A Doll’s House

1. A Doll’s House By Henrik Ibsen

2. Symbolism • A symbol is a sign which has further layers of meaning. In other words, a symbol means more than it literally says. (Signs are literal; symbols are not). • Notice that a symbol can have more than one layer of further meaning. The more profound the symbol, the greater the complexity of the layers of meaning (although the symbol itself may be quite simple). • Examples: flags which symbolize a nation; the cross is a symbol for Christianity; Uncle Sam is a symbol for the United States;

3. Symbolism • Symbols can have three kinds of association; often a symbol will have all three. The associations are • Personal: We all have associations with things in our experience. One person may have strong affection for dogs while another person may fear them intensely. • Cultural: Different symbols may have quite different meanings in different cultures. A lion can represent Christ in Christian culture; in Sumerian culture, the sun represents the god Marduk. In Chinese culture, dogs represent devotion and faithfulness; in Islamic culture, they represent impurity. • Universal: Jungian psychology, along with other theories, argues that some symbols have universal meaning. Lions suggest deity in a variety of cultures, for instance. Trying to discern and express the universal meaning of a symbol is tricky.

4. Conflict • Conflict is the struggle between the opposing forces on which the action in a work of literature depends. There are five basic forms of conflict: • person versus person • person versus self • person versus nature • person versus society, and • person versus God

5. Characterization • The way an author presents characters. • In direct presentation, a character is described by the author, the narrator or the other characters. • In indirect presentation, a character's traits are revealed by action and speech.

6. Irony • Irony: the discrepancy between what is said and what is meant, what is said and what is done, what is expected or intended and what happens, what is meant or said and what others understand.

7. Irony • Sometimes irony is classified into types: • in situational irony, expectations aroused by a situation are reversed; • in cosmic irony or the irony of fate, misfortune is the result of fate, chance, or God; • in dramatic irony. the audience knows more than the characters in the play, so that words and action have additional meaning for the audience;

8. Plot (Definition) • Plot is the organized pattern or sequence of events that make up a story. Every plot is made up of a series of incidents that are related to one another.

9. Exposition • This usually occurs at the beginning of a short story. Here the characters are introduced. We also learn about the setting of the story. Most importantly, we are introduced to the main conflict (main problem).

10. Rising Action • This part of the story begins to develop the conflict(s). A building of interest or suspense occurs

11. Climax • This is the turning point of the story. Usually the main character comes face to face with a conflict. The main character will change in some way.

12. Falling Action • All loose ends of the plot are tied up. The conflict(s) and climax are taken care of

13. Resolution • The story comes to a reasonable ending.

14. Putting it all together 1. Exposition Beginning of Story 2. Rising Action 3. Climax Middle of Story 4. Falling Action 5. Resolution End of Story

15. Point of view: the perspective from which the story is told. • The most obvious point of view is probably first person or "I." • The omniscient narrator knows everything, may reveal the motivations, thoughts and feelings of the characters, and gives the reader information. • With a limited omniscient narrator, the material is presented from the point of view of a character, in third person.

16. Point of View • The objective point of view presents the action and the characters' speech, without comment or emotion. The reader has to interpret them and uncover their meaning. • A narrator may be trustworthy or untrustworthy, involved or uninvolved.

17. A Doll’s HouseSome Facts: • Published in 1879 • Norwegian title: Et dukkehjem • Title can be also read as “a dollhouse” • The play was highly controversial when first published, as it is sharply critical of Victorian marriage norms. • Written while Ibsen was in Rome and Amalfi Amalfi is a town and commune in the province of Salerno, in the region of Campania, Italy. • The play was born in a time of revolution in Europe.

18. Revolutionary • Charged with the fever of the 1848 revolution, a new modern perspective was beginning to emerge in the literary and dramatic world, challenging the romantic tradition; • Ibsen has been credited for mastering and popularizing the realist drama derived from this new perspective. • His plays were both read and performed throughout Europe (in numerous translations) like no other dramatist before. A Doll's House was published and premiered in Copenhagen.

19. A Challenge to Technical Tradition of the Well Made Play • The Well Made Play • a genre of theatre from the 19th century, codified by Eugène Scribe (1791-1861) . • It has a strong neo-classical flavor, involving a very tight plot and a climax that takes place very close to the end of the story, with most of the story taking place before the action of the play; much of the information regarding such previous action would be revealed through thinly veiled exposition. • Following that would be a series of causally related plot complications.

20. Attributes of a “Well Made Play” • The plot is based upon a withheld secret, known only to some of the characters, usually about the play's hero, the revelation of which provides the turning point of the play. • Initial exposition provides information, usually by means of question and answer, about the events that precede the start of the play (antecedent action) and both leads toward the secret and withholds it. • Ups and Downs are generally seen in dialogue, exchanges of wit between opponents, in which we move closer to the revelation of the secret. • Reversal, followed by a revelatory scene (the French critic Francisque Sarcey called this the scéne à faire) in which we and the characters in the play learn the secret, often for the first time. • A plausible dénouement is designed to make everything that has occurred believable. • The key to the whole play is that each act or scene repeats this pattern.

21. The majority of well-made plays are comedies, often farce. In his book The Quintessence of Ibsenism, Bernard Shaw proposed that Ibsen converted this formula for use in "serious" plays by substituting discussion for the plausible dénouement or conclusion. • Thus, plays become open ended, as if there were life beyond the last act curtain. • Ibsen's play was notable for exchanging the last act's unraveling for a discussion.

22. Critics agree that, up until the last moments of the play, A Doll's House could easily be just another modern drama broadcasting another comfortable moral lesson. • However, when Nora tells Torvald that they must sit down and "discuss all this that has been happening between us", the play diverges from the traditional form. • With this new technical feature, A Doll's House became an international sensation and founded a new school of dramatic art.

23. Where is the Wise Old Man? • Ibsen's realist drama disregarded the tradition of the older male moral figure. • Dr. Rank, the character who should serve this role, is far from a moral force; instead, he is sickly--rotting from a disease picked up from his father's earlier sexual exploits--and lascivious, openly coveting Nora. • The choice to portray both Dr. Rank and the potentially matronly Mrs. Linde as imperfect, real people was a novel approach at the time.

25. The Feminist Message • The play rocked the stages of Europe when the play was premiered. • Nora's rejection of marriage and motherhood scandalized contemporary audiences. • In fact, the first German productions of the play in the 1880s had an altered ending at the request of the producers. • Ibsen referred to this version as a "barbaric outrage" to be used only in emergencies.

26. Ibsen was reacting to the uncertain tempo of the time; Europe was being reshaped with revolutions. • The revolutionary spirit and the emergence of modernism influenced Ibsen's choice to focus on an unlikely hero--a housewife--in his attack on middle-class values. • Quickly becoming the talk of parlors across Europe, the play succeeded in its attempt to provoke discussion. In fact, it is the numerous ways that the play can be read (and read it was--the printed version of A Doll's House sold out even before it hit the stage--that make the play so interesting. • Each new generation has had a different way of interpreting the book, from feminist critique to Hegelian allegory of the spirit's historical evolution.

27. Major Themes • Women and Men: • This play focuses on the way that women are seen, especially in the context of marriage and motherhood. Torvald, in particular, has a very clear and narrow definition of a woman's role. • Torvald believes that it is the sacred duty of a woman to be a good wife and mother. Moreover, he tells Nora that women are responsible for the morality of their children. • In essence, he sees women as both child-like, helpless creatures detached from reality and influential moral forces responsible for the purity of the world through their influence in the home.

28. Yet precisely what sort of play is it? • George Steiner claims that the play is “founded on the belief…that women can and must be raised to the dignity of man,” but Ibsen himself believed it to be more about the importance of self-liberation than the importance of specifically female liberation— • Ibsen’s contemporary, Strindberg, certainly disagreed, himself calling the play a “barbaric outrage” because of the feminism he perceived it as promoting.

29. Materialism v. People: • This is particularly important for Torvald, whose sense of manhood depends on his independence. • In fact, he was an unsuccessful barrister because he refused to take "unsavory cases". As a result, he switched to the bank, where he primarily deals with money. • In other words, money and materialism can be seen as a way to avoid the complications of personal contact.

30. Images of women: • Nora, as a symbol of woman, is called a number of names by Torvald throughout the play. These include • "little songbird", • "squirrel", "lark", • "little featherhead", • "little skylark", • "little person", and • "little woman". • Torvald is extremely consistent about using the modifier "little" before the names he calls Nora. • These are all usually followed by the possessive "my", signaling Torvald's belief that Nora is his. • Torvald's chosen names for Nora reveal that he does not see her as an equal by any means; rather, Nora is at times predictable and silly doll and at times a captivating and exotic pet or animal, all created for Torvald.

31. Light: • Light is used to illustrate Nora's personal journey. • After the turning point of Torvald's claim to want to take everything upon himself and while she is talking to Dr. Rank, the light begins to grow dark, just as Nora sinks to new levels of manipulation. • When Dr. Rank reveals his affection, Nora is jolted out of this fantasy world and into reality and insists on bringing a lamp into the room, telling the Doctor that he must feel silly saying such things with the light on. • The Dress: • Nora's ball dress symbolizes the character she plays in her marriage to Torvald. • Take note of when Nora is supposed to be wearing it and for whom.

32. The Tarantella: • A tarantella is a folk dance from southern Italy that accelerates from its already quick tempo and alternates between major and minor keys. • In its constant fluctuation, it is like Nora's character. In this Act, it serves as Nora's last chance to be Torvald's doll, to dance and amuse him. • Also, the tarantella is commonly (and falsely) known as a dance that is supposed to rid the dancer of the bite of the tarantula. • Applied to the play, its use suggests that Nora is trying to rid herself of the deadly poison of an outside force, however fruitlessly. • Rather than alleviating the bite, though, the music and her life only continue to accelerate and spin out of control.

33. Sites Cited • “A Doll’s House” Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henrik_Ibsen5 April 2007 • Gillis, G. J. and Westhagen, Jen. SparkNote on A Doll’s House. 5 Apr. 2007 http://www.sparknotes.com/lit/dollhouse/. • "Henrik Ibsen” Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia. 5 April 2007 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henrik_Ibsen • "Well-Made Play" Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia. 5 April 2007 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%22well-made_play%22 • William, Robert. “About A Doll’s House.” Grade Saver. http://www.gradesaver.com/a-dolls-house/study-guide/about/