A Doll's House Summary

Henrik Ibsen
At a Glance
In A Doll's House, housewife Nora hides her financial problems from her
husband Torvald. When Torvald
learns of her deceit, he becomes angry. Disgusted by his selfishness,
Nora leaves him to become an
independent woman.
A Doll's House summary key points:
In order to protect her secret, Nora tries to defend one of Torvald's
employees who knows that she is
misleading her husband. Torvald insists on firing the employee.
Krogstad, the fired employee, sends a letter to Torvald detailing Nora's
deceit. She tries to distract her
husband to prevent him from reading the letter.
Torvald eventually reads the letter and is angry at Nora, insisting that
her deceit has harmed his
reputation. He dismisses the fact that she borrowed the money to save his
life.
After learning that the money does not need to be repaid, Torvald
forgives Nora, but she cannot forgive
his self-centeredness and leaves the family.
Summary
(MASTERPIECES OF WORLD LITERATURE, CRITICAL EDITION)
In A Doll's House, Nora Helmer returns home on Christmas Eve with a
Christmas tree that must be
hidden from the children until it is trimmed. Indeed, hiding is a major
theme in this play. Later in the
first act, Nora plays hide-and-seek with her children, and she hides the
macaroons that her husband,
Torvald, has forbidden her to eat. A more dangerous secret is the fact
that, years earlier, she had
borrowed a large amount of money to pay for the sojourn in Italy that
enabled Torvald to recover from a
serious illness. She had borrowed the money illegally from a usurer named
Krogstad, and she has
secretly been repaying the loan out of the small sums that she is able to
earn by copying documents or to
save from her household budget. To spare her dying father, who was to
have been her cosigner, she even
forged his signature on the contract.
That something is wrong with the Helmers' marriage quickly becomes
evident in the first scene: Torvald
treats Nora more like a favorite child than a wife, and to please him she
seems perfectly willing to
pretend to be his little "skylark" or his "squirrel." In other words, she
is content to live in a dollhouse.
Nora's old school friend, Mrs. Linde, is one of those Ibsen characters
who has married for money, not
for love. The man she did love-and jilted-was Krogstad. Now a penniless
and childless widow, she
would be very happy to settle down in a dollhouse, but necessity forces
her to beg Nora to help her get a
job in Torvald's bank.
The plot hinges upon Nora's ignorance of three important facts: Krogstad
holds a minor position in the
bank of which Torvald is shortly to become manager; Torvald is so
embarrassed by Krogstad's
presumptuous familiarity that he plans to fire him; and forgery, no
matter what the motivation, is a
serious crime. Ironically, Torvald fires Krogstad and promises his
position to Mrs. Linde. This act
prompts Krogstad, who is trying to regain his respectability, to use his
knowledge of Nora's forgery to
blackmail her: If he loses his job, he will expose her and ruin Torvald.
Nora's attempt to persuade
Torvald to retain Krogstad precipitates the crisis: Torvald angrily
dispatches the letter of dismissal. Her
situation worsens when Krogstad delivers an ultimatum and leaves a letter
exposing her crime. In
desperation, Nora tells Mrs. Linde about the incriminating letter now
locked in the mailbox and urges
her to use whatever power that she may still have over Krogstad to
persuade him to ask for it back
unread. By the end of the second act, Nora sees only two possible ways
out of her dilemma: Either she
will save her beloved husband's reputation by committing suicide, or what
she calls "the miracle" will
happen, and he will magnanimously assume full responsibility for her
crime. In an interview with
Krogstad, Mrs. Linde succeeds in reviving his love for her, but she
precipitates the final crisis by
forbidding him to retract his letter.
Torvald's explosive reaction to Krogstad's letter shows Nora that the man
for whom she was willing to
sacrifice her life, the man capable of "the miracle," is a fiction.
Discovering that he is self-centered,
petty, and unfeeling, she can no longer love him. To challenge his
outmoded ideas about marriage, she
becomes a rebel and informs him that she is leaving him and the children.
When he admonishes her that
she is duty bound to remain, she says that she has discovered a higher
duty: her duty to herself. She
exits, slamming the door on a bewildered Torvald.
Part of the play's effectiveness on stage depends on Ibsen's suggestive
use of props, costumes, and
activities (for example, the Christmas tree, the macaroons, the game of
hide-and-seek) to illustrate
psychological states or to underscore symbolic meanings. In its day, A
Doll's House was extremely
controversial. While many applauded Nora's determination to "be herself,"
many more condemned her
as "unnatural" for deserting her children. More than a century later, the
play still raises questions that
stimulate readers and spectators.
Summary
(CRITICAL SURVEY OF LITERATURE FOR STUDENTS)
On the day before Christmas, Nora Helmer busies herself with last-minute
shopping, for this is the first
Christmas since her marriage that she does not have to economize. Her
husband, Torvald, is made
manager of a bank and after the New Year their money troubles are over.
She buys a tree and plenty of
toys for the children and even indulges herself in some macaroons, her
favorite confection, although
Torvald does not entirely approve. He loves his wife dearly, but he
regards her very much as her own
father did, as an amusing doll-a plaything.
It is true that she does behave like a child sometimes in her relations
with her husband. She pouts,
wheedles, and chatters because Torvald expects these things; he would not
love his wife without them.
Actually, seven years earlier Nora demonstrated that she had the courage
of a mature, loving woman.
Just after her first child was born, when Torvald was ill and the doctor
said that he would die unless he
went abroad immediately, she borrowed the requisite two hundred and fifty
pounds from Krogstad, a
moneylender. She forged to the note the name of her father, who was dying
at the time, and convinced
Torvald that the money for his trip came from her father. However,
Krogstad was exacting, and since
then she devised various ways to meet the regular payments. When Torvald
gives her money for new
dresses and such things, she never spends more than half of it, and she
finds other ways to earn money.
One winter she does copying, which she keeps a secret from Torvald.
Krogstad, who is in the employ of the bank of which Torvald is now
manager, is determined to use
Torvald to advance his own fortunes. Torvald dislikes Krogstad, however,
and is just as determined to be
rid of him. The opportunity comes when Christina Linde, Nora's old school
friend, applies to Torvald
for a position in the bank. Torvald resolves to dismiss Krogstad and hire
Mrs. Linde in his place.
When Krogstad discovers that he is to be fired, he calls on Nora and
tells her that if he is dismissed he
will ruin her and her husband. He reminds her that the note supposedly
signed by her father is dated
three days after his death. Frightened at the turn matters take, Nora
pleads unsuccessfully with Torvald
to reinstate Krogstad in the bank. Krogstad, receiving from Torvald an
official notice of his dismissal,
writes a letter in which he reveals the full details of Nora's forgery.
He drops the letter in the mailbox
outside the Helmer home.
Torvald is in a holiday mood. The following evening they are to attend a
fancy dress ball, and Nora is to
go as a Neapolitan fisher girl and dance the tarantella. To divert her
husband's attention from the
mailbox outside, Nora practices her dance before Torvald and Dr. Rank, an
old friend. Nora is desperate,
not knowing quite which way to turn. She thinks of Mrs. Linde, with whom
Krogstad at one time was in
love. Mrs. Linde promises to do what she can to turn Krogstad from his
avowed purpose. Nora thinks
also of Dr. Rank, but when she begins to confide in him he makes it so
obvious that he is in love with
her that she cannot tell her secret. However, Torvald promises her not to
go near the mailbox until after
the ball.
What bothers Nora is not her own fate but Torvald's. She imagines herself
already dead, drowned in icy
black water, and pictures the grief-stricken Torvald taking upon himself
all the blame for what she did
and being disgraced for her sake. In fact, Mrs. Linde, by promising to
marry Krogstad and look after his
children, succeeds in persuading him to withdraw all accusations against
the Helmers. She realizes,
however, that sooner or later Nora and Torvald will have to come to an
understanding.
The crisis comes when Torvald reads Krogstad's letter after their return
from the ball. He accuses Nora
of being a hypocrite, a liar, and a criminal and of having no religion,
morality, or sense of duty. He
declares that she is unfit to bring up her children and that she might
remain in his household but will no
longer be a part of it. When Krogstad's second letter arrives, declaring
that he intends to take no action
against the Helmers, Torvald's attitude changes, and with a sigh of
relief he declares that he is saved.
For the first time, Nora sees her husband for what he is-a selfish,
pretentious hypocrite with no regard
for her position in the matter. She reminds him that no marriage can be
built on inequality and
announces her intention of leaving his house forever. Torvald cannot
believe his ears and pleads with her
to remain, but she declares she is going to try to become a reasonable
human being, to understand the
world-in short, to become a woman, not a doll to flatter Torvald's
selfish vanity. She goes out and,
with irrevocable finality, slams the door of her doll house behind her.