6 The Timeless and Universal

6

The Timeless and Universal Relevance of Henrik Ibsen's Play A Doll House (1789) Henrik Ibsen's play A Doll House (1789) may seem to only have to do with 1960's and 1970's era women's issues when many women were still struggling to be equal in any way, at work or as persons in their own right. Then many women found it difficult to enter professions like medicine or engineering dominated by men. There was also more social pressure on women (like the social pressure on Nora) to marry, have children, take care of a home and 'know their place' (outside men's arenas). Obviously much has changed since then. But I feel Ibsen's A Doll's House remains relevant and that it is not and never was only a play about women's rights even if that seems its most obvious focus. A Doll's House can be looked at freshly from the perspective of today's much different world - but also one in which plenty of (if not the same) pressures and expectations still exist, and one where men and women alike struggle perhaps now more than ever to find their authentic selves. In A Doll's House the main character, a married woman with three children named Nora decides at the end of the play to finally stop acquiescing to her husband Torvald's and her society's ideas about who or what she "should" as opposed to who she is. Even at the beginning of the play it is clear that Torvald sees Nora as more of a plaything than an authentic human being. He teases her condescendingly about the Christmas shopping trip from which she has just returned and addresses her as one might a child instead of an adult woman with children of her own: HELMER. Is it my little squirrel bustling about? NORA. Yes! HELMER. When did my squirrel come home? (Ibsen Act I) Nora is a stronger-minded woman than she appears and also one who knows for sure by the end of the play that it is more important to see and feel her authentic self than to keep up appearances by staying married to Torvald. Within life today such a state of mind can be found in many people seeking either a whole fresh start or even among those just wishing to develop a yet undeveloped talent, interest, or part of him or her self.

Hollywood movies abound today about men and women alike who are fast- track executives or well-paid lawyers, physicians, or investment bankers but realize their lucrative profession is all wrong for them because they have entered it for the wrong reasons: money; prestige; pressure from parents or a wish to impress society. Once these people finally take a deep breath and reflect on who they really are and what they really find meaningful, they may leave a high-powered profession in order to perhaps do something in the arts, work with children, help the needy, or accomplish something entirely different that is truly and personally fulfilling. Such plots and scenarios echo Nora's struggle for identity throughout A Doll's House and her final heart-wrenching decision. Movies like Doc Hollywood or Under the Tuscan Sun (as but two 21st century examples, out of many), with their themes of leaving one's present life and going "elsewhere' to find one's self would not be so successful if they did not in fact address a universal, deeply felt conflict many had in Ibsen's day and have now about social expectations versus finding one's authenticity. This (and real-life examples like the young mother going back to college for her own degree once her children are independent; or the retired Air Force Colonel deciding to teach elementary school) are modern-day versions of Nora's decision to strike out on her own in order to discover and finally nourish long-neglected parts of her own self. As Nora tells Torvald, for example, shortly before leaving him: "I can no longer content myself with what most people say, or with what is found in books. I must think over things for myself and get to understand them" Ibsen, (A Doll's House, Act III). Ibsen's Nora is a deep-feeling woman who, in seeing how far she truly is from knowing her true self, realizes she must take herself away from her family in order to grow into personhood on her own. In this way, then, Nora evolves personally and changes into a stronger and more reflective character as A Doll's House progresses. Nora realizes during the play that she has never really grown up into an independent adult human being. For this reason, as Nora explains to her husband Torvald, within the ending scene where she slams the front door and leaves him and their three young children on their own (Ibsen, A Doll's House, Act III) , Nora must find herself first, in order to possibly be able to return, as an authentic person in her own right, to her husband and family. As Nora also explains to her husband near the end of the play, she moved, as a newly married woman directly from her father's house into marriage. Consequently Nora, even now, has no clear idea of herself as an independent person, apart from the domination her father and now Torvald. Nora does not know for sure, despite her already being a mother of three, who she is, what she thinks, or what she believes in, independently from others' (male) opinions. Therefore, she decides, she must now leave Torvald and their family, in order to find out. Nora is, in the beginning, a self-sacrificing; self-effacing character (albeit with much hidden strength) who subsumes her essential self in order to be a wife to Torvald and a mother to their children. It is only when Nora learns that Torvald is indeed unappreciative of the risks she has taken and the sacrifices she has made on his behalf in the past that she realizes her self is not worth sacrificing to either an ungrateful, unsympathetic husband or "appearances" anymore. It is for that reason that Nora decides to leave her husband and children in order to pursue an independent life so that she might finally reach her authentic state of adulthood, instead of continuing to still lead the false, doll-like life inside the "Doll's House" where she has lived up to now with Torvald. Within this play the quest for selfhood and true personal identity and integrity happens to be that of a woman, Nora. However Ibsen's A Doll's House also is not merely a tired feminist play about outdated, long- resolved women's issues. Looking deeper into it, the play really is not about, either, one or another gender even if its protagonist is a female. Nor is this play relevant to the late 18th century when Ibsen wrote it; or within Europe (Norway in particular) where Ibsen lived. Instead Ibsen's play A Doll's House is dramatic work in fact both universal and timeless: in theme; conflict and resolution and deserves no less credit than that. Work Cited