Doll's House

Currently I'm teaching Ibsen in my lit classes. 4literature.net has the William Archer translation of A Doll's House online: full text with a decent introduction. I'm amazed at this play's intricate dramatic linkage, assembled with enviable skill, abounding in situational and dramatic ironies and dramatic foils and smart stagecraft wedded to theme. Here we experience an art form that explodes the face off social convention. It exposes the clash of individual against middle class society, freedom vs. convention, independence vs. conformity, honesty vs. deception, truth and lies, the private, authentic self buried by the public persona. The play strips the middle class of everything they thought they valued. It questions the traditional basis for marriage. It shows us the materialisic demands forced upon people and spotlights the desparate measures they will take to regain a reputation or save one. And even though women have come a long way (baby) since Nora slammed that door at the end of Act III, the play continues to unsettle. Why? We're still preoccupied with middle class virtues, we still have plenty of stocks in the law and authority, in keeping up appearances and saving reputations, in getting ahead, in the ideal trophy wife at the side of the buff rich man with the bronze tan, in the righteousness of money, the productive grace of the protestant work ethic, in the defense of a man's honor and the right to be kings of the castle (or as Bernard Shaw called them, suburban Kings Arthur). Ibsen's social problem play feels all too realistic. The pressures points are still there. A little bit of progress in women's rights doesn't keep it from cutting to the bone.
To reduce A Doll's House to feminist propaganda is to do it an injustice. Certainly, the play champions the cause of women, and feminists are right to sing its praises. There is nothing trivial about that. But it reaches beyond womens' rights. Ibsen is defending the rights of individual self determination. You (man or woman) have the right, even the obligation, to figure out who you are, what's important to you, to exercise your freedom and independence, to educate yourself, learn from experience, and only then will you be prepared to accept someone else into your life, in what Nora calls a true marriage. That would be "the most wonderful thing." What makes the play sociallly explosive is the realization that even the socially powerful, the Torvalds who are in charge, the rich and famous and respected, are no more self-realized than the powerless. Torvald by play's end, is a mess. Mr. middle class has been cut to size. He has been found wanting and is left in shambles. He is not the man he thought he was. He's been pretending, and he's been blinded by his own platitudes and attitudes. His middle class virtues haven't made him truly happy. As Nora puts it near the end of the play, she has never been happy in this marriage, only cheerful. There's a huge difference between cheerfulness and happiness. Middle class wealth might bring good cheer, champagne and Cuban cigars, but it won't get you any nearer to the truth of yourself. The middle class emperor has no clothes.
don't think audiences have really come to grips with the suggestiveness of this play's themes. For if bourgeois values are nothing more than false fronts, the moral equivalent of a Hollywood backlot, then a different kind of society is needed to foster true freedom for individuals. Ibsen doesn't hint at a clear answer to the question of what such a society would look like. He's too good an artist to proscribe a solution. It's not his job.
I would suggest it'd have to be the kind of society where people were free from the necessity of money grubbing, where they weren't living in constant fear of financial ruin, where all had equal rights under the law and equal access to education, and where everyone who wanted to work, could. A society founded on basic human dignity, that valued common humanity above almighty profit.
A Doll's House is not an exhilirating nor liberating play. It is a gut wrencher. It is, arguably, tragic. Nora abandons her family for a future that can't lead to much good, at least by middle class standards. Nora, however, IS free. And that for Ibsen is preferable and a necessary prerequisite. On the ruins of the Helmer's marriage, something better could be born. The seeds of that birth are in the play itself, in the relationship between Krogstad and Linde. Ibsen isn't against marriage at all, but he's certainly struggling to redefine it.
OK, I've spit out enough rambling, idle thoughts for now. Ibsen.net is where you'll want to start exploring the master's work.