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Doll’s House and Feminism

Many literary works have been written to express political ideas of the author and

promote or uncrown the cause the author served or opposed. Many works have been written for a

different reason, but nevertheless have been used as a banner of the cause the author was far

from supporting or opposing. The Doll’s House by Henrik Ibsen was proclaimed a play about

feminist liberation almost immediately on its publication and the author was considered the

champion of the movement. However, later on an increasing number of researchers began to

suggest that he “never meant to write a play about the highly topical subject of woman’s rights”

(Templeton 28). Which interpretation is right? I tend to disagree with those researchers who

deny any trace of feminism in the play, but still the play cannot be called feminist in the sense

which its first readers put into the word. I do not think that the play proves the idea that legal

and social restrictions on females must be removed in order to bring equality of both sexes.

In order to prove this point, we need to look into the Norway of the late XIX century. The

Doll’s House was published in 1879. By that time the feminist movement had existed for nearly

a century. The first wave of feminism, as it was termed later, was gaining its force and

Scandinavia was on its crest. Women there “enjoyed their maximum educational opportunity”

(Anthony 28): in 1873 women were permitted to take exams for university in Sweden. Three

years before the publication of Ibsen’s play first coeducational schools appeared in Scandinavia,

and four years after it the first woman got a doctor’s degree in one of Scandinavian universities.

At the same time Norvegian Association for Women’s Rights was founded.

Such was the epoch when the play was created. As every great author, Ibsen was a man

of his time and could not and would not escape the reality and write as if the women’s question

did not exist, as Fyodor Dostoyevsky could not ignore nihilistic movement in Russia. His

heroine lives in Norway of the late 1870s, bubbling with the ideas of women’s right, women’s

inequality, women’s slavery… But he denied writing solely for the purpose of attracting public

attention to the issue or offering solutions: “True enough, it is desirable to solve the woman
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problem, along with all the others, but that has not been the whole purpose (my italics). My task

has been the description of humanity” (qtd. in Templeton 28). Unfortunately, this frequently

quoted statement looks ambiguous: perhaps it was one of his purposes? Or are his words just a

polite disavowal?

Let us try to find out what in Ibsen’s play allowed feminists to use it as a banner. Firstly,

it is the personalities of the heroes. Nora, as we see her on the first pages, is a ‘little squirrel’,

‘little featherhead’, ‘little spendthrift’, enjoying being alternately indulged and instructed by

Torvald, her husband, who is so loving and thoughtful, so down-to-earth and far-sighted in his

care about the family. Is he?

A few more pages and the picture changes. ‘Little squirrel’ gradually changes into an

energetic and resourceful woman, who saved her husband’s life by secretly and illegally

borrowing a large sum of money and has been secretly working to repay it. A manly action,

hidden from husband with a womanly sensitiveness and delicacy to save his pride. Now her

childishness, immaturity and pretty playful ways seem a mask, intuitively chosen and worn

because her husband enjoys so much pampering her, who loves her as devotedly, as she loves

him. Does he?

Reading on, we find an answer to this question as well. When Torvald learns about

Nora’s crime, he is furious and threatens to deprive her of her mother’s right to bring up their

children. Not because as a highly moral man he loathes lying and deceit – he is thinking about

himself:  “I am in the power of an unscrupulous man; he can do what he likes with me, ask

anything he likes of me, give me any orders he pleases--I dare not refuse. And I must sink

to such miserable depths because of a thoughtless woman! (my italics)” (Ibsen). He does not

bother to think when and why Nora committed the forgery. However, a few moments later

the incriminating document is in his hands, he hastily destroys it and Nora becomes ‘a

frightened little singing-bird’ again – she is forgiven, because nothing threatens Torvald’s

reputation and prosperity now. So the hero’s personality is finally revealed both to readers
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and to the heroine – he is ungenerous, cowardly and blind in his utter selfishness, and it is

hard to put the blame for it wholly on the society. Yes, the society and its standards allotted

the parts precisely that way: a strong husband and a ‘dollish’ wife, but how strong was

Torvald when his strength, his ability to defend his wife and his home was tested? He

vented his anger and frustration on Nora, blaming her for everything, but he was going to

yield to Kronberg and his blackmailing scheme. He found his ‘strength’ again and took up

his ‘manly’ part again when the danger was over and he destroyed the dangerous papers.

Apart from a manly heroine and effeminate hero, (incidentally, the other female

character, Christine, is also above her partner, ungenerous and unscrupulous Krogstad)

there are other moments in the text, which would be impossible, had it been written in

another epoch. It is the mention of Christine’s marriage to provide for her mother and

young siblings (and behind it woman’s inability to live and earn her living independently).

It is Nora’s act of forgery itself (and illegality of woman’s signature, as if she were a child).

It is Torvald’s wish to preserve the appearance of the marriage in the eyes of the world.

But most importantly, it is the play’s ending.

Nora leaves her Doll’s house, her husband and her children, slamming the door.

“The terrible offstage slamming of that door … resounded through more apartments than

Torvald Helmer’s” (qtd. in Törnqvist 153). It “reverberated across the roof of the world,”

as James Huneker put it. Feminists saw in this ending Ibsen’s solution to the situation –

woman’s liberation from her bondage and slavery and her first independent steps. “When

Nora closes behind her the door of her doll’s house, she opens wide the gate of life for

woman, and proclaims the revolutionary message that only personal freedom and

communion make a true bond between man and woman, meeting in the open, without lies,

without shame, free from bondage of duty” (Goldman 12).

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However, German theatres and particularly the leading actress, who was to play

Nora’s parts, compelled Ibsen to write an alternative version of the play’s ending. Here it

is:

NORA. ... Where we could make a real marriage out of our lives together. Goodbye. [Begins to go.]

HELMER. Go then! [Seizes her arm.] But first you shall see your children for the last time!

NORA. Let me go! I will not see them! I cannot!

HELMER [draws her over to the door, left]. You shall see them. [Opens the door and says softly.]
Look, there they are asleep, peaceful and carefree. Tomorrow, when they wake up and call for their
mother, they will be - motherless.

NORA [trembling]. Motherless...!

HELMER. As you once were.

NORA. Motherless! [Struggles with herself, lets her travelling bag fall, and says.] Oh, this is a sin
against myself, but I cannot leave them. [Half sinks down by the door.]

HELMER [joyfully, but softly]. Nora!

[The curtain falls.]

(The alternative ending of The Doll’s House)

What is especially valuable for our research, is the existence of Ibsen’s open letter

concerning this version. “I prefer… to commit such violence myself, rather than surrender

my works to treatment and “adaptation” by less careful and less skillful hands than my

own” (The alternative ending of The Doll’s House). But is it another argument, supporting

the feminist interpretation of the play?

I do not believe that Ibsen could change the ending of his play to the one conveying a

directly opposite message. His feelings can be compared with the feelings of a painter, who

is compelled to add a few gaudy strokes to a delicate water-colour portrait to highlight a

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few details. I suggest that the original version’s idea is the same, only more subtly. What is

this idea?

The traditional version of the play’s ending is open. It is impossible to close the book

or get up from the theatre chair without asking a question: “Will Nora ever come back or

has she gone forever?” The author maintains the balance between the two suggestions. In

Nora’s final words there is a possibility of both options. She mentions the condition of her

return to her husband: “The most wonderful thing of all would have to happen… Both you

and I would have to be so changed that … our life together would be a real wedlock”

(Ibsen).

Let us look beyond the text. What will happen if she does not return? The play will

become a story of a woman, deceived in her love, who could not get over the pain of

disappointment and forgive her own and her husband’s mistake. I would not agree with

the critics who claim that “Like angels, Nora has no sex” (qtd. in Templeton 28). I agree

with Joan’s Templeton’s statement that the play becomes impossible with the hero instead

of a heroine. Nora’s problem is first and foremost the problem of a woman – a wife and a

mother: what about her children, who she refuses to see before her flight from her Doll’s

house? The life of mother who left her children is hardly enviable, and the children, who

are innocent of their parents’ mistakes, are sacrificed in this case to her disappointment. If

that is what the author intended for Nora to do, it seems to me a dead end rather than a

way out. It is utterly impossible for Nora to be happy, and at the same time she ruins every

hope for Torvald and makes her children motherless.

However, in my opinion, Nora’s loving and self-sacrificing nature permit the reader

to hope for her return. The miracle she talks of may happen. Torvald “does not

understand” yet, but he may learn to understand, or start learning. In the version written

for German theatres this metamorphosis has to take place incredibly, impossibly, forcedly

soon – in order to allow sentimental German audience to go home appeased and satisfied
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with another Christmas story about nearly-disaster-but-all-turned-out-well family conflict.

The original version leaves the reader baffled, guessing, hoping. She may return to bring

up her children and live with the man she does not love or respect anymore, and it would

be another sacrifice, a greater and nobler than the one she had made for her sick husband.

A greater, because it is everyday and inconspicuous, and would consist not in a single

action, but in her whole life, devoted to her home – not a bright and pretty Doll’s house,

full of mutual illusions – and her children, in patience, self-denial and selflessness. Only in

this case there is a hope for Torvald’s transformation, and only in this case her marriage

might turn into a “real wedlock” she scarcely hopes for, because a real marriage must be

based on mutual respect and mutual self-sacrifice. I suppose this possibility is far more

valuable than the ruin of Nora and Torvald’s marriage in the case of her flight from her

home, her children and her mother’s duties.

In conclusion, let us return to the original question: Is The Doll’s House a feminist

play? In the sense that it is the play written in the epoch and permeated by the problems of

feminism – yes, it is. In the sense that it is a play primarily about a woman, her illusion and

disillusion, her tragedy, her choice, – yes, it is. In the sense that it is an appeal for women to

leave their undeserving husbands and unhappy homes, to sacrifice their motherhood to

social, financial, psychological independence – no, it isn’t. It is a humanistic appeal for

their fortitude and self-sacrifice.

If we go back from the XIX century Norway back to the origins of Scandinavian

literature, we will see characters unique for the world mythology – Valkyrie, representing

strong women of Northern races. They are neither fair temptresses, nor powerful

goddesses. Warlike maidens, they fly over the battlefield, electing the heroes, worthy of

their love and Scandinavian Heavens, Valhalla. The Doll’s House is about the tragedy of a

Valkyrie who has chosen a wrong man and has to pay for it with her whole life.

.
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Anthony, Katharine. Feminism in Germany and Scandinavia. New York, H.Holt, 1915.

Print.

Goldman, Emma. The Social Significance of the Modern Drama. Berkley Digital Library.

Web. July 2, 2003. <http://sunsite.berkeley.edu>

Templeton, Joan. “The Doll House Backlash: Criticism, Feminism, and Ibsen.”

PMLA, Vol. 104, No. 1, Jan., 1989. Jstor. Web. n.d. <http://jstor.org>

Törnqvist, Egil. A Doll’s House. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995. Print.

”The alternative ending of A Doll’s House”. All about Ibsen. Web. 30.05.2005

<http://ibsen.net>