I knew that Joyce had rated Ibsen (he even wrote him fan mail), but it has taken a long time for me to read him. A Doll’s House is the first in the book, and so I began with that. I was expecting less than I should have, especially given Joyce’s praise. I thought the work would merely be one of those dramas of the 19th century where women are miserable and men narrow or cruel, and the meaning of life is all contained in a house of one’s own and a respectable personal income. I expected, in short, something a little like the works of my favourite German writer of the period, Theodor Fontane, without considering that the reason I like Fontane is precisely that he goes beyond the limits of that world to tell us things that are truly significant.
The setting is the apartment (I made my typical note in the margin that all action for women has to be domestic in the 19th century) of a former lawyer, just then promoted to bank manager, Torvald Helmer. He lives with his wife, Nora, and their three small children. There’s a maid and a nursemaid, and a regular guest in the consumption-stricken Dr Rank. A friend from the past, Kristine Linde, comes to see Nora. And there is also the figure of Nils Krogstad, who works at Torvald’s bank but has other reasons to come by too. A small cast of characters for what I assumed to be a kind of simple, domestic tragedy.
Act One
At first, the play did little to encourage me. The first act’s portrayal of Nora and Torvald’s relationship is just as unpleasant as all the other unhappy marriages of that period which I have read, even though Nora seems happy enough. Her husband controls her access to money, he controls what she eats (no macaroons!), and rather than refer to her as his wife or even by her name Torvald much prefers to call her a bird or squirrel or pet: “My little pet is very sweet, but it runs away with an awful lot of money. It’s incredible how expensive it is for a man to keep such a pet.”
Torvald does not come across well to the modern reader. He seems quite comfortable embodying all the least attractive elements of 19th century bourgeois society. “Oh, what a glorious feeling it is, knowing you’ve got a nice, safe job, and a good fat income.” He does not approve of borrowing money or any kind of concealment or deceit. The household which he lords over is his heart and rock. Krogstad, who managed to avoid a criminal conviction for forgery by lying, comes in for particular scrutiny in Torvald’s eyes: “A fog of lies like that in a household, and it spreads disease and infection to every part of it. Every breath the children take in that kind of house is reeking with evil germs.” Torvald here speaks the language of medicine and sanitation, just as later he will speak the language of heredity to explain criminality. His language is authoritative; his knowledge, however, doubtful.
Nora’s life within the household seems happy, notwithstanding her husband’s dreadful choice of pet names. She is able to play with the children and to sneak a macaroon every now and then. We can assume that this is enough – she certainly thinks it is, at least at that moment. “Oh yes! When you’re happy, life is a wonderful thing!”
When her friend Mrs Linde arrives Nora seems shocked by just a certain lack of respectability in her friend compared to herself. Mrs Linde’s husband died without even giving his wife a reason to mourn him, which is shocking to Nora, who knows, as a good girl should, that marriage is all about love. But Mrs Linde was forced into a marriage of necessity to a richer man, so that she could help save her younger brothers and mother from destitution. She has not had the luck, for that’s all it is, that her former schoolmate Nora has had. Mrs Linde has come to see Nora in search of work. Her life now, with her brothers old enough to fend for themselves and her mother passed away, is “unutterably empty.” Mrs Linde had found her life’s meaning in living for others, and without the others, things have become terribly hard and sad.
Fortunately, Torvald can set Mrs Linde up at the bank, based on her experience. The only catch is that it will require Krogstad to lose his job. This is no bother at all, Torvald declares. There is but one snag, of which he is entirely unaware. Some years ago, when her husband had worked himself nearly to death, Nora had borrowed an extraordinary sum from Krogstad in order to take herself and Torvald to the South of Europe for some rest and recuperation. Nora had pretended that the money came from her own father, who had died recently, to avoid suspicions, while paying down the debt secretly through odd jobs and scrimping and saving on her allowance.
The problem is that Krogstad wants his job at the bank, and he can reveal not just the truth concerning where the money was found, but also that Nora is guilty of a forgery in signing for her father even after he died. Such a truth, he remarks, would ruin Nora in the eyes of her husband and the law. And Krogstad, who has only just begun to recover his own social standing after his earlier transgression, has no desire to be thrown back down into unemployment and disrepute. Nora cannot believe that she could face prison for forgery, should the truth come out, but she is not wise in such things:
Krogstad: The law takes no account of motives.
Nora: Then they must be very bad laws.
Alas, Nora is naïve. As her discussion with Mrs Linde shows, she has a good idea of how the world should be. Luckily for her, the world has not yet proved itself to be otherwise. But things soon begin to change on that front.
Act Two
The action of A Doll’s House takes place around Christmas, so there are plenty of excuses for guests to pop round and merriment to be had. In the play’s second act Nora tries to get Torvald to reverse the decision to replace Krogstad with Mrs Linde. She begs and she pleads, but there can be no luck. “If it ever got around that the new manager had been talked over by his wife…”, as Torvald charmingly remarks, it would be the end of him. He fears the embarrassment and any sense that his integrity – that highest of virtues for a respectable citizen – might be compromised.
Nora, convinced that she would receive the IOU note and be able to destroy it if she simply paid off the money as soon as possible, also turns down an opportunity to get the funds when old Dr Rank confesses that he is not long for this world and has secretly been in love with Nora. Not unexpectedly, she takes it badly, rather than using the position Rank has placed himself in to get the money.
Krogstad also returns, albeit secretly, to pressure Nora. Their talk turns to suicide, and here I began to see what I thought would be the shape of the play, with Nora ending her life rather than facing the shame and collapse of the family that the note would bring out. “Krogstad: Most of us think of that, to begin with. I did, too; but I didn’t have the courage.” Krogstad says he has a letter for her husband, detailing the truth of the matter, which he leaves in the letterbox and which only Torvald has the key to.
Nora manages to keep her husband from looking at his post until after they have gone to a dance, which takes place in act three, but act two ends, all the same, without much cause for optimism:
“Nora: Five. Seven hours to midnight. Then twenty-four hours till the next midnight. Then the tarantella will be over. Twenty-four and seven? Thirty-one hours to live.”
Act Three
Nora enlists Mrs Linde’s help to try to convince Krogstad to change course. She leaves him a note during the second act, and act three begins with them meeting while the Helmers are upstairs at their dance. Here, we discover that these two knew each other long ago. And that the love Mrs Linde lacked in her marriage she had once felt for this man, who thus far has seemed the villain of the play. Mrs Linde had married for others, at a time when Krogstad had few prospects. The poison he is alleged to have brought into his own household – he has children and is a widower – appears not hereditary, as claims Torvald, but rather perhaps to have come from these disappointments of youth. “When I lost you, it was just as if the ground had slipped away from under my feet. Look at me now: a broken man clinging to the wreck of his life.”
Now that she and Krogstad have seen their loveless marriages end, Mrs Linde suggests they may be together at last. Krogstad immediately agrees to try to secure the return of his letter, unopened. But then Mrs Linde changes her mind, and suggests that the right thing to do is let the letter be read after all. “Those two must have the whole thing out between them. All this secrecy and deception, it just can’t go on.” For those awaiting a tragic conclusion, these words, designed to bring good, seem unintentionally fatal. These two leave, and now Nora and Torvald, newly returned and a little drunk, have the flat to themselves until Dr Rank shows up briefly to say his goodbyes.
Torvald is in a good mood and seems determined to seduce his wife. Those phrases about his “most treasured possession” and his rights “Am I not your husband…?” redouble now, though his wife resists, knowing as she does that he will soon see the letter. Rank’s arrival saves her, but he does not stay long. Torvald discovers the visiting card that Rank left, marked with a black cross to indicate his oncoming death, but his mourning lasts half a paragraph before the man, who had visited every day during his healthy life, is forgotten. Torvald instead returns to his passion, declaring how he sometimes wished his wife were in terribly danger so he could save her. When he finally reads Krogstad’s letter it does not take long for him to have just such an opportunity.
He bungles it, completely, of course. He insults her family and her poor breeding, “no religion, no morals, no sense of duty…”, her intelligence, and even insults her suggestion that she will shortly end her life: “Oh stop pretending!” In short, Torvald reveals to her just what an awful creature he is. “From now on, there can be no question of happiness. All we can do is save the bits and pieces from the wreck, preserve appearances…” This is not a resolution worth having. But the play does not end here, nor with Nora’s flight to end her life. Suddenly, a letter comes from Krogstad for her. Her husband opens it and finds the IOU and an apology. “I am saved!” he shouts, forgetting for a moment that perhaps his wife may need some salvation too. Everything can go back to normal. “I’ve forgiven you,” he declares magnanimously. Ever the gentleman.
Ending
So things are back to normal, the family is protected, the values of honesty and integrity reaffirmed. It’s like the conservatism of the marriage plot that ends works like Turgenev’s Fathers and Sons and Fontane’s On Tangled Paths, despite their otherwise liberal tendencies. What a lucky man Torvald is. “Here I shall hold you like a hunted dove I have rescued unscathed from the cruel talons of the hawk, and calm your poor beating heart.” Readers or audiences can pat themselves on the backs and take away that message we always seem to from works of the 19th century, namely that society could do with some improvements, especially in how it treats women, but that in general it’s better than chaos and formlessness, and that family and proper values should always come first.
Only, that’s not how the play ends. Only the alternative German ending, which Ibsen was literally forced to write, is like this. The true ending is so much more awesome. It was here that I understood what Joyce found in Ibsen, the link I had not anticipated between that incomparably great novella “The Dead” and the works of this magnificent Norwegian. Just as Gabriel in Joyce’s novella, on learning of his wife’s more real and authentic romance to a young man in the countryside before she met him, cannot continue living the same way as before, so too can Nora not merely shrug her shoulders and go back to playing with the children and stealing quick bites of macaroons as if nothing had happened. No, Nora rebels.
“You don’t understand me. And I have never understood you, either – until tonight.”
“We have now been married eight years. Hasn’t it struck you this is the first time you and I, man and wife, have had a serious talk together?” Ironically, in a work that is all about paper – paper that condemns (the IOU and Krogstad’s letter), paper that provides work (the files from the bank Torvald constantly carries around), paper that saves (Krogstad’s final note) – there is very little real communication. Nora turns on her husband and her father, the two men who had shaped her life, as she realises what a life it was they had shaped for her:
“You two never loved me. You only thought how nice it was to be in love with me.”
“He used to call me his baby doll, and he played with me as I used to play with my dolls. Then I came to live in your house….”
It comes out. That Nora’s life has not been a life at all, but an object of other’s play. Not work, which would be serious, but just a toy to have around. And suddenly she sees a different image of herself, one that could never have existed in this kind of world: “It’s your fault that I’ve never made anything of my life.” And so she decides on a course of action. Not suicide in the woods, but still a departure into the night. “There’s another problem needs solving first. I must take steps to educate myself. You are not the man to help me there. That’s something I must do on my own. That’s why I’m leaving you.”
Torvald’s attempts to rebut her are so pathetic they are almost not worth quoting. “Helmer: Oh you blind, inexperienced. / Nora: I must set about getting experience, Torvald.” He tries appealing to her duty, her “most sacred duty” to her family. But she is wiser now. “I have another duty equally sacred… My duty to myself.” She wants to discover herself, her own truth, not society’s. She wants, above all, to live, not to be a doll in someone’s house. Torvald is shocked. There can be only one explanation possible: “You don’t love me any more.” To which Nora gives the hilarious response, the one Torvald was definitely least expecting: “Exactly.”
And so she goes.
Oh how exciting! How brilliant! Readers, if I may at times strike you as being a little too much from the 19th century, which is certainly a fault, at least it gave me one advantage in reading A Doll’s House: I was not at all expecting this. I was expecting suicide, I was expecting Nora to be cast out of the house like poor Effi in Effi Briest. I was expecting God to Punish the Sinner for mistreating His Sacred Values. What I was not expecting was this heroism. How awesome Ibsen is for writing such a work. I think I must have been burned by Chekhov, whose brilliant plays always end with nothing changing, or everything somehow getting worse. Here we have a positive ending which doesn’t involve marriage, but involves something much more important – truth, personal truth, pursued. I am not saying that it is always right to abandon one’s family in pursuit of truth – after all, we know what happens to Anna Karenina. But it is surely right here.
And so I was delighted that at last I turned to Ibsen. This will not be the last work of his that I read – that much is for certain.