Historical Context

A Doll's House was published in Norway in 1879. The first stage production
was in Stockholm, in 1880. The play caused an immediate sensation, sparked
debate and controversy, and brought Ibsen international fame. It was highly
provoking: People tended to respond strongly to it, whether in praise or
censure. All around the world, Nora's final door-slam made conservatives
rage and liberals cheer, gave anti-feminists reason to fear and feminists
reason to hope. The play has less shock-value today, but in the latenineteenth century, performing it was often, as one critic puts it, "a
revolutionary action, a daring defiance of the cultural norms of the time."

What were these cultural norms? Without simplifying too much, we could say
that they were the ideals and values represented by Torvald Helmer and his
doll-wife Nora, before her great change. These were the ideals that defined
what is commonly termed "bourgeois respectability": financial success,
upward social mobility, freedom from financial debt and moral guilt (or at
least the appearance thereof), and a stable, secure family organized along
traditional patriarchal lines. The patriarchal ideal was supported and
reinforced by a social structure wherein women had little overt political or
economic power, wherein they were economically, socially, and
psychologically dependent on men and especially on the institutions of
marriage and motherhood. The ideal of bourgeois respectability prevailed in
the nineteenth century, but it never went unchallenged, and by the time
Ibsen wrote his own challenge to it, at the end of the century, a new era of
crisis and uncertainty regarding all things conventional had already begun.
The position of women was an especially volatile issue because the
patriarchal ideology underlay the entire social, political, and economic
structure. If women were to have autonomy, then the whole structure of
society would have to be reimaginedthe world would have to be remade. It
was an apocalyptic idea that thrilled many intellectuals but terrified the ruling
and middle classes, so that each move in the direction of autonomy
women's suffrage, revised marriage laws, advances in women's education
felt like the end of the world. The last decades of the nineteenth century had
already begun to feel like the end of the world, anyway. The Western world
was about to enter a period of unprecedented change-revolutions social,
political, economic, cultural, and scientific. No one knew exactly what was
coming, but a great many looked toward it with a mixture of hope and dread.
When Nora slams the door of her doll's-house, shutting herself out of the only
world she has known and stepping into a future that is unknown and
therefore both promising and threatening, the sound resonates with the
apocalyptic tremors of Ibsen's time.

Cultural Context

The background of this play is urban middle class society in the nineteenth
century. In the figure of Helmer we see the embodiment of patriarchy who
manages to dominate his wife and assert his authority consistently. Money
plays an important part in this social world and it is a means through which
Helmer manages to sustain his power over his wife and keep her subservient
to him.

Genre

This play is a drama of social realism in three acts