Themes in A Doll’s House

Themes in A Doll’s House

Themes are the fundamental and often universal ideas explored in a literary work.

In Henrik Ibsen s play A Doll s House there are many themes that are apparent, but the one that is most apparent is the way that women and men are viewed. Women are especially viewed in the context of marriage and motherhood. Men are viewed as manly men that are not dependent on anyone for anything.

The play focuses on the way Nora is seen as a mother and a wife. Torvald has a clear and narrow definition of a woman. He believes that a woman should be a good wife and mother. Torvald tells Nora that mothers are responsible for the morality of their children. In essence, he sees women as both child-like, helpless creatures and important moral forces responsible for the morals and purity of the world through their influences on their own child s morality.

Well as such the central theme of this play is Nora’s rebellion against society and everything that was expected of her. Nora shows this by breaking away from all the standards and expectations her husband and society had set up for her. In her time women were not supposed to be independent. They were to support their husbands, take care of the children, cook, clean, and make everything perfect around the house.

Nora’s first rebellion was when she took out a loan so that she could pay for her husband, Torvalds medical treatment. It was against the law for women to take out a loan without their husbands consent.While Nora’s second rebellion was when she left Torvald and her children.

 

Other themes of the play include - 

Individual and Social Fabric

This is one of the most important themes of the play. Most actions of an individual are in response to the society or community they live. Nora is a loyal wife and a dedicated mother, but she does not stick to the moral framework of society. She thinks it morally right to deceive her husband about her debt and forgery. Even suicidal thoughts are for her husband, who will ruin himself when protecting her later. Mrs. Linde yearns to be a caretaker and play the role of nurturer. She betrays Nora, which helps her see the true nature of Torvald. Also, Krogstad does not achieve happiness through any means but realizes by the end that he can achieve it through his reformation. He learns that a person must give proper respect to his personality if he wants to win the respect of others in society.

Feminism

Nora, as a character, becomes prominent not only in the world of literature but also in the world of theatre. Her figure as a woman towers over those of men with whom she locks horns. She breaks Torvald’s traditional notion of women subservient to men; she still has to find a future for herself and support her children when she decides to leave. However, Torvald fails to understand the value of a woman and the reason for her debt. Nora has secured a bright future for her children and also supported her husband, but she has failed to support her own position. It shows that the patriarchal circle has still the same strength as it has before the start of the play. Femininity though tries to break this circle; it seems that it needs more than merely the threat to leave as Nora does by the end of the play. However, she indeed stands in the shadow of her father whenever her husband has some praise for her despite having decision-making ability at critical junctures.

Love and Marriage

Another important theme of the play is love and marriage. Nora and Torvald Helmer are presented as a happy couple, leading a blissful married life. The use of pet names by them for each other shows the involvement of love as opposed to Mrs. Linde’s life. This marriage proves a contrast to the marriage of Mrs. Linde and Krogstad that happens by the end of the play, which shows that love and marriage are based on realistic expectations. When the reality of the deception of Nora dawns upon Torvald, he reveals the other side of human nature and immediately expels Nora from his life, while she is also ready to go away. On the other hand, Mrs. Linde and Krogstad have never been in love with each other.

Moreover, Dr. Rank, too, has loved Nora for years though he has never married. Nora and Torvald show that their marriage is subject to social rules, conventions, and customs. When this rule is broken, the marriage stands cancelled. Krogstad and Mrs. Linde’s marriage show that this is not always the case.

Deception

Deception is another major theme of the play. Nora’s action of borrowing debt and then forging her father’s signature shows that she has deceived her husband. Although Krogstad blackmailed her several times on account of this forgery, she has never disclosed it to her husband. She then shares this deception with Mrs. Linde, who advises her that she should inform her husband. She believes that such marriages based on deceptions do not have a chance to succeed, and she proves right. Krogstad also suffers from a bad reputation as he is with Nora in forging the signature of her father and using her as a ploy to get a promotion. Therefore, such frauds and deceptions have been presented in the play as corrupting forces that not only destroy the very foundations of society but also ruin blissful married lives.

Materialism

Materialism is an essential thematic strand that runs throughout the play. Stress upon money is the specific focus of the married couple Nora and Torvald Helmer. Financial autonomy and success are the central points of Torvald’s point of view about success, whether it is in marriage or business. His refusal to take cases that do not give him satisfaction is the primary reason for his financial success. Nora, too, thinks that by providing material comfort, she can win her husband as well as her married life. However, expectations of the material success of Nora and Torvald dash to the ground by the end of the play when they come to know the truth.

Upbringing Children

Although Ibsen has not given children of Nora and Helmer any space in the play, it is also a thematic strand that runs parallel to the truth of marital love. Emmy, Ivar, and Bobby show how parents are bringing them up and how they should be treated. Nora has a little time for them as she brings toys, but her father never appears to have any time except for his financial career. However, in another way, he has time to call his wife with names such as “little person” or “little woman” or “little songbird” and other such names reserved for children. This shows that both of them are bringing up their children as their possessions instead of human beings, which is proved wrong by the end.

Parental Obligations

The play shows that parents are responsible for bringing up their children with the right moral values. For example, Nora is accused of following her father’s extravagance and money-making drive. Dr. Rank seems to have inherited disease as well as moral flaws from his father. Torvald, too, holds this idea that parents determine the moral character of a child as he states when Nora is with him that criminals always have mothers who lie in their lives.

Religion

Although religion does not directly appear in the play, it has some importance. For example, the events of the play occur around or on Christmas. While the events of the first act take place in the evening, the second on the day of Christmas, and the third on Boxing Day. The arrival of the Christmas Tree in the first act also shows this occasion. Secondly, there is much stress on the morality that is undoubtedly Christian morality. However, it is interesting that it has not been directly mentioned. Only Torvald accuses Nora of having “no religion” and that his father does not have any principle. Nora too admits by the end that she does not know the reality of religion and that she is not sure about the clergy as well.

Corruption

It is a minor theme but plays an important role in the progress of the play. Dr. Rank is the epitome of corruption and has inherited tuberculosis along with moral degradation from his father. In the same way, Torvald accuses Nora of inheriting moral ineptitude about money and financial matters from her father. In other words, it is suggested that such corruption, whether it is physical, or moral is a curse for society.

The Theme of Emancipation of Self in Henrik Ibsen’s A Doll’s House.

Henrik Ibsen was an extremely influential Norwegian playwright who stood responsible for the rise of modern realistic drama. In A Doll’s House, Ibsen employs the themes and structures of classical tragedy while writing in prose about everyday, unexceptional people.

A Doll’s House, a realistic three-act play, focuses on late nineteenth-century life in a middle-class Scandinavian household, in which the wife is expected to be contentedly passive and the husband paternally protective Nora Helmer once secretly borrowed a large sum of money so that her husband could recuperate from a serious illness. She never told him of this loan and has been secretly paying it back in small installments by saving from her household allowance. Her husband, Torvald thinks her careless and childlike and often calls her his doll.Nora tries to influence her husband, but he thinks of Nora as a simple child who cannot understand the value of money or business.

A Doll’s House manifests Ibsen’s concern for women’s rights and human rights in general. It has two kinds of moral laws, two kinds of conscience, one for men and the other for women. Norah appears to be happy with her husband, the lawyer Torvald Helmer and their three children, two sons and a daughter. When the play begins, it is Christmas eve and Nora has returned home after doing her Christmas shopping. The affectionate exchanges between her and her husband suggest that they are still very much in love after eight years of marriage. It is clear through the thinking of Helmer that Nora is rather careless with his money. She is elated because he has recently been appointed as Manager of a bank.

The play is divided into three acts. In the first act, we are first introduced to the two women characters of the play, Nora Helmer, the heroine, and Christine Linde her old friend, and come to know about their past and present life.Then we are introduced to Doctor Rank and Krogstad the villain of the piece. Then follows a talk among Nora, Helmer, and Christine in the course of which Helmer promises Nora’s friend Christine Linde works in his bank. Then from the ensuing conversation between Nora and Krogstad, we come to know about Nora’s secret loan from him and her forgery of her father’s signature on the bond signed to Krogstad. The act ends with Nora brooding on the influence of bad mothers on their children as well as the threat posed by Krogstad

In the second act, we come to know about Nora’s nurse having forsaken her daughter and Nora’s hint to her that the nurse may have to look after her children too just as she did with motherless Nora, Nora’s request to Helmer to retain in his post and Helmer’s egotic rashness in dismissing him through his orders precipitating the crisis of Nora in the following act.

In the third act, we are led to know about the meeting between Linde and Krogstad and their decision to marry. Then we have a glimpse of Helmer’s unsuccessful efforts to woo his wife Nora. We are then presented with the dignified exit of Doctor Rank from the Helmers and the world. The final episode is between Nora and Helmer after Helmer having read Krogstad’s letter exposing Nora. This is in turn enables Nora to see the real character of her husband which makes her take the sudden decision to sever all her ties with him abruptly and walk out of his home.

Ibsen makes numerous hints about the roles of women and how the female gender was treated at the time. A Doll’s House is considered to be the first feminist play, challenging the Victorian ideal of a woman’s role in marriage. In A Doll’s House, Ibsen paints a bleak picture of the sacrificial role held by women of all economic classes in this society. The play is significant for its critical attitude towards nineteenth-century marriage norms. It aroused great controversy at the time, as it concludes with the protagonist, Nora, leaving her husband and children because she wants to discover herself. Ibsen was inspired by the belief that a woman cannot be herself in modern society, since it is an exclusively male society, with laws made by men and with prosecutors and judges who assess feminine conduct from a masculine standpoint. Nora initially seems like a playful, naive child who lacks knowledge of the world outside her home. She realized that she has acted the part of the happy, child-like wife for Torvald and before that she has acted the part of the happy, child-like daughter for her father. She now sees that her father and Torvald compelled her to behave in a certain way and understands it to be great wrong that stunted her development as an adult and as a human being. She has made nothing of her life because she has existed only to please men.

But Nora is a woman with unlimited potential. She will not be able to attain her self-realization and selfhood until she leaves home to stop being a doll. She has not been allowed to be her true self both by her father and her husband and as both have treated her like a doll, she has to play the doll throughout. Nora has never left home. She was confined in her father’s home and to do what he wanted. She then goes directly to her husband Torvald Helmer’s home where she is treated as a child. She is protected, petted, patted, dressed up, given pocket money, but she is not allowed to be herself. She has no experience of life outside her home. She leads her life only as a doll which is keyed by her father before marriage and by her husband after marriage. The title of this play shows that there is a relationship with the theme of home.

The play also focuses on the main theme of marriage which is based on perfect understanding between the couples and not mere in wealthy life or some other facts. The marriage is not based on illusions or phantasies or a mere show it is all about the two minds which are going to dwell into a single soul. Marriage should not consider to be a doll house it is a human institution. Nora, the female protagonist of The Doll's House, acts as Ibsen’s mouthpiece of the woman emancipation. Ibsen himself said that the intention of the play was to show an individual’s liberation from the shackles and restraints of society. Nora leads the traditional role of a puppet wife and a doll-mother for the sake of gaining self-liberation, individuality, and independence. The play tries to probe the true base of the man-woman relationship in its most intimate forms of marriage. Nora is perfectly aware of outsider’s opinion about her. Nora is a doll in the hands of three persons, namely Torvald Helmer, Krogstad, and her father. Nora is judged from the eyes of men. To them, she has committed forgery and is a cheat but it is not so. She has done everything only for the betterment of her family. Not even a single room is given for her wish or her passion or her emotion; rather she is treated as a puppet, whose acts are controlled by their masters.

The play A Doll’s House advocates the rights of women and especially of wives in relation to her husband’s. The final decision of Nora the protagonist of the play shows the sufferings she has come across in her lifetime. She doesnot want to ruin her life by committing herself towards the family in the namesake of parents, husband, children, and society. She had believed that someday a miracle would happen and he would prove that he too was capable of making a sacrifice of her, but she has found that the miracle did not happen. She takes back her wedding – ring, and steps out of the house, slamming the outer door behind her. A Doll’s House has great relevance in the present age when man has lost his intuitive, feminine self, hence the increasing materialism and masculinity in today’s modern world. The intuition of oneself is to be with their own self-identity. Society is set up by ourselves for our convenience and not for the sake of others. The ultimate message of this play in my point of view is to be what you want to be.