So you want to know more about how and why I wrote “A Doll’s House”. Many people have asked me about this play and about my ideas, why I made this play the way I did. They said I was too bold, I was immoral and I was contributing to the breakdown of my society. I tell you, though, my society was already broken before I ever arrived and my play did not serve to break it, but to bring ideas that needed to be discussed out into the open. They also applauded me and welcomed me at their meetings, saying I was their hero, one of the champions of the woman problem, but I was not that either. I admit I had some influence in the development of the theater. I did not choose to follow the same lines as my predecessors and present a hero character who would champion the accepted ideas of what was right and good. But again, this was not necessarily my intention. And so, I will tell you what I was thinking, as well as I might recall, what things were like in my time and society that helped me determine the direction I would take and why I took this direction dramatically-speaking, which helped to change the course of future theatrical productions.
In writing “A Doll’s House,” I, of course, knew about the woman problem, the question of whether women should be given more rights, perhaps even rights equal to the rights of men. I knew how they felt. I saw the problems in the streets. My primary concern, though, was in describing the human condition as well as I might. The issues of women really were not much concern of mine, but they could heighten the dramatic effect of the primary questions that were then weighing on my mind. I believe it was Joan Templeton (1989) who said “Nora’s conflict represents something other than, or something more than, woman’s” (28). I like this way of putting it. I wrote the play considering the problem of becoming an individual. Everyone grows older, takes on professions, struggles through life as best they may and often find themselves disappointed with what they have. But what did it mean to be truly alive, actually fulfilling the ideas of self that one harbored – courageous, brave, steadfast, loyal, clever, etc.? This kind of questioning was not unique to me alone. In my time, life was changing rapidly in every possible way. It seemed all of Europe was engaged in busy activity, there was a sense of a perfect way of living and of life and a realization that this form of life was not realized by most, if any. It seemed we were constantly greeted with new and more amazing advances in technology and scientific thought. Philosophy advanced tremendously as we became more informed thanks to the wonders of the discoveries made.
At the same time, the society of my youth was not the society I knew as an old man. By the time I reached my advanced age, life for myself and my countrymen, regardless of which country I lived in, had become focused more upon the active life of the city than it had been in my youth, and the problems of the city had become much more defined. Our cities continued to grow, but they were ill-equipped to handle such growth. They were often dirty and grimy, full of poor people seeking aid of some sort and urchins in the streets running about. There were also plenty of respectable people as well, of all classes and education levels. But the cities also offered many more opportunities for people to work together in new and unique ways. Although Nora was seen by my critics as an unusual woman because she found a means of earning money of her own and used this money to pay back a loan she’d kept hidden from her husband for several years, she was not. This was what my audiences recognized in her. It was scandalous to bring this conversation into the open, but it was known to have occurred in at least one household within a given circle. Between everyone questioning the strictures of society I had grown to know as a child and my own questions regarding what it meant to truly become what one was meant to be, it should not be surprising that a character such as Nora should come to be.
While my primary aim was to investigate the question of what it meant to exercise one’s choice, it cannot be denied that I was probably influenced by the woman problem. It would have been hard to avoid as it was talked of loudly. Viewing the streets as I made my way through each day, it was impossible not to see the hopeless condition of some of these women or to realize that they were in such a condition not as the result of their own lack of effort or moral adherence, but instead because of strict rules of society that prevented them from gaining appropriate education, adequate employment or sufficient familial support and protection. While I desired Nora to become a type of Everyman in the exploration of the development of the individual as a real and valid human being, this type of exploration was only possible within this sort of framework. Let me try to explain in another way. Had I placed the questions I was asking within the framework of a male character, shaped and molded to a small frame by the workings of society and then constrained within this form as a caged bird, my story would not have been believed. Nor would it have served a double benefit of bringing these questions into the open while suggesting further social investigation. It was denied in my day that men of any kind were limited in what they could do, particularly as our economic base was so quickly shifting that poor men became rich and rich men became poor seemingly overnight in a variety of new fields that also seemed to spring up suddenly (Greenblatt, 2005). However, it could not be denied that women were very rigidly constrained within a certain ideal.
In deliberating these questions within my own mind and with my friends and colleagues, I determined that at least some portion of who we became, or perhaps didn’t become, was due to the effect of the various constraints our society places on us. What if we didn’t wish to become a lawyer, a doctor or a pharmacist? What if what one wanted to do with his or her life was to become a writer? More than a selfish wish or a hedonistic dream, what I propose here is that perhaps we have been given by God certain talents that we must utilize in order to bring about the changes and discussions that must take place to further society in the direction God intends. If this one, with a talent for bringing together ideas and words in some format, were intended to write about social issues and were prevented, through the constraints of society, from doing so by becoming a chemist instead, these ideas and words would never be placed before the public and God’s plan would thus be thwarted. These were the thoughts that helped to inform the production of “A Doll’s House.” It was not the question of providing equal rights for women per se, but was rather a question of what it meant for a person to find the strength within themselves to become the person they wanted to be and the opportunity to be recognized for this effort, to be permitted to exercise their abilities to explore their talents and abilities, that brought me to write this play.
Perhaps you will notice some similarities between my thoughts, above, and my life. Anyone who has read even the smallest amount of detail about me will know that I was born to a well-respected and ancient family, but that I grew up in a household without a great deal of money (Merriman, 2006). I left home early as an apprentice to a chemist despite the fact that this was not where my heart lie. I enjoyed using my brain, but only to the pursuit of the lives I saw around me rather than the mixing of chemicals to produce what we might hope were healing effects. However, I must admit, my experiences here might have had some bearing upon the way in which I approached the world, with a more analytic, somewhat objective eye toward presenting things as they really were rather than how we might like them to be. This, too, was a sign of the times. It is a set of ideas and concepts that is today referred to as Modernity. “Modernity is a project, and not only a period, and it is, or was, a project of control, the rational mastery over nature, the planning, designing and plotting which led to planomania and technocracy” (Beilharg, 2001: 6). The basic concepts of modernism were to take a hard and fast look at various social processes to determine the universal truths of existence. These could then be canonized and applied across all cultures, individuals and time periods as a means of progressing toward a more ideal civilization. We were attempting, through such approaches, to expose the real essence of the truth, which required intense and detailed investigation of what was in front of us rather than what we would choose to see.
In terms of dramatic approach, I find I usually prefer to work with the point of the story that traditionally contains the most impact. This is usually considered the climax and occurs, in most plays, much later in the story. Anyone who studies Shakespeare is familiar with the approach in which the character slowly builds up his mistakes until he is finally brought to an appropriate final moment of reckoning and then the playwright ties up any loose ends in a resolution (Lee, 1910). In presenting my story, I prefer opening the curtain upon approximately the last moment possible before the climax hits and closing it as soon as possible afterward. My plays, including “A Doll’s House”, are concerned, as I have previously discussed, with the psychological elements of the human mind and what it means to ‘become’. As a result, I place the entire structure within a limited space that also helps to illustrate the limited space allowed the main character. Nora is constrained in mind, body and soul and this is depicted explicitly within the frame of the stage as everything occurs in the one room. At the same time, by concentrating on presenting the climax and conclusion only of the story within the frame of the play, the ‘action’ can only occur within a constrained time – here the course of two days. At the same time, there is the tension of knowing that there is a tremendous story leading up to the opening of the play that is never told, nor is the intriguing story of what occurs immediately after the play and therefore, time also is not constrained. This underscores the idea that Nora also may seem constrained at first glance but is at heart, constrained only as much as she allows herself to be.
What thrilled me so much about this condensed approach to the story was the way in which it changed the focus of attention. Rather than focusing on the broad view of what brought the character to a particular end, this condensing of the time and space available within the play forces attention to shift to understanding just how the individual’s mind exerts itself in a moment of crisis. Just how a person responds to a moment of truth reveals much about the true nature of that character. Some have suggested that perhaps Nora, having had her fit of anger at Torvald and stormed out of the house in childish indignation, might have then turned around and slunk back home again, begging his forgiveness and again adopting the role of housewife and mother. And well she might. That is not how I envisioned her, though. For a person to realize their own internal value, to have established a sense of worth within themselves such as Nora has, to then be told these efforts meant nothing, to lose that value, is a difficult thing. I provided Nora with the opportunity to make the decision for herself. She could have kept Torvald from opening the envelope that revealed her secret, but she did not. She could have accepted Torvald’s reaction and resumed her ‘proper’ position, but again she did not.
I did attempt to provide hints within the play that Nora was not intended to be the kind of character that simply threw a childish tantrum and will soon repent after the curtain falls. For example, the name of the play and numerous hints within it suggested that what was contained within was a passing trifle, a child’s plaything that couldn’t possibly last. The title makes direct reference to the doll’s house and the way Torvald speaks to his wife is also very much like a child speaking to a favorite toy. Nora brings home with her in the first act a small doll and her bedstead. In itself, the presence of this toy should remind the audience of the nature of the room they are viewing and the people who act within it. Nora then provides the key link when she tells Torvald, “they [the doll and bed] are very plain, but anyway she will soon break them in pieces” (Act 1). Nora herself breaks the house in pieces when she leaves, something that cannot be undone or repaired and is, perhaps, not something worth repairing as it prevents each of the characters within it from becoming fully as human as they might.
They say that this approach has founded a new approach to theater, bringing the traditional art form into the modern age. I will admit that I consciously stripped the play down to its constituent elements, focusing on what was real and relevant and focusing upon the development of the soul as it is defined in a moment of crisis. It must also be acknowledged that prior to my plays, there were not many within the theater world that were directly challenging the issues of the day, at least not in such a direct way. From what I understand, this has been a tradition in theater since my time. I must say it is gratifying to realize that I was able to have some effect, presumably to the good, in bringing about necessary discussion and investigation into long-standing assumptions and beliefs and present day social issues.
Works Cited
Beilharz, Peter. The Bauman Reader. Oxford: Blackwell Publishers, 2001.
Greenblatt, Stephen (Ed.). “Introduction: The Victorian Age.” The Norton Anthology of English Literature. Vol. 8. New York: W.W. Norton, 2005.
Ibsen, Henrik. “A Doll’s House.” Four Major Plays: A Doll’s House, Ghosts, Hedda Gabler, The Master Builder. James McFarlane (Trans.). Oxford University Press, 1998.
Lee, Jennette. “Relation of Symbol to Plot in Ibsen’s Plays.” The Ibsen Secret: A Key to the Prose of Drama of Henrik Ibsen. New York: G.P. Putnam’s Sons, 1910: 86-113.
Merriman, C.D. “Henrik Ibsen.” Online Literature. Jalic, 2006. Web.
Templeton, Joan. “The Doll House Backlash: Criticism, Feminism, and Ibsen.” PMLA. Vol. 104, N. 1, (January 1989): 28-40.