Henrik Johan Ibsen (1828-1906) was a great and
prominent playwright of 20th century. His plays deal realistically
with psychological and social problems. His themes are mainly concerned with
the topics like women’s position in marriage and society, hypocrisy in women,
relationship between truth and justice, freedom and duty etc.
‘A Doll’s House’ is a protest against fatally
false view of women that turns marriage into a bargain between a beautiful
slave and a kind slave owner. Ibsen has delineated the character of Nora in
order to justify his point of view. Through a story of three days in which the
action passes through, Nora develops from a child to woman and the writer gets
a chance to expose a number of realities pertaining to married life and the
role of woman as a better half in the drama of so called happy married life.
In ‘A Doll’s House’, Nora’s husband’s health
suffers badly and she needs money to get her husband well soon. Her husband
(Torvald) is a very honest person and abhors malpractices. But the irony of
fate is that his wife (Nora) forges her rich father’s fake signatures to obtain
money for the treatment of her ailing husband. Ultimately, the disclosure of
her guilt, the gravity of which she was not conscious of and its consequences
she was ignorant of, brings her face to face with the grim realities of life
which the writer targets at. Through the character of his heroine, Ibsen (the
writer) has tried to illustrate some fundamental problems of society and the
share of women in the creation of such issues.
During the first act, Nora appears to be a
very submissive, selfish and foolish woman but at the same time we find that
this is not her real disposition. When she asks Torvald for more money despite
having on a spending spree, she appears selfish and grasping. Nora says
speaking quickly;
“You might give me money, Torvald. Only just as much as you can afford; and then one of these days I will buy something with it.”
But soon we discover through her conversation
with Mrs. Linde that she is not squanding money to satisfy her own desires but
using it to pay off the loan she took out in order to save her husband’s life.
In doing so she was putting her own desires off having new things so that her
husband and children could have all they needed. Her arrangement of loan, trip
to Italy and her careful management of money and her secret – all these
collaboratively endow an astonishing strength to her character. But Nora does not
dare to acknowledge her own strength because the society in general and her
beloved Torvald in special would not comfortably accept such strength in a
woman. Nora is not an object ‘a doll’ but she was dealt with like the one
throughout her life.
Ibsen does not absolve Nora from the duties of
motherhood. Rather he shows that to become a successful mother, a woman like
Nora should follow her heart and learn what it is like to be an individual
instead of a doll or toy. Nora hides the fatal truth that might bring havoc in
their lives just because she holds a greater character and this becomes quite
transparent and obvious through her discussion with Mrs. Linde.
Mrs. Linde: “And since then have you never told your secret to your husband?”
Nora: “Good Heavens, no! How could you think so? A man who has such strong opinions about these things! And besides, how painful and humiliating it would be for Torvald, with his manly independence, to know that he owed me anything! It would upset our mutual relations; our beautiful happy home would no longer be what it is now.”
Nora knew very well that what could be the
consequences if Torvald comes to know that Nora has committed a blunder which
he will never spare and their matrimonial and conjugal life will lose
happiness.
To conclude, we may say that Ibsen has
succeeded in producing the atmosphere of horror, sympathetic feelings and a
dreaded climax. He was not altogether a feminist or proponent of women’s
emancipation.
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