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Dollshouse + Rossetti Notes
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A01: A Doll’s House is replete with hundreds of such lexemes and phrases where Nora istreated as a possession by Torvald Helmer.
- Ros – 1830 -1894. ADH - 1879
- A Doll's House explores the nature of women within society and its rules, but as Ibsen
insisted, it is not a play about the rights of women. Nora's story is part of a searching
exploration of the female at the turn of the century. Nora, at the beginning, is infantilised
and dependent; we see the shackles of the patriarchy quite clearly. At the time of the play,
Freud was asking "What do women want?" and finding no answer. "The ideal wife is one
who does everything that her ideal husband likes and nothing else," wrote George Bernard
Shaw, in The Quintessence of Ibsenism, in a chapter entitled "The Womanly Woman", at the
time the play was written. – Byatt 2009
- Both Nora and the speakers of Christina Rossetti at points are starkly subordinated
and are thus alienated from those around them. The weary persona in From The
Antique claims that “doubly blank is a woman’s lot”, starkly emphasising the
bleakness and inferiority suffered by females. Similarly Nora is isolated from the
offset of A Doll’s House; we picture her as a silly child through the infantilised
nicknames used to dictate her movements. “Skylark” and “squirrel” not only infer at
her skittish nature but suggest in a way that she is less than human, lower than her
husband, an opinion echoed by Byatt who states that Nora is “infantilised and
dependant”. This alienation links strongly to the time in which both authors were
writing, where women were subjugated to gender codes which alienated them
chiefly from the spheres of education and business. Indeed, women were not able to
own property of their own accord, vote or attend university, a clear indicator of the
distance between men and women at the time.
- Ibsen uses his Dolls House to expose the reality of women’s lives in the 19th century
in Europe and the effect of the patriarchal society on women, and thus the struggle of
, women to be themselves; ordained to follow the societal perception of whom they
should be.
- The work of Ibsen encapsulates the intense feeling of entrapment that women felt due to
their sexuality. After dancing the provocative tarantella, Nora is held by Torvold’s
captivation; he is beguiled by her, declaring she is a “fascinating, charming little darling”,
whilst moving closer to her and “fixing his gaze upon her”. Ibsen’s protagonist here suffers
for displaying elements of her sexuality, reflecting the context of the Victorian era whereby
women were out casted and isolated for sexual exploration. This idea was epitomised in the
artwork of August Egg; his popular ‘Past and Present’ series depicted that the Victorian
female who commits adultery is cast down below the rest of humanity; she suffers. A similar
sentiment is echoed in the work of Rossetti, with the Goblin men “bounding and
surrounding” Laura in a vicious manner when she dares to sensually enjoy their forbidden
fruit. Wilson argues that “Rossetti hinders the feminist cause”, which is given weight with
the fact that Lizzie and Laura endure prolonged suffering for indulging in passions in Goblin
Market. Rossetti herself worked at a centre for fallen women in Highgate, initially suggestive
that she was sympathetic to the plight of females who did not conform. However the fact
these women were redeemed only within a church setting does show the limitations of their
“second chance”.
- The work of Ibsen encapsulates the intense emotion of freedom which can only be truly
realised through self-actualisation. At the play’s denouement Nora declares to her husband,
and previous idol, that she has “other duties just as sacred” as being a mother, inferring that
her duty to herself is now her source of devotion and honour. Ibsen’s protagonist here
starkly resists the patriarchal expectations dictating that a wife should be subservient to her
husband and children, an idea epitomised in the artwork of August Egg; his popular ‘Past and
Present’ series depicted that the Victorian female who defies marital gender roles is
ultimately outcasted and alone. By the end of the play, Nora’s coquettish, childlike
demeanour of the beginning, the figure who bends to the will of her husband, “as you
please, Torvold”, has been replaced. The ‘squirrel’ casts off the ties of her marriage and finds
a new purpose through the will of her own self; the boundaries of the doll’s house are
breached and transcended, and the freedom of the outside reached, because of her
adamance that she has ‘duties to herself’ . In contrast to this, the freedom experienced
through Rossetti’s speakers is derived from the glory and grandeur of God himself. This is
seen through Up-Hill where God provides salvation for the speaker who can feel at ease,
with God ensuring that there are ‘beds for all who come.’ In A Birthday, the poem is littered
with natural imagery intertwined with a devotion to God where the speaker feels most
liberated, detailing how her‘ heart is like a singing bird’ and how it has become ‘the birthday
of (her) life’ free from societal expectations, detailing the ‘vibrant voice’ given to the female
speaker (Mold).
- Foremostly, the deceit of the Victorian marriage is revealed. Ibsen and Rossetti’s
work similarly exposes the deception inherent to the artificial, vacuous Victorian
marriage, otherwise hidden behind the veneer of domestic serenity and bliss.
Considering the arc of the Helmer household throughout Ibsen’s “A Doll’s House”, it
is clear to see that Ibsen saw marriage as a deceptive institution, where Torvald
would rather “live...as brother and sister” than admit their marriage had failed. Further
still, his entitled “Am I not your husband?” in response to Nora’s choice not to have
, sex reveals the truth of sexual abuse that is hidden within the Helmer’s picturesque
marriage. In fact, it was not until 1991 that marital rape was officially criminalised
within England, revealing the more sinister motivations behind one’s commitment to
the marital institution.
- Regenerative change of Nora blossoms by the end of Ibsen’s A Doll’s House. With
Nora’s acknowledgement that she has just been Torvald’s ‘doll’; there begins to
emerge a nascent sense of hope.
- The deification of Torvald at the play’s opening, evident through his omnipresence and
through the control he exerts over his “squirrel”, is vanquished. Evocative of the defiant
speaker in Rossetti’s Maude Clare, Nora triumphantly declares that “first and foremost” she
has a “duty to herself”, a realisation which provokes a newfound consciousness from within
her, and ultimately allows her to transcend the boundaries of the doll’s house.
- At a time when the conservative Scandinavian bourgeois society of the
nineteenth century witnessed suppression of women at the hands of their male
counterpart, the female protagonist of A Doll's House, Nora, the doll of the title
of the play, takes decisions for herself.
- Nora, the representative character of the mid nineteenth century Norway society, is a
dutiful lady who knows her role well and is happily married to her husband, Torvald,
and meticulously performs her duty as a mother too without any reproach, grumble or
whine. Like the other women of the contemporary age, she is also treated like a doll
who can be taken to big society parties like a status symbol but is an idol of silence
with no voice of her own like a dumb cattle. She is to look after the kitchen, the home
and the hearth but is not considered to be capable of making decisions for the family
as women back then were not given proper education and is not deemed fit to play
any role outside the four walls of their house which is their sole premises.
- A Doll’s House utilizes the traditional metaphor of role-playing or masking to
represent a character’s repressed identity. A woman finds it impossible to be herself
in late nineteenth-century bourgeois society because of the dominance of man-made
laws and conventions.
- At the very heart of A Doll's House is a drama of human metamorphosis. Ibsen was
fascinated by the way that human beings are capable of radical change, and
he recognised that such transformations are the fundamental precondition for
what he called self realisation.
- Metamorphosis: A Doll’s House is also a parable of rebirth – most notably Nora, who
is reborn into a new life – and reflects the Christian story that is enacted in the three
days over Christmas during which the play is set. Although, like all of Ibsen, ‘A Doll’s
House’ is written from a distinctly atheistic perspective, the biblical resonance is
deliberate and should create a kind of shadow play behind the realistic characters
that populate Torvald and Nora’s apartment. Thus A Doll’s House is a secular
version of the Christmas story, and it’s possible this is where the deepest meaning of
where Ibsen’s extraordinary masterpiece can be found – or at least looked for.
(Unwin p18)
- Nora’s ‘Religion of Torvald’ is embedded and intertwined in the play at the start- she
breaks away from the shackles of Torvald in her rejection of her God- Torvald and
the male patriarch. CRITIC: Lavender 2008: “Nora has ensconced Torvald as her
god”. Nora’s expectation for Torvald, albeit problematic, demonstrates an authentic
longing for sacrificial love. Therefore her realisation that their love is nothing but- with
Torvald saying he will never ‘sacrifice’ his ‘honour’ (although she wanted the ‘miracle’
she hoped he would perform), she is exposed to the idea that it is only her that loves
Torvald (even saves his life, takes a rejuvenating trip to Italy) and submits herself to
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