Ibsen's A Doll's House

A Study Guide

Stephen Unwin

• Publisher: Nick Hern Books
• Year: 2019
• Print ISBN: 9781854598721
• eBook ISBN: 9781788502023
• Topic: Media & Performing Arts
• Subtopic: European Literary Criticism

The Nick Hern Books Page to Stage series – highly accessible guides to the world's best-known plays, written by established theatre professionals to show how the plays come to life on the stage.

Director Stephen Unwin takes you scene by scene through the action of Ibsen's play A Doll's House, analysing moment by moment what is actually said and done, and how the staging of these moments affects our understanding of them.

Also included in this volume: a concise introduction to Ibsen and the historical background of the play; a discussion of the characters and setting; and an exploration of the possibilities for staging, lighting, costumes, props and furniture, and the sound and music.

Ideal for anyone studying, teaching or performing A Doll's House, as well as anyone interested in how the play works on stage.

The Action

When thinking about how a play might look on stage, unfolding in three-dimensional space, it’s essential that we read the text in the closest possible detail, alert to every clue about staging, character and dramatic action. And when a play is written by a dramatist with such meticulous theatrical imagination as Ibsen, it’s doubly important that all our conclusions should emerge from such a study. And since Ibsen is the master dramatist of the repressed and the hidden, it’s essential that we read the play not just for what’s said, but for what’s left unsaid, or only suggested obliquely.

This reading needs to be comprehensive and thorough, and we must look at the whole play, not just highlights. A common mistake is to focus on the most obviously dramatic moments – the tarantella, for example, or Nora’s final departure – and neglect the ‘less important’ sections. If we do this, the production will lack context or three-dimensionality; worse still, the point of the play will be lost.

This chapter divides the three acts of the play into much shorter sections, usually marked by the arrival of a new character, but sometimes by a dramatic change of pace or atmosphere. These sections are designated merely for convenience, though they might coincide with the way the play is divided into ‘units’ for the purposes of rehearsal.

I’ve provided a detailed synopsis in roman type and a commentary beneath in italics.

Act One

Act One takes place on Christmas Eve.

1.

A bell rings in the hall, and we hear the front door being opened. Nora Helmer returns home from shopping: ‘She is happy, humming a tune’ and carries a number of parcels. In the doorway stands a Porter, ‘carrying a Christmas tree and a basket’, which he gives to Helene, the chambermaid. Nora tells her to hide the tree so that the children don’t see it until it’s ‘trimmed’.¹⁶ She gives the Porter a tip and he leaves. She closes the door, laughs to herself, takes two macaroons from a little bag and eats them, then listens carefully at the door of her husband’s study.

This brief section immediately introduces us to several aspects of Nora’s personality: her secretiveness, her financial generosity – at first sight, extravagance – and her affection for her children. It also sets up the contradiction between her happy, playful independence and the anxiety she feels about her husband.

The flat has an outer door that leads onto the shared staircase, but the room in which the action of the play takes place has a door of its own. In other words, the door into the room isn’t the front door into the apartment. It’s possible that when both are open we can see a flash of daylight beyond, in the stairwell.

2.

Having established that Torvald is at home, Nora resumes her humming and looks at her parcels. Torvald hears her and calls out through the study door, wondering when his ‘little squirrelkin’ came home. She asks him to come and see what she’s bought. After a pause, he emerges, and asks if ‘my little feather-brain has been spending all my money again?’ She protests that this is the first Christmas they haven’t needed to ‘scrimp and save’, adding that they could borrow money to tide them over until his first pay packet. He’s appalled and lectures her on the perils of debt. When she becomes sulky, he gives her some housekeeping money, which she quickly pockets. She also shows him the children’s Christmas presents, and hints at a surprise for him. But when she asks for some pocket money for herself, he dismisses her, saying that she’d only spend it on the housekeeping. They both agree that things will be better, now that the hard times are finally over.

In this section, we get our first glimpse of the play’s central relationship. As we’ re to discover, Nora has been using the housekeeping money to pay off the secret loan from Krogstad, as well as providing for all the family, and has even managed to persuade Torvald into thinking that she’s extravagant. Her pretend sulkiness and little-girl flirtatiousness are all part of an elaborate act that she puts on to wheedle more money out of him, while his affectionate but patronising replies demonstrate his blindness to what’s really going on. He finds her childishness erotic, and the more she protests the more interested he becomes. Of course, all this must be played subliminally: the surface is of an entirely ‘normal’ nineteenth-century bourgeois marriage. It’s the tiny hints of what’s lurking beneath – the secrets – which provide the dramatic tension.

3.

We hear the front doorbell ringing in the hall and the maid announces the arrival of ‘a lady, a stranger’. She also tells Torvald that ‘the doctor’ (Rank) has gone straight through to his study. As Torvald leaves Nora to join Rank, Mrs Linde enters, in ‘travelling clothes . . . timid and ill-at-ease’. At first, Nora doesn’t recognise her, but suddenly realises that she’s her old school friend, Kristine Linde. When Mrs Linde points out that they haven’t seen each other for nine or ten years, Nora tells her how happy she’s been in that time. Mrs Linde has just arrived in town; Nora invites her to warm herself by the stove. She tells her that she looks paler and thinner, and suddenly remembers that Mrs Linde has lost her husband. Mrs Linde explains that he left her too little to live on and that she’s had to work since his death. Tactlessly, Nora speaks of her own good fortune – three healthy children and a husband who has just got a well-paid job at the bank – but tells her that, when they were first married, Torvald was very ill, so they spent a year in Italy, which saved his life. She adds that it ‘cost a fortune’, but implies that her father left them the money in his will. Suddenly, realising that she’s been talking only about herself, Nora asks Mrs Linde whether it’s true that she didn’t love her husband. Mrs Linde replies that she had no choice but to stay with him and that after his death his business collapsed entirely; since then she’s been making her own way (‘it’s been endless hard work’, she says, ‘these last three years’). When Nora tactlessly advises her to take a holiday, she snaps: ‘I’ve no daddy to pay the bills’.

The maid’s announcement that Dr Rank has gone into Torvald’s study (without anybody seeing him) indicates that it has two entrances: one from the living room and another from the hall. When Torvald goes to join Rank, he should leave through the door from the living room into the study.

Nora’s failure to recognise Mrs Linde hints at her innate sense of superiority; but it also suggests that Mrs Linde has aged markedly. At first sight she’s the polar opposite of Nora: an independent-minded woman who has had to work hard to look after her sick mother and young brothers and who now finds herself all alone in the world. But she reveals a deeper truth when she tells Nora that she feels ‘empty’, with ‘no one left to live for’. When later we see the nature of her relationship with Krogstad, we come to understand more clearly what this means.

Mrs Linde’s arrival is an important development in the unfolding drama. Her presence allows Nora to speak frankly about what she’s been doing. Furthermore, her underestimation of Nora’s situation triggers Nora into revealing more than she might do otherwise. It’s important to note, however, that Nora doesn’t reveal everything, including who lent her the money.

4.

Nora assures Mrs Linde that Torvald will help her, but when she patronises Nora for being a ‘babe in arms’, Nora says that she’s not talked of her ‘real problems’. So she leads her over to the sofa and says, ‘The person who saved Torvald’s life – it was me’, explaining that she borrowed the money (‘Four thousand, eight hundred kroner’) herself, even though, as she says, ‘a wife can’t borrow without her husband’s permission’. She also says that she hid from Torvald the seriousness of his condition, and persuaded him to take the break for her benefit. Mrs Linde wants to know if she’ll ever tell him the truth, and Nora replies, ‘with a light smile’: ‘One day. Perhaps. When I’m not quite such a pretty little thing.’ She also explains how she’s paying off the debt – by taking money out of the housekeeping, but also by taking on copying work – and says that she used to dream about a rich old man who would die and leave all his money to her. ‘Now’, she says, ‘I’m free of it. I can play with the children . . . make the house pretty, make everything the way Torvald likes it. It’ll soon be spring, the wide blue sky.’

Note the change in atmosphere when the two women move from the stool and the rocking chair by the stove (good for calm contemplation and memory) to the more comfortable sofa (good for more active and passionate discussion). Once moved, Nora is careful not to tell the whole sordid truth, that she borrowed the cash from a common moneylender (she doesn’t know about Mrs Linde’s involvement with Krogstad); instead she retreats into pleasure at her own cleverness. Her dream of a wealthy admirer makes Mrs Linde suspicious, but Nora’s last exclamation gets to the heart of the relief she feels.

5.

The doorbell rings, and Mrs Linde decides that she should leave. Nora, however, tells her to stay. The maid announces that there’s ‘a gentleman here to see the master’. When Nora asks who it is, Krogstad appears at the door, and Nora surreptitiously ushers him into Torvald’s study, through the hall door. Mrs Linde asks Nora about Krogstad and shows that she knows a surprising amount about him. But Nora doesn’t want to talk about Krogstad and is pleased when Rank enters from the study.

This brief appearance of Krogstad raises the dramatic temperature. Not only is Nora alarmed by his arrival (what’s he going to say to her husband?), but Mrs Linde, who is still in love with him, is disturbed to see him there too. Neither woman wants to share her secret with the other, and the audience is likewise in the dark. However, their reactions to his appearance should alert the audience to the fact that things are more complicated than they seem, without giving away exactly what those complications might be. It’s important for the scene that Mrs Linde is positioned in such a way that Krogstad doesn’t notice her when he comes in, but that she can see him, or at least hear his voice.

6.

Rank enters, sees Mrs Linde and feels that he shouldn’t stay. Nora introduces them to each other: he says that he noticed her on the stairs earlier. Mrs Linde explains that she finds stairs difficult, and he presumes that she must be unwell; she says, however, that she’s exhausted and has come to town to look for work: ‘One has to live’, she tells them ruefully. Rank agrees, saying that his patients all feel the same, including those who are ‘morally sick’, such as Krogstad. He speaks of how ‘some people go round sniffing out weakness’ and back the weak person into ‘a profitable corner’. Mrs Linde is shocked by his cynicism, but Nora is excited by the prospect of Torvald’s newly found power as bank manager. She tells Rank there is one thing she’d like to say ‘straight out’ to her husband, but that it’s ‘too terrible’. Hearing that Torvald is about to enter the room, Rank encourages her to speak, but she just hides the bag of macaroons she has been eating.

In this section we see Rank’s curious combination of charm, cynicism and despair. Rank is, of course, the rich, dying man that Nora mentioned to Mrs Linde, as Mrs Linde realises. This is borne out by what happens: we see the familiarity of his relationship with Nora, which is mostly avuncular, but also flirtatious. His frankness about the proximity of death (his own included) and his almost jovial acceptance of the folly of trying to avoid it, give Nora a powerful sensation of the transience of all things – and this encourages her recklessness. His attempts to persuade her into talking to Torvald are more provocative than serious, but his condemnation of Krogstad has real force behind it – disturbing to both Nora and, more especially, Mrs Linde.

7.

Torvald comes out of his study, with his coat and hat, ready to go out, and Nora runs to him, keen to hear whether he’s got rid of Krogstad. She introduces Mrs Linde as a ‘genius at bookkeeping’, and asks him to find her a job at the bank. He says that she ‘could hardly have come at a better time’ and he may well have something for her. However, he has to go to the bank, and Rank says that he’ll join him. Mrs Linde says that she’s going too, to find a room. As they leave, children’s voices can be heard coming up the stairs: Torvald says, ‘This’ll soon be no place to be, except for mothers.’

Torvald’s second entrance into the play should show another side of his character: a man with business affairs to get on with. He has been unyielding with Krogstad in his study and has sacked him (as we’ll soon see), but is now magnanimous with Mrs Linde – whom he takes kindly to almost immediately. His exit with Rank and Mrs Linde should be full of businesslike bustle: picking up hats, coats and a briefcase, cracking cheerful jokes, and so on. It’s made clear that the man’s world lies outside and that the home is a sacred preserve for mothers and children. Mrs Linde – childless, hardworking, old before her time and alone – is accepted by the men, but only as an unthreatening junior.

8.

The three children, Ivar, Emmy and Bob, come running into the apartment with their nanny, Anne-Marie, and tell their mother what they have been up to outdoors, in the snow. Thrilled to see them with their rosy cheeks, Nora picks up her youngest and dances with him. When Anne-Marie starts to take their coats off, Nora intervenes and tells her to help herself to some coffee: she’ll look after the children herself. Delighted to see their mother, the children all chatter excitedly, and she starts to play a game of hide-and-seek with them. When they insist that she should hide first, she takes refuge under the table; when they eventually discover her, they all shriek with delight.

This short scene is essential to the balance of the play. It demonstrates the depth of Nora’s love for her children and the pleasure she takes in them. It also shows that she can be unconventional: taking over from the nanny, running around like a child and joining in the shrieking and giggling, playing hide-and-seek and hiding under a table herself. Of course, this is all quite natural in a modern family, but in a middle class nineteenth-century woman such behaviour would suggest a real independence of spirit; childish as it may be, this hints at the greater unconventionality that she demonstrates so conclusively later on. It also suggests a certain desperation, as if Nora foresees the possibility of losing her children.

Ibsen doesn’t actually write the children’s lines, and in a production these should be improvised. Of course, he asks for such a hubbub of laughing, giggling and general excitement that it should be difficult to catch everything they say.

9.

In the meantime, Krogstad has knocked at the hall door and quickly appears at the half-opened door. Nora is shocked to see him again and tells him that her husband is out. But he wants to talk to her, and so Nora ‘gently’ sends the children off to Anne-Marie, reassuring them that ‘the man won’t hurt Mummy’. She closes the door behind them and asks Krogstad what he wants, adding that ‘It’s not the first of the month’ (when her payments are due). He says that he’s just seen Torvald in the street with Mrs Linde – who, he says, was once a ‘friend’ of his – and wants to know if Mrs Linde has been given a job in the bank. When Nora confirms that she has (‘One isn’t without influence’, she says), Krogstad tells her bluntly that he’s been sacked and asks her to put this influence of hers to work for him, to help him keep his ‘position of dependence in the bank’. He reminds her that a long time ago he ‘slipped up’, but he’s now keen to become ‘respectable again’: the job at the bank was the first step, he says, but now Torvald is kicking him down ‘into the mud again’. She’s shocked to realise that Krogstad might tell her husband the truth about what she’s been up to, and snaps at him: ‘Do it, do it, and see where it gets you . . . You’ll never get your job back.’ Krogstad, however, reminds her of the facts: he lent her money on the condition that her father would guarantee the repayments. He points out that it appears her father signed the contract three days after he died – in other words, she must have forged the signature. When Krogstad speaks of the seriousness of what she’s done and says that he’ll show the document to the court, she’s scornful:

Nonsense. A daughter can’t save her dying father from care and worry? A wife can’t help her sick husband? I kno...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title page
• Contents
• The Page to Stage Series
• From Page to Stage
• Henrik Ibsen
• Writing A Doll’s House
• Backstory
• The Action
• Characters
• Setting
• Staging
• Lighting
• Costumes
• Props and Furniture
• Sound and Music
• Endnotes
• About the Author
• Copyright and Performing Rights Information