A Doll's House

The play was controversial when first published, as it is sharply critical of 19th century marriage
norms. Michael Meyer argues that the play's theme is not women's rights, but rather "the need of
every individual to find out the kind of person he or she really is and to strive to become that person.

Act one
A Doll's House opens as Nora Helmer returns from Christmas shopping. Her husband Torvald
comes out of his study to banter with her. They discuss how their finances will improve now
that Torvald has a new job as the vice president of the bank. Torvald expresses his horror of
debt. Nora behaves childishly and he enjoys treating her like a child to be instructed and
indulged.

Soon an old friend of Nora's, Christine Linde, arrives. She is a childless widow who is moving
back to the city. Her husband left her no money, so she has tried different kinds of work, and
now hopes to find some work that is not too strenuous. Nora confides to Christine that she
once secretly borrowed money from a disgraced lawyer, Nils Krogstad, to save Torvald's life
when he was very ill, but she has not told him in order to protect his pride. She told everyone
that the money came from her father, who died at about the same time. She has been
repaying the debt from her housekeeping budget, and also from some work she got copying
papers by hand, which she did secretly in her room, and took pride in her ability to earn
money "as if she were a man." Torvald's new job promises to finally liberate her from this
debt.

Nora asks Torvald to give Christine a position as a secretary in the bank, and he agrees, as she
has experience in bookkeeping. They leave the house together.

Krogstad arrives and tells Nora that he is worried he will be fired. He asks her to help him
keep his job and says that he will fight desperately to keep it. Nora is reluctant to commit to
helping him, so Krogstad reveals that he knows she committed forgery on the bond she
signed for her loan from him. As a woman, she needed an adult male co-signer, so she said
she would have her father do so. However the signature is dated three days after his death,
which suggests that it is a forgery. Nora admits that she did forge the signature, so as to spare
her dying father further worry about her (she was pregnant, poor, and had a seriously ill
husband). Krogstad explains that the forgery betrayed his trust and is also a serious crime. If
he told others about it, her reputation would be ruined, as was his after a similar
"indiscretion," even though he was never prosecuted. He implies that what he did was in
order to provide for his sick wife, who later died.

Act two

Christine arrives to help Nora repair a dress for a costume party she and Torvald are going to
the next day. Then Torvald comes home from the bank and Nora pleads with him to reinstate
Krogstad at the bank. She claims she is worried that Krogstad will publish libelous articles
about Torvald and ruin his career. Torvald dismisses her fears and explains that although
Krogstad is a good worker and seems to have turned his life around, he insists on firing him
because Krogstad is not deferential enough to him in front of other bank personnel. Torvald
goes into his study to do some work.

Next Dr. Rank, a family friend, arrives. Nora talks about asking him for a favor. Then he
reveals that he has entered the terminal stage of tuberculosis of the spine (a contemporary
euphemism for congenital syphilis),[8] and that he has always been secretly in love with her.
Nora tries to deny the first revelation and make light of it, but she is more disturbed by the
second. She tries clumsily to tell him that she is not in love with him, but loves him dearly as a
friend.

Desperate after being fired by Torvald, Krogstad arrives at the house. Nora gets Dr. Rank to
go in to Torvald's study, so he does not see Krogstad. When Krogstad comes in he declares he
no longer cares about the remaining balance of Nora's loan, but that he will preserve the
associated bond in order to blackmail Torvald into not only keeping him employed, but giving
him a promotion. Nora explains that she has done her best to persuade her husband, but he
refuses to change his mind. Krogstad informs Nora that he has written a letter detailing her
crime (forging her father's signature of surety on the bond) and puts it in Torvald's mailbox,
which is locked. sectarian

Nora tells Christine of her predicament. Christine says that she and Krogstad were in love
before she married, and promises that she will try to convince him to relent.

Torvald comes in and tries to check his mail, but Nora distracts him by begging him to help
her with the dance she has been rehearsing for the costume party, as she is so anxious about
performing. She dances so badly and acts so worried that Torvald agrees to spend the whole
evening coaching her. When the others go in to dinner, Nora stays behind for a few minutes
and contemplates suicide to save her husband from the shame of the revelation of her crime,
and more importantly to pre-empt any gallant gesture on his part to save her reputation.

Act three

Christine tells Krogstad that she only married her husband because she had no other means
to support her sick mother and young siblings, and that she has returned to offer him her love
again. She believes that he would not have stooped to unethical behavior if he had not been
devastated by her abandonment and in dire financial straits. Krogstad is moved and offers to
take back his letter to Torvald. However, Christine decides that Torvald should know the truth
for the sake of his and Nora's marriage.

After literally dragging Nora home from the party, Torvald goes to check his mail, but is
interrupted by Dr. Rank, who has followed them. Dr. Rank chats for a while so as to convey
obliquely to Nora that this is a final goodbye, as he has determined that his death is near, but
in general terms so that Torvald does not suspect what he is referring to. Dr. Rank leaves, and
Torvald retrieves his letters. As he reads them Nora steels herself to take her life. Torvald
confronts her with Krogstad's letter. Enraged, he declares that he is now completely in
Krogstad's powerhe must yield to Krogstad's demands and keep quiet about the whole
affair. He berates Nora, calling her a dishonest and immoral woman and telling her she is
unfit to raise their children. He says that from now on their marriage will be only a matter of
appearances.

A maid enters, delivering a letter to Nora. Krogstad has returned the incriminating papers,
saying that he regrets his actions. Torvald exults that he is saved as he burns the papers. He
takes back his harsh words to his wife and tells her that he forgives her. Nora realizes that her
husband is not the strong and gallant man she thought he was, and that he truly loves himself
more than he does her.

Torvald explains that when a man has forgiven his wife it makes him love her all the more
since it reminds him that she is totally dependent on him, like a child. He dismisses Nora's
agonized choice made against her conscience for the sake of his health and her years of secret
efforts to free them from the ensuing obligations and danger of loss of reputation, while
preserving his peace of mind, as a mere mistake that she made owing to her foolishness, one
of her most endearing feminine traits.

Nora tells Torvald that she is leaving him to live alone so she can find out who she is and what
she believes and decide what to do with her life. She says she has been treated like a doll to
play with, first by her father and then by him. Concerned for the family reputation, Torvald
insists that she fulfill her duty as a wife and mother, but Nora says that her first duties are to
herself, and she cannot be a good mother or wife without learning to be more than a
plaything. She reveals that she had expected that he would want to sacrifice his reputation
for hers, and that she had planned to kill herself to prevent him from doing so. She now
realizes that Torvald is not at all the kind of person she had believed him to be, and that their
marriage has been based on mutual fantasies and misunderstanding.

Torvald is unable to comprehend Nora's point of view, since it contradicts all that he had
been taught about the female mind throughout his life. Furthermore, he is so narcissistic that
it would be impossible for him to bear to understand how he appears to her, as selfish,
hypocritical and more concerned with public reputation than with actual morality. Nora
leaves her keys and wedding ring and as Torvald breaks down and begins to cry, baffled by
what has happened, Nora leaves the house, slamming the door behind herself.

Real-life basis

A Doll's House was based on the life of Laura Kieler (maiden name Laura Smith Petersen). She
was a good friend of Ibsen. Much that happened between Nora and Torvald happened to
Laura and her husband, Victor, with the most important exception being the forged signature
that was the basis of Nora's loan. In real life, when Victor found out about Laura's secret loan,
he divorced her and had her committed to an asylum. Two years later, she returned to her
husband and children at his urging, and she went on to become a well-known Danish author,
living to the age of 83. In the play, Nora left Torvald with head held high, though facing an
uncertain future given the limitations women faced in the society of the time. Ibsen wrote A
Doll's House at the point when Laura Kieler had been committed to the asylum, and the fate
of this friend of the family shook him deeply, perhaps also because Laura had asked him to
intervene at a crucial point in the scandal, which he did not feel able or willing to do. Instead,
he turned this life situation into an aesthetically shaped, successful drama. Kieler eventually
rebounded from the shame of the scandal and had her own successful writing career while
remaining discontent with sole recognition as "Ibsen's Nora" years afterwards.

Criticism

A Doll's House criticises the traditional roles of men and women in 19th-century marriage. To
many 19th-century Europeans, this was scandalous. Nothing was considered more holy than
the covenant of marriage, and to portray it in such a way was completely unacceptable; [29]
however, a few more open-minded critics such as the Irish playwright George Bernard Shaw
found Ibsen's willingness to examine society without prejudice exhilarating. In Germany, the
production's lead actress refused to play the part of Nora unless Ibsen changed the ending,
which, under pressure, he eventually did.[28] In the alternative ending, Nora gives her
husband another chance after he reminds her of her responsibility to their children. This
ending proved unpopular and Ibsen later regretted his decision on the matter. Virtually all
productions today, however, use the original ending, as do nearly all of the film versions of
this play, including Dariush Mehrjui's Sara (the Argentine version, made in 1943 and starring
Delia Garcs, does not; it also modernizes the story, setting it in the early 1940s).

Because of the radical departure from traditional behavior and theatrical convention involved
in Nora's leaving home, her act of slamming the door as she leaves has come to represent the
play itself. One critic noted, "That slammed door reverberated across the roof of the world."

Much of the criticism is focused on Nora's self-discovery, but the other characters also have
depth and value. The infected Dr. Rank and Nora both suffer from the irresponsibility of their
fathers: Dr. Rank for the father who infected his family, Nora for the father she likely married
to protect. Dr. Rank's disease becomes a metaphor for the poison infecting the Helmers'
marriage and society at large. Mrs. Linde provides the model of a woman who has been
forced to fend for and find herself a self-aware, resourceful woman.