Presented By:

2. Prof. Sukhwinder Kaur Dept. Of English Presented By:

3. HENRIK IBSEN

4. Henrik Johan Ibsen (20 March 1828 – 23 May 1906) was a major 19th-century Norwegian playwright, theatre director, and poet. • He is often referred to as "the father of realism" and is one of the founders of Modernism in theatre. • He is the most frequently performed dramatist in the world after Shakespeare, and A Doll's House became the world's most performed play by the early 20th century. HENRIK IBSEN

5. Henrik Ibsen 1828-1906Biographical Influences • Born in Skien, a tiny coastal town in the south of Norway • Merchant father went bankrupt – raised in poverty. • Mother was a painter and loved theatre. • Age 18 – fathered and supported his illegitimate child through journalism • Failed his entrance exam to the university where he had hoped to become a physician.

6. Playwright Historical Influences • Catiline, a tragedy, which reflected the atmosphere of the revolutionary year of 1848 which sold only a few copies. • The Burial Mound was performed three times in 1850. • The first performance of Cataline did not take place until 1881. After successfully performing a poem glorifying Norway's past, Ibsen was appointed in 1851 by Ole Bull as "stage poet" of Den Nationale Scene, a small theater in Bergen. • During this period Ibsen staged more than 150 plays, becoming thoroughly acquainted with the techniques of professional theatrical performances. • In addition to his managerial work he also wrote four plays based on Norwegian folklore and history, notably Lady Inger of Ostrat (1855), dealing with the liberation of medieval Norway. In 1852 his theater sent him on a study tour to Denmark and Germany.

7. “After Shakespeare, without hesitation, I put Ibsen first.” ― Luigi Pirandello (1867-1936), Italian dramatist and novelist and the winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1934.

8. His major works include • Brand, • Peer Gynt,  • An Enemy of the People,  • Emperor and Galilean,  • A Doll's House, • Hedda Gabler,  • Ghosts,  • The Wild Duck,  • Rosmersholm, • The Master Builder. Major WORKS

9. A DOLL’S HOUSE A Doll's House (Norwegian: Et dukkehjem; also translated as A Doll House) is a three-act play in prose by Henrik Ibsen. It premiered at the Royal Theatre in Copenhagen, Denmark, on 21 December 1879, having been published earlier that month.

10. LIST OF CHARACTERS • Nora Helmer – wife of Torvald, mother of three, is living out the ideal of the 19th-century wife, but leaves her family at the end of the play. • TorvaldHelmer – Nora's husband, a newly promoted bank manager, suffocates but professes to be enamoured of his wife. • Dr. Rank – a rich family friend, he is secretly in love with Nora. He is terminally ill, and it is implied that his "tuberculosis of the spine" originates from a venereal disease contracted by his father. • Kristine Linde – Nora's old school friend, widowed, is seeking employment. She was in a relationship with Krogstad prior to the play's setting. • Nils Krogstad – an employee at Torvald's bank, single father, he is pushed to desperation. A supposed scoundrel, he is revealed to be a long-lost lover of Kristine. • The Children – Nora and Torvald's children: Ivar, Bobby and Emmy • Anne Marie – Nora's former nanny, she now cares for the children. • Helene – the Helmers' maid • The Porter – delivers a Christmas tree to the Helmer household at the beginning of the play.

11. COMPOSITION Ibsen started thinking about the play around May 1878, although he did not begin its first draft until a year later, having reflected on the themes and characters in the intervening period (he visualised its protagonist, Nora, for instance, as having approached him one day wearing "a blue woolen dress"). He outlined his conception of the play as a "modern tragedy" in a note written in Rome on 19 October 1878. "A woman cannot be herself in modern society," he argues, since it is "an exclusively male society, with laws made by men and with prosecutors and judges who assess feminine conduct from a masculine standpoint.

12. Ibsen sent a fair copy of the completed play to his publisher on 15 September 1879. It was first published in Copenhagen on 4 December 1879, in an edition of 8,000 copies that sold out within a month; a second edition of 3,000 copies followed on 4 January 1880, and a third edition of 2,500 was issued on 8 March. PUBLICATION

13. Significance of the title “A Doll’s House”

14. “A Doll’s House” The word “doll” means a woman who has no mind or will of her own. “A Doll’s House” therefore means a house in which there lives such a woman. The word “doll” in the play is applicable to Nora. She is a doll because, during the eight years that she has spent as Helmer’s marriage-partner, she has always been a passive and subservient kind of wife to him.

15. Nora as Helmer’s pet At the very beginning of the play Helmer treating his wife as a kind of a pet. He addresses her as his “little skylark” and as his “little squirrel”; and she fully responds to these terms of endearment. It has become a normal practice for Helmer to address her thus, and she accepts the role of a pet without in the least being conscious of anything usual or singular about it.

16. Helmer’s Authoritarian attitude towards Nora The authoritarian attitude of Helmer becomes more emphatic when he rejects Nora’s recommendation on the behalf of Krogstad. Helmer on the occasion appears as a stern moralist.

17. If Nora had been a self-assertive woman, she could very well have taken up a firm attitude on this occasion and tried refute Helmer’s arguments. • But far from adopting a firm attitude ,Nora begins to think of suicide. • His condemnation of Krogstad is so strongly worded that Nora, applying the condemnation to her own case, shudders inwardly.

18. Nora’s wifely Devotion Nora is entirely depended on her husband. She seeks his advice as to what kind of a costume she should wear at the fancy-dress ball. She tells him that she can not move a step without his guidance in this matter. She then seeks his guidance in rehearsing the Tarentella, appealing almost helplessly to him for his direction. According to the ideas then prevailing, Nora is a model of wifely devotion.

19. A doll wife all these years Nora has been living a doll’s house without having ever been conscious that she was a doll. After Helmer’s totally unexpected reaction to Krogstad’s two letters, Nora realises that she has always been a non-entity in this house. Nora realises that she has been rendering blind obedience to convention and custom all these years in order to keep her husband pleased. It now dawns upon her mind that her husband is not the man she had thought him to be.

20. Nora’s love for Helmer now drops dead, and her mind now becomes active. • she discovers that she is an individual in her own right, but that her individuality has remained dormant and suppressed all these years. • She tells Helmer that he has been treating her as his doll-wife just as her father had in the past treated her as his baby-doll. • She says that she would now like to know things at first-hand and, in order to do that, she must go out into the world alone.

21. At the end of the play Nora is no longer a doll. • She is a woman and individual in her own right. • She would now discover her own potentialities and seek to achieve the fulfilment. Nora No Longer a Doll at the End

22. The title “A Doll’s House” for the play is most appropriate because it signifies the kind of a life that Nora has led for eight years in her husband’s home. Her exit from her husband’s home is turning-point in her life; her exit can prove to be a new starting-point for Nora.

23. Thank you