A Doll's House

[wong alex]

Theme:
(i)Reflects feminism’s concern with liberating women form restrictive
materials and social roles
(ii)Human endeavor to determine value and commitment
(iii)Embodies feminism

Technique:
(i)Dramatic irony: we recognize the inadequacy of codifying our
response to experience or our place in any human relationship
(ii)Rank’s last celebration of life is followed by a final separation
foreshadowing Nora’s departure
(iii)Retrospective: Story virtually over by the time play begins; only
the catastrophe remains to be enacted

Device:
Christmas tree symbolizes Nora’s position in her household as a
plaything who is pleasing to look at and adds charm to the home

Character:
(i)Torvald: is seen as more than merely the villain of an oppressed
household or a symbol of a repressed society
(ii)Nora: lacks the courage for suicide and that her faith in the
miracle is a response of hysteria

Structure:
The inversion of the play’s action, for Krogstad makes amends for his
behavior and finds happiness in Mrs. Linde’s unconditional love,
whereas Torvald is left confused and alone.

[Michael]

Theme
- Individualism
- Women’s Choices
- Difficulties of Women in the 19th Century

Character
- Nora:
- Significance of the Door: The door she slams is the door the ends
the play
- Door: Leads to the readers speculation about Nora’s character
development throughout the play
- Trait Arguable: Fragile and Ill-equipped vs Capable and Independent
- Transformation: Dependent Nora wanting to leave the family to “find
some meaning in her life”
- Mrs. Linde:
- Wants to marry Krogstad to “have something to live for”
- Ironic: Inversion between Krogstad’s happiness from Mrs. Linde’s
love and Torvald’s confusion

Playwright’s Intention
- Ibsen: Emphasis on character > plot
- Character: Psychological histories and experiences, how they react
to problems of the society, the suffering of their spiritual state
- Goal: Stimulates audience’s interest
- Medium: The Plot

Plot
- Late point of attack: Nora’s reunion with Mrs. Linde
- Reveals the secrets Nora has hidden from Torvald
- Tension:
- Secret on saving and repayment
- Southern Vacation
- Identity of Creditor
- Nora’s Hidden document
- Timing of Krogstad’s letter
- Nora’s lock picking
- Torvald’s promise on reading the mail

[L Chan]

Essay 1:
Introductory Courses in Literature and Composition - Lois More
Overbeck

Theme:
- Reflects Feminism’s concern with liberating women from restrictive
marital and social roles
- Evaluate expectations imposed by others
- Human endeavor to determine value and commitment
- Unreliability of appearances

“But neither the.... nor ..... constitute the whole point of ...;
instead,....”

Technique:
- Dramatic irony to let us recognize the inadequacy of codifying our

response to experience or our place in any human relationship

- Rank’s last celebration of life is followed by a final separation
foreshadowing Nora’s departure
- Retrospective: Story virtually over by the time play begins; only

the catastrophe remains to be enacted

- Dramatic Tension/Stage setting: She stealthily checks Torvald’s
whereabouts before indulging in a macaroon, and yet she casually lies
about it, creates a character with multiple voices, reflects the
unreliability of appearances
- Has her back to Torvald or averts her eyes
Dramatic Irony, causes the audience to feel the discrepancy between
what Nora feels and what Torvald perceives

Device:
- Nora as a device for people to evaluate expectations imposed by
others
- Christmas tree symbolizes Nora’s position in the household as a

plaything who is pleasing to look at and adds charm to the home

Character:

- Torvald: is seen as more than merely the villain of an oppressed

household or a symbol of a repressed society

- Nora: lacks the courage for suicide and that her faith in the

miracle is a response of hysteria

Structure:

- Sudden change in Nora’s character in Act 3, the reconsideration
demonstrates that Nora’s discontent festers beneath the surface from
the beginning
- The inversion of the play’s action, for Krogstad makes amends for

[Christopher Chow]

A Doll’s House
Essay 1: Introductory Courses In Literature And Composition
Essay 2: Courses In Dramatic Literature
Essay 3: How to Get into A Doll House: Ibsen’s Play as an Introduction
to Drama

Theme
1. Human endeavor to determine value and commitment
Feminism’s concern with changes in environment i.e. restrictive
marital and social roles
Appearence
Ibsen poses questions about human emotions and destinies present in
social conditions and principles instead of attempting to answer
them.
Individual as victim, society as victimizer.

Techniques
Dramatic Irony: Recognizing the inadequacy of codifying our response
to experience or our place in any human relationship.
Multiple Voices: When acquiescent, Nora often has her back to Torvald
or averts her eyes.
Dialogue: demonstrates the issue on rightness or wrongness of social
institutions,m conventions, attitudes.
Retrospective, Story virtually over by the time play begins; only the
catastrophe remains to be enacted.
Well-madeness: The intricate weaving togather of plot events in a
compact, suspenseful plot of “strong” scenes.

Characterization:
Complex figure: Nora, tension of the play resides in her character as
much as it does in the external circumstances of plot.

Villian: Torvald, oppressed household, symbol of repressed society.

Structure:
Character Inversion: While independent Mrs. Linde wants to marry
Krogstad and have something to rely on and depend on, dependent Nora
wants to leave her family and seek for freedom and a meaning in her
life.

Character Configuration: Two couples as mutual and ironic foils:
moving in opposite directions, their relative position at the end a
reversal of what it was at first.

Character Transformation: Particularly Nora in Act 3, the

reconsideration demonstrates that Nora’s discontent festers beneath

the surface from the beginning.

Collocation
...not only a play about... It is a play about...
By focusing the dramaturgy of exposition,...
....creation of the figure of....demonstrates....
The dramaturgy of the play helps the audience see...

[Ingrid Chung]

Character:
Nora:
Playactor, multi-roles
Embodies feminism and a new myth of women
Mature and subtle
Psychological heroines facing personal dilemmas for which there is no
social resolution
Society’s victim because her husband and the patriarchal society he
represents denies her human rights as a women
Demonstrates how capable and independent she is and that despite the
odds set by society her chances of survival are high
Shame of Torvald’s heroism
Selfish, silly, slyly manipulative, romantic sentimentalist
Fragile, ill-equipped

Torvald:
Successful, protective, intelligent, with taste and wit and charm,
affectionate, ardent lover
Ignorant, knows nothing of the circumstances of the forgery
The villain of an oppressed household
Symbol of a repressed society
Defensive and weak, a man whose actions are governed by appearance
Cowardly and arrogant

Dr. Rank:
The illness shadows the whole play with death
Self-sought isolation parallels Nora

last celebration of life is followed by a final separation
foreshadowing Nora’s departure

Plot:
Nora stealthily checks Torvald’s whereabouts before indulging in a

macaroon, and yet she casually lies about it

Torvald is at first solicitous, then condemning and Nora leaves,
nuance of appearance and reality develop, Dr. Rank’s illness shadows
the whole play with death, Torvald is cowardly and arrogant, Nora
matures to give up her concealment: plot gives way to character

Theme:
The human endeavor to determine value and commitment
Naturalistic as charaters are the victims of their biological heredity
and social conditioning
Excess and deficiency of will and on moral and metaphysical of true
self-hood

Technique:
Dramatic irony
Dramatic tension
Dramaturgy of exposition
Dramatic expectation
Dramatic reversals
Parallelism
Imagery
Illusionism
Irony
Juxtaposition
Symbolism
Paradox

Structure:
Timeless
Inversion as the pattern of the play
Well-made play
Neoclassical three unities – only subplot and three-day time span do
not conform to the strictest interpretation of the unities of action
and time

Collocation:
But…not only…it is…
Neither…nor…instead…
Make a commitment to
…outcome on…
…exploits devices

[rachelleu...@yahoo.com.hk]

Techique
* The two couples (Nora & her husband) as mutual and ironic
foils:moving in oppsite directions, their relative position at the end

a reversal of what it was at first

* Christmas season ironically coinciding with destruction of the happy
home
* Juxtaposition of the two man-woman confrontations
* Her tragedy (Nora): her exit is an act of uncertain outcome and
questionable morality that costs her her home and family
* Mrs. Linde's explanation in act 3 of why she and Krogstad have to
meet and talk in the Helmer's living room seems contried-a piece of
awkward well-madeness forced on Ibsen by his need for keeping his
setting single.
* The emotional validity
* The dramaturgy of the play helps the audience see these
discrepancise even before the characters recognize a need to abandon
illusion and take a wider view of their reality.

Theme
* Nora Helemer's painful and degrading discovery of what male society
has made of her. The artistic and intellectual strength of the play is
Ibsen's virtually seamless joining of a thesis play to a traditional
tragedy of inner waste. The tragedy invests the thesis with emotive
power, the thesis the tragedy with continuing relevance,
* Sanctity of marriage & motherhood against individual's right to seek
selfhood on her or his own terms

Character:
* Nora and Mrs. Alving are "psychological" heroines facing personal
dilemmas for which there is on "social" resolution
* The Helmer marriage destroyed not just by Nora's forgery but by her
whole conditioning from girlhood on by a society run by men.
* The fragility of Nora's personality
* Nora has just demonstrated how capable and independent she is and
that despite the odds set by society her chances of survival are high.

[Ho Lok Sze]

Character:
- Speech educated middle-class people
- Helmer’s drunken amorousness
- Nora’s broken soliloquy
- Two couples as mutual and ironic foils

Plot:
- Christmas season ironically coinciding with destruction of happy
home
- Juxtaposition of the two man-woman confrontation in act 3
- Krogstad’s two entrances in act 1
- coincide with Mrs Linde’s first visit and with Nora’s expression of
joy in her new freedom from money worries
-interrupt with “business” from men’s “serious” and “adult” world
Nora’s game of hide-and-seek with her children
- Krogstad’s letter  focus for suspense

Technique/ Device:
- Continual, fragmentary and inferential exposition
- Dialogue a progressive unlayering of the past

Structure:
- Neoclassical three unities (unities of action and time)

[Jeffrey Au]

Notes on A Doll’s House

THEME
1. “Reflects feminism’s concern with liberating women from restrictive
marital and social roles.”
2. “is a play about the human endeavor to determine value and
commitment.”
3. Deception; Appearance vs. Reality; “unreliability of appearances”
4. Freedom
5. Women’s life in the 19th Century
6. Sanctity of marriage vs. right to seek selfhood.

CHARACTER
NORA:
1. Embodies feminism and a new myth of women
2. “casually lies”
3. “uses multiple voices with Torvald”
4. Weak & listens to Torvald vs. Independent and capable
5. Wants to leave family in order to ‘find meaning in her life’
6. “ Shame of Torvald’s heroism”
7. “Fragile, ill-equipped”
8. “stealthily checks Torvald’s whereabouts before indulging in a
macaroon.”
Torvald:
1. Affectionate, ardent lover
2. Symbol of a repressed society
3. Villain of an oppressed household
4. Ignorant; knows nothing of Nora’s forgery & feelings / acting
5. Arrogant
6. “First solicitous; then condemning.”
MRS. LINDE:
1. Her love (deceased husband) is an inversion to Nora’s relationship
with Torvald at the beginning.
2. However, Linde ends up together with Krogstad, while Nora ends up
breaking apart – ironic Character development.
DR. RANK:
1. “Self-sought isolation parallels Nora.”
2. “illness shadows whole play with death.”
3. last separation of life is followed from last celebration.


STRUCTURE
1. (As mentioned before): Inversion of the play – Nora with Torvald
vs. Mrs. Linde with Krogstad. ( “The two couples as mutual and ironic
foils” ) (“ justaposition of the 2 man-woman confrontations.”)
2. Sudden change of Nora’s actions and characteristics in Act 3; “The

reconsideration demonstrates that Nora’s discontent festers beneath

the surface from the beginning.”
3. Only 3 acts – classic [Neoclassical 3 unities (of action & time) ]
4. “Story virtually over by the time play begins; only the catastrophe
remains to be enacted”

SUSPENSE & TENSION
1. Timing of Krogstad’s letter
2. Nora’s actions of worrying Torvald opening the letter
3. Nora’s act of lock picking
4. Torvald promised on reading the mail
5. Secrets that Nora has hidden from Torvald are revealed
6. Slamming the door; act of ending play

TECHNIQUES
1. Dramatic Irony; “Dramaturgy of the play helps audiences to notice
discrepancies before characters notice them and made changes.”
2. Dramatic Irony: “causes the audience to feel the discrepancy
between what Nora feels and what Torvald perceives”
3. Dialogue – “progressive layering of the past”
4. Parallelism
5. Imagery
6. Reversals
7. Juxtaposition
8. Symbols; e.g. Christmas Tree -> Comparison with Nora’s position in
household (toy, pleasant looking, adds charm to home)
9. Multiple voices

DEVICES
1. “Remind students of their own need to evaluate the expectations
imposed by others.” (Purpose of play)

[Jason Kwan]

Theme:
Feminism's concern with liberating women from restrictive martial and
social roles.
The human endeavor to determine value and commitment.
The Play embodies feminism and a new myth for women.

Technique:
Dramatic irony
The inadequacy of codifying our response to experience or our place in
any human relationship.
Nora recognizes her own course
Dramatic tensions
In the character of Nora and in the plot.
Juxtaposition of the two man-woman confrontation in act 3.

Device:
Significance of gesture
Stage movement
Setting as imagery
- illness and moral decay
- bank, nursery, hospital
Subtle shifts of characterization
Parallelism
Exposition that is continual, fragmentary, inferential.
Symbolism - Helmer's pet animal names for Nora, her petty lying and
deliberate seductiveness, money exchanged for love.

Character:
(1) Nora:
A sudden change in Nora's character in act 3, the reconsideration

demonstrates that Nora's discontent festers beneath the surface from
the beginning.

Nora is the shadow of Krogstad
Nora lacks the courage for suicide and that her faith in the miracle
is a response of hysteria.
Nora stealthily checks Torvald's whereabout before indulging in a
macaroon, and yet she casually lies about it.
Nora tosses her head when she tries to repress an unwonted reality.
Nora uses multiple voices with Torvald
(2) Torvald:
An oppressed household or a symbol of a repressed society.
Both Nora and Torvald hold unexamined beliefs that govern their lives
even when conflicting experiences impinge on and eventually undermine
their illusions.
(3) Dr. Rank
The only major character not essential to the plot.
The irony that the only man Nora has ever been able really to talk to
never learns the secret.

Language:
Speech is the everyday speech of educated middle-class people.

Structure:
The well-made play
1.An unexpected result or situation leads the protagonist to make a
wrong decision.
2.The protagonist refuses to admit and make the situation worse than
before.
3.The protagonist admits the truth and the reality.

Inversion as the pattern of the play

Neoclassical three unities

Plot:
Terrible-wonderful testing of her marriage
Krogstad's letter becomes a focus for suspense
Final scene changes mode of play from fast-paced melodrama to
scenically static debate

[lorraine!]

THEME:
- Human endeavor to determine value and commitment
- The play embodies feminism and a new myth for women
- Deception of Appearance

DEVICE
- Inversion as the pattern of the pattern
- Parallelism, Nora is the shadow of Krogstad; each time Torvald
denounce the sins of the reprobate.

TECHNIQUE
- Dramatic irony- helps the audience to see the discrepancies even
before the character recognize a need to abandon illusion and take a

wider view of their reality

- Juxtaposition of the two man-woman confrontations
- Multiple voice
- Retrospective - story virtually over by the time play begins; only

the catastrophe remains to be enacted

CHARACTER
Nora
- a tragic for she is beset by conflicting claims of family, self,
law.
- a sudden change in act 3 , the reconsideration demonstrates Nora's
discontent fester beneath the surface from the beginning
- society victim because her husband and the patriarchal society

Torvald
- a man whose actions are governed by appearance
- Villain of an oppressed household
- represents denies Nora's human rights as a woman

[Norym]

Theme:
- Feminism’s concern with liberating women from restrictive marital
and social roles.
- Nora the oppressed woman, the rebel breaking away from the past and
finding freedom to herself.
- Human endeavor to determine value and commitment.

Technique:
- Dramatic Irony (the inadequacy of codifying readers response to
experience or place in any human relationship)
- Comparative Metaphor (compare the unfamiliar to known, so relevance
provides the familiar element that helps students discover greater
depths of knowing)

Device:
- Torvald: seen as more than merely the villain of an oppressed
household or a symbol of a repressed society.
- Nora: as a dramatic tensions in the character of Nora and in the
plot itself.
- Timeliness of its issues
Contrast of characterization:
- Nora: Sheltered and unrealistic, submissive
- Mrs. Linde: Assertive
- Independent Mrs. Linde wants to marry Krogstad and have something to
live for.
- Dependent Nora wants to leave her family in order to have some
meaning to live for.

Characterization:
- Nora: she stealthily checks Torvald’s whereabouts before indulging
in a macaroon, and yet she casually lies about it; she tosses her head
when she tries to repress an unwonted reality; she constantly moving;
use multiple voices with Torvald; acquiescent, she often has her back
to Torvald or averts her eye. Frequently observations about one
character reveal something about another, so interruptions intensify
the dynamics of discussion.
- Nora’s character in act 3, the reconsideration demonstrates that
Nora’s discontent festers beneath the surface from the beginning.
- Relationships between characters (Torvald and Dr. Rank, Torvald and
Krogstad, Mrs. Linde and Nora, Nora and Krogstad, Nora and Dr. Rank,
Torvald-Nora, Krogstad and Mrs. Linde)

Setting:
- Significance of gesture, stage movement, setting as imagery, and
subtle shifts of characterization that occur with each change in the
composition of the group of character on stage.

[kwok lun Chow]

A Doll's house

Theme
-The human endeavor to determine value and commitment.
-The life-style of people in the 19th centries.
-Relationship between Man and Woman and the society.


Character:
1) Nora: Act Three demonstrates the suddent and unexpected change of
main character Nora. Suggest multi-sides of a human being and how
people change faces in different situations, also shows discontent
fester beneath the surface from the beginning. And indicated Nora as a
victim of the society.
2) Torvald: Defensive and weak, a man whose actions are governed by
appearance
Cowardly and arrogant.

Technique:
-Dramatic irony
-Multi-personallity
-Dramatic tensions
-Act3 demonstrates the conflite between man and woman.

Devices:
-Stage movment
-Lead Character Nora as to symbol female at that time of society.
-Chocolate to symbolise the limited freedom that Nora has.

Structure:
-Well made plan
unexpected situation leading to false judgment of characters.
Followed by unecpeced ending.
-The protagonist admits the truth and the reality. Inversion as the

pattern of the play
Neoclassical three unities


Plot

- Krogstad's letter being the linkin item of characters.
-Opening scene suggest situation of play.

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