unravelling of a family. Nora and Torvald Helmer believe they are happily married
and on the brink of a blissful new phase of life: Torvald has been promoted to bank manager
and their money worries are over. But Nora has a secret debt, incurred with good intentions
and a forged signature, and with her husband's new power comes the threat of blackmail.

Over three acts the illusion of bourgeois contentment unravels, and the play culminates in a
spectacular scene between the couple as Nora's lie is exposed and Torvald first blames, then
forgives her – and is finally abandoned as Nora recognises the truth of her situation. She
accuses her husband, and her father before him, of having used her as a doll, and declares
herself unfit to be a wife or mother until she has learned to be herself. Ibsen's final stage
direction, of the door closing behind her, is one of the most famous ever written.

Unsurprisingly, feminist contemporaries of Ibsen welcomed the play, although, as theatre critic
Caroline McGinn points out, when he was invited to speak at a women's congress, he told them
he wasn't a feminist himself. The first German production notoriously altered the ending so
that Nora did not leave home, when leading woman Hedwig Niemann-Raabe refused to act the
part as written, an amendment Ibsen later described as "a barbaric outrage". In the century and
more since, the play and the role of Nora have taken on iconic status; ​Unesco's Memory of the
World register calls Nora​ "a symbol throughout the world, for women fighting for liberation and
equality".

David Sturzaker and Cush Jumbo as Nora

Helmer in A Doll's House at the Royal
Exchange in Manchester. Photograph:
Jonathan Keenan

She is also a symbol for female

actors, both of what is possible
and of how much they still have
to fight for, when most plays
and films still feature more male
than female characters and
work famously dries up for older
women unless they are among a lucky handful of national treasures. Cush Jumbo, star of the
Royal Exchange's production, says "it's a role a lot of actresses have on their list – if they have a
wish list – because it's a very challenging part. It's Ibsen's Rosalind [the heroine of
Shakespeare's As You Like It], I suppose. You never leave the stage and the journey she goes on
is epic."

"I would compare it to Hamlet," says Morahan, whose interpretation has been described as a
career-changing breakthrough – in the way that Hamlet ​and now Iago have been for her exact
contemporary Rory Kinnear​ (both are 35). Janet McTeer experienced a similar effect two
decades ago when her tempestuous, 6ft Nora, deeply in love with her husband and completely
broken by his betrayal, won plaudits in London and then on Broadway, where the New York
Times theatre critic Ben Brantley called McTeer's "the single most compelling performance I
have ever seen".

McTeer's take on the play was to sweep away some of the feminist baggage it carried – it
doesn't work for Torvald's "sweet little skylark" to suddenly turn into Emily Pankhurst,
she decided – and to treat it as the story not of a woman, but of a marriage. Anthony Page, who
directed, says "she was very unexpected casting, being tall and strong-looking, but it
heightened the idiocy of the false identity she was living under. She had a wonderful way of
playing it very naturalistically, and she and Owen Teale [as Torvald] were playing off each other.
Sometimes it got a bit out of hand. They were throwing chairs at each other, which had to be
stopped, but they were remarkable."

But it is hard to ignore the play's strong feminist resonances in a culture where it is blindingly
obvious that any woman who puts herself in the public eye will become a target for abuse.
Some complain that social media have given misogynists – such as those who have been in the
news this week after ​threatening the MP Stella Creasy​, or sending death threats to female
journalists – a platform they don't deserve. Others argue they have simply revealed a
woman-hating streak that has always been with us. Either way, it seems difficult to deny that
virulent prejudice against women and the pressure on them to behave in certain ways still exist.
Ibsen himself wrote in a note on his work-in-progress that women can't be themselves in an
"exclusively male society, with laws made by men and with prosecutors and judges who assess
feminine conduct from a masculine standpoint" – which felt startlingly pertinent when I read
it shortly after learning of the male prosecutor and judge who this week ​labelled a 13-year-old
child a sexual predator​ and suspended the prison sentence of the 41-year-old man convicted of
abusing her.

Which is why some of the current generation of women acting, directing and adapting A Doll's
House have sought to reassert its feminist credentials. ​Director Carrie Cracknell made a short
film​ that imagined Nora as an overstretched modern mother, her life a nightmare of spilled
porridge, missed appointments and hurriedly applied makeup. She says working on the play
made her acutely aware of the ideas about gender that shaped her parenting of her two young
children. "We live in a culture in which the way we represent women is becoming narrower. I
think we have a generation of women growing up who understand that power is linked to how
we look."

But all those I spoke to agree that the central dilemma the play presents, of how to be yourself
and true to yourself, while being married and being a parent, is not exclusive to women.
"In a sense," says Caroline McGinn, "Nora's famous dramatic exit [leaving home and children to
work and pursue self-fulfilment] is something many parents do five days a week."

And perhaps this is the play's most radical aspect: that it presents a woman's dilemma as a
human dilemma, relevant to both sexes, when so often women's stories are treated as a special
subject of concern only to women (evidence of which can be seen everywhere in culture, from
the small number of men who read books by and about women to the girl-heavy audience for
the RSC's smash-hit musical Matilda, when there is no equivalent gender bias at Charlie and the
Chocolate Factory down the road).

"I feel really strongly that we still obsess around male protagonists," Cracknell says. "There's a
thousands-of-years-long legacy of storytelling in which men have been the protagonists – we go
back to telling their stories over and over." McGinn says A Doll's House remains thrilling as a
critic because "you go to new plays all the time where the ratio of men to women is 80/20".

Jumbo, who is currently starring in ​her own play about the singer Josephine Baker​ at the Bush
Theatre in London, also acted in ​Phyllida Lloyd's all-female production of Julius Caesar​ earlier
this year and found "it opened people's minds to the idea that it's not that there aren't any
roles for us, it's that plays aren't produced in that way. Quite a lot of the time you are the
minority sex in a cast, because most stories that are told are male-driven. So it's a case of telling
more women-driven stories, or being open to being casting things in different ways."

Or, as ​Zinnie Harris​ puts it: "Nora's departure started a journey, and it's incumbent on us to
keep going."

https://www.theguardian.com/stage/2013/aug/10/dolls-house-henrik-ibsen-relevant

Questions
1. What does the article say is the play’s most radical aspect? Do you agree? Explain.
It says that “presents a women’s dilemma as a human dilemma”. I agree with this. I
think it’s super important in theatre to be relevant to any gender, background, or
culture that might come watch. It shouldn’t be exclusive. Also specifically to this play,
it’s important for both women and men to understand that there are differences in
marriage and relationships should be equal.
2. The article spends a lot of time discussing what women can learn from this play, but
what can this play teach men?
 Men can learn about the importance of communication shown by Nora in the final
speech, and the gift of forgiveness from Torvald. Also just the overall importance of
honesty. From the play men can see how bad things happened for Nora when she
kept to herself so they can encourage honesty in their relationships and provide an
atmosphere where people feel comfortable opening up. Lastly, don’t call your wife a
child, or suggest that they could still be like brother and sister when she dumps you.
3. The very last line says, "Nora's departure started a journey, and it's incumbent on us
to keep going." How do we do that?
Nora’s story shows people that you can move past things and you can be in control.
When people watch the play and see her arch and change, then eventually closing the
door on everything, I think they must feel some overwhelming urge to stand up for
themselves. People can continue Nora’s journey by assessing their situations and
asking if they are truly happy. If the answer is no, they need to respond honestly and
genuinely. Also everyone needs to remember how important it is to treat people
equally and with respect.
4. How important is cultural or historical context to the production and reception of this
play? Well, women are going to receive a different message then men who watch this
play. They have felt the same oppression Nora feels from Helmer, and are more
empathetic to her situation and her actions are empowering. Some men might feel
uncomfortable or embarrassed seeing the way Helmer treats Nora. But also,
reading/watching this play in the 21st century is much different from the 19 or 20
century. The world has had many movements for equality and women’s rights, and
society overall has come to accept roles for different genders outside of stereotypes.
It’s less relatable because of these improvements. The audiences don’t experience
these types of interactions regularly.
5. Has the impact and meaning of this play changed overtime? Explain.
Yes. I think that what a person or group of people take away from a play is fluid.
People are constantly progressing and hitting blocks and changing emotionally that at
any given time the play could change meanings. In my opinion it’s silly to tie it down
to one consistent message. I think that overall the message has switched between an
outlet for women’s rights and counsel on marriage. In the past, women’s rights
might’ve been a bigger deal because there was significantly less of them. Recently, it
could’ve changed to relationship issues.
6. How did your culture and identity influence your personal reception of the play?
I am a woman, and as a woman I was drawn to Nora and Mrs. Linde’s character
actions more than anyone else. I found myself wondering if sometimes I made
decisions for the same reasons they did. I naturally imagined myself as them.
However, as a girl, I was annoyed by the things that the girls did. Sometimes I felt like
it wasn’t an accurate representation of life. Also, as a very privileged girl who gets to
go to school, has a wonderful father, and is single, I focused more on the message
audiences got from Torvald and Nora’s marriage. I tried to pick out points in their
conversation that seemed unnatural and triggering.