An essay. 1992 words. My stan­dard Cre­ative Com­mons license applies — this means attri­bu­tion is required, and you aren’t legally per­mit­ted to repub­lish this as your own work (yes, even for non-commercial rea­sons such as school).

How are the con­cerns and val­ues of Ibsen’s play estab­lished in Act 1?

Hen­rik Ibsen’s play, A Doll’s House, seeks to crit­i­cise the val­ues of the soci­ety in which it is set. This crit­i­cism is estab­lished in the open­ing act of the play, and fur­ther devel­oped through­out (cul­mi­nat­ing in the active rejec­tion of these val­ues by Nora in the clos­ing scene). From the out­set, Ibsen’s work iden­ti­fies sev­eral key val­ues which are of con­cern, in order to address these at a later point.

The viewer is pre­sented first with the char­ac­ter of Nora Helmer enter­ing from “the out­side”, dressed in out­door attire: this is the first and only time the viewer is aware of Nora hav­ing been out­side the house in the entire play, with all action tak­ing place in the con­straints of the set defined by Ibsen as “A room, com­fort­ably and taste­fully, but not expen­sively, fur­nished.” The set itself is used to estab­lish an envi­ron­ment of com­fort, with some degree of irony: what is now a scene of domes­tic liv­ing, becomes syn­ony­mous with a prison for Nora, as the story develops.

Upon first entry to the set, Nora is seen stand­ing in the door­way, pay­ing a porter a krone – although he requests only fifty øre (half a krone) – for car­ry­ing a Christ­mas tree and a bas­ket. Whilst “tips” or gra­tu­ities of this kind may have been con­ven­tional and pos­si­bly even required by the expec­ta­tions of soci­ety at the time, a reader in a more con­tem­po­rary cul­ture (espe­cially in a coun­try such as Aus­tralia, or non-European nations where such an expec­ta­tion does not exist) may per­ceive this as reflec­tive of Nora’s “spend­thrift” nature, which her hus­band Tor­vald Helmer is con­stantly crit­i­cal of.

Per­haps more sig­nif­i­cantly, the jux­ta­po­si­tion of Christ­mas and all that entails for the fam­ily of this play (a tree, gifts, etc.) with pay­ment and com­merce may be viewed as exem­pli­fy­ing the val­ues held by the soci­ety in which Nora and Tor­vald live their lives: indeed, there is a com­plete absence of spir­i­tual or reli­gious ref­er­ences regard­ing Christ­mas or any other event which occurs in the play (though some may argue Torvald’s con­dem­na­tion of his wife in the clos­ing scene stems from “Chris­t­ian” val­ues; indeed, he crit­i­cises her for hav­ing “no reli­gion, no moral­ity, no sense of duty”). Tor­vald is still work­ing in his study, so com­mit­ted to his work that this is being done at home, even on Christ­mas Eve – “I must make use of the Christ­mas week for [work], so as to have every­thing in order for the new year.” The val­ues of soci­ety in which they live are such that numer­ous vis­i­tors at this time (with the excep­tion of Doc­tor Rank, whose vis­it­ing is as a friend, as opposed to a busi­ness acquain­tance) appear with an agenda not purely social, but moti­vated by some­thing per­tain­ing to work or employment.

Not only the char­ac­ter of Nils Krogstad, but also, to an extent, that of wid­owed Mrs. Kris­tine Linde – the motive for her appear­ance is not entirely appar­ent to the audi­ence, although the out­come of her visit is key to cre­at­ing con­flict lead­ing to the rev­e­la­tion of Krogstad’s agree­ment with Nora; her appoint­ment to the posi­tion in which Krogstad was pre­vi­ously employed is the cat­a­lyst for fur­ther plot devel­op­ment in this play. The con­ver­sa­tion between Mrs. Linde and Nora is focussed on finan­cial affairs, with all per­sonal ref­er­ences bound to a need for secu­rity in a finan­cial man­ner, or in accor­dance with other val­ues of the period. Whilst at the begin­ning of this dia­logue Nora asserts that “today I won’t be self­ish”, she comes to speak of her “self”, and all that entails: finan­cial secu­rity, her hus­band, and her children.

In this, Ibsen’s play crit­i­cises soci­ety as focussed upon finan­cial secu­rity and the acqui­si­tion of wealth first and fore­most, with fam­ily and friends tak­ing sec­ond place, and reli­gion some­where in the dis­tance – some­thing to pro­vide a loose set of (patri­ar­chal) val­ues, and an impres­sion of self-righteous morality.

It is with no degree of sub­tlety that Hen­rik Ibsen con­trasts the char­ac­ters of Nora and Mrs. Linde at the begin­ning of their dia­logue: It is estab­lished that Mrs. Linde has been wid­owed, with a man she did not love dying and leav­ing her pre­cious lit­tle behind, as his busi­ness col­lapsed with his own death – in this, there is a par­al­lel estab­lished between the sus­te­nance of life and work, a value echoed in other aspects of the text, too. Deprived of secu­rity (which may be achieved, so it is implied, only through mar­riage to a male pre­server – Tor­vald describes him­self in the clos­ing act as hav­ing “broad wings to shel­ter [her] under”), Mrs. Linde is forced to work for a liv­ing of her own, and is at this time unemployed.

Ibsen changes the focus of dia­logue so quickly that his audi­ence is left in a state of shock: one moment, Nora is declar­ing “That must be awful”, and sym­pa­this­ing with Mrs. Linde’s plight, yet in the next breath speaks of her own three chil­dren, imme­di­ately fol­low­ing Mrs. Linde’s dec­la­ra­tion that she has none, and no-one to live for.

At this stage, Nora claims she does not wish to be self­ish, and requests Mrs. Linde speak of her­self first: until she begins on a tan­gent of her own, say­ing “just one thing” first. “Just one thing” is to detail the suc­cess of Tor­vald, and the new posi­tion of finan­cial secu­rity in which they find them­selves. Indeed, the impres­sion cre­ated is near-comic in nature: one moment, the audi­ence is faced with a dour-faced Mrs. Linde, and sym­pa­this­ing Nora at her side – the next, Nora is declar­ing how for­tu­nate she is, in a cir­cum­stance with which Mrs. Linde is only able to look upon with a degree of remote long­ing – “Yes; at any rate it must be delight­ful to have what you need.” – to which Nora replies “No, not only what you need, but heaps of money– heaps!”.

Nora says “Oh, Christina, I feel so light­hearted and happy!” in regard to her sit­u­a­tion at the begin­ning of the play. There exists some­thing of an argu­ment over the seman­tics of the term “happy” as applied in this play: it is felt by some that nuances of lan­guage rep­re­sent­ing dif­fer­ent degrees and types of “hap­pi­ness” have been lost in some trans­la­tions of Ibsen’s orig­i­nal play, such that the mean­ing of terms in the orig­i­nal Riksmål (Tra­di­tional Stan­dard Nor­we­gian), Lykke­lig and Lystig, are used inap­pro­pri­ately in some trans­la­tions: the for­mer term means “happy”, whilst the lat­ter is bet­ter trans­lated as “gay” (or, given the con­tem­po­rary con­no­ta­tions that word now car­ries, “cheerful”) – associated with a more fleet­ing and tem­po­rary emotion.

The sig­nif­i­cance of this, of course, is that Nora’s “hap­pi­ness” (trans­lated as such in both McLeish’s trans­la­tion, Archer’s trans­la­tion, and the trans­la­tion used by the Project Guten­berg pub­lic domain text), as an pro­found state of mind, and not a fleet­ing emo­tion, is felt as a direct result of the finan­cial sit­u­a­tion in which she is in by virtue of her hus­bands posi­tion at the bank. This is per­haps the clear­est way in which the impor­tance and value of mate­ri­al­ism to the soci­ety in which the play is set is con­veyed in the open­ing act of this text.

There is some degree of irony, then, in the cause of con­flict within this text being directly asso­ci­ated with that which is so val­ued: whilst mate­ri­al­ism is the pre­vail­ingly good and a cause of “hap­pi­ness”, embrac­ing this same mate­ri­al­ism (with char­i­ta­ble objec­tives, no less) is the ulti­mate cause of com­pli­ca­tion and demise – if demise is an appro­pri­ate term for the res­o­lu­tion of this text.

In the open­ing act, Ibsen estab­lishes Nora’s motive in forg­ing her deceased father’s sig­na­ture: this is done in order to sus­tain her husband’s life, and spare her dying father from “anx­i­ety and care” which would have stemmed had he been aware of her husband’s ill­ness. It is said by Krogstad that “the law cares noth­ing about motives”, and claims that the cause of his own social demise was “no more or noth­ing worse” than the actions taken by Nora. In this, her actions are con­demned along with his, and the stage is set for her inevitable “fall” into the same social dis­re­pute which Krogstad now inhab­its: her hus­band con­firms as much later in the same act, claim­ing what was done was done out of neces­sity, yet later denied – and this, cre­at­ing a “poi­so­nous” cli­mate for his children.

He goes on, attribut­ing this poi­son to a “mother’s influence” – something upon which Nora reflects, and appar­ently accepts: imme­di­ately after this con­ver­sa­tion ceases, she refuses to see her “lit­tle ones” which are beg­ging to be let into the room.

A con­cern of this play estab­lished here is the notion of guid­ance by parental fig­ures: this is also echoed in the clos­ing act of the play, how­ever the frame­work and grounds for later com­ment are estab­lished here, as the audi­ence is pre­sented with the three Helmer chil­dren being cared for by their nurse – the rela­tion­ship between the chil­dren and Nora par­al­lels that of Tor­vald and his wife. This serves as a dual crit­i­cism, both of the appar­ent lack of involve­ment between chil­dren and their tra­di­tional men­tors, and also in liken­ing the rela­tion­ship between hus­band and wife (in this cir­cum­stance) to that between a par­ent and a child: Torvald’s con­tin­u­ally refers to his wife as being “lit­tle”, as to a child.

The belit­tling atti­tude adopted by Tor­vald towards Nora per­sists through­out the play, with his liken­ing her to an object which is his pos­ses­sion – “You can’t deny it, my dear lit­tle Nora.… It’s a sweet lit­tle spend­thrift, but she uses up a deal of money.” (empha­sis added) – later, towards the close of the act, Tor­vald appar­ently takes some plea­sure in say­ing to Nora “Aha! so my obsti­nate lit­tle woman is obliged to get some­one to come to her res­cue?” when she requests his advice: her motive in this is appar­ent to the audi­ence (she wishes to pla­cate her hus­band), and the advice required is triv­ial – this hints that per­haps Nora is capa­ble of greater con­trol and depth than pre­vi­ously thought: in the words of Amer­i­can fem­i­nist Emma Gold­man, “Down deep in the con­scious­ness of Nora there evi­dently slum­bers per­son­al­ity and char­ac­ter, which could come into full bloom only through a great mir­a­cle — not the kind Nora hopes for, but a mir­a­cle just the same.”

To the audi­ence, Nora’s con­cern at this point is pri­mar­ily for her hus­band and chil­dren: there is no notable sense of self in her con­ster­na­tion with regard to Krogstad’s threats. This is reflected not only in her past actions (specif­i­cally, the man­ner in which she con­cealed the source of funds for their hol­i­day to Italy from her hus­band and father), but also in her imme­di­ate con­cerns – she recog­nises a threat from Krogstad, and responds by speak­ing of her hus­band: “If my hus­band does get to know of it, of course he will at once pay you what is still owing, and we shall have noth­ing more to do with you.” Her con­cerns are not for the impli­ca­tions for her­self at any point in this first act. Later, when Tor­vald asserts that the cause of moral cor­rup­tion is from the mother, Nora responds by shun­ning her chil­dren, in her fear of what she may do to them.

She believes her hus­band implic­itly, not think­ing to ques­tion him: she is, as the title of the play implies, a doll, stuck in a doll’s house, manip­u­lated by oth­ers. The open­ing act estab­lishes this envi­ron­ment, her domes­tic prison, and sets the stage for her inner tur­moil and sub­se­quent escape from the stric­tures and expec­ta­tions of soci­ety in the clos­ing lines of this play. Through the devel­op­ment of Nora’s char­ac­ter, and grad­ual rev­e­la­tion of “truth” oppos­ing soci­ety, Ibsen annun­ci­ates his con­cerns and oppo­si­tions to accepted val­ues, both in the open­ing act, and fur­ther through­out the play.

Tags: A Doll's House, Archer, australia, bank, Christmas, Christmas Eve, Emma Goldman, Henrik Ibsen, Ibsen, Italy, Kristine Linde, Krogstad, New Year's Day, Nils Krogstad, Nora Helmer, nurse, porter, Torvald Helmer