Doll\'s House: Symbols and Themes

Doll's House": Symbols And Themes

So much feminist analysis has taken on Ibsen's classic tale and protagonist Nora as its subject it is easy to forget that the source of the plot of "A Doll's House" is essentially a small one. The play is about a financial quarrel between husband and wife. The heroine has unwittingly subject herself to a scheme to release her husband from the stresses of his job for a time in the form of a 'rest cure' -- and because of her female ignorance, nearly ruins herself and her family in the process. Rather than the grand, high familial tragedy of the Greeks and Shakespeare, the protagonists face common middle class difficulties about money and creditors, with very specifically defined, concrete conflicts, in contrast to than the epic themes and royal struggles of high and grand tragedy.

Money thus forms one of the core and symbolic statements of the play -- from the very beginning, when Nora asks for it as a Christmas gift. Like the toys that she buys for the children, Nora asks for it in a winning way, wanting it to tie upon the little tree she has purchased. But the real reasons for her needing money as a Christmas, which her husband does not immediately comprehend, are far more complex. She borrowed money against Torvald's wishes -- but to save his health, not for her own pleasure. Nora's desire to buy toys for others also shows her female selflessness but also her childlike status as a toy, passed on from her own profligate father's household to another household which is stingier yet just as controlling. Her understanding of money is equally underdeveloped.

The lack of communication between husband and wife, and the mendacity it produces is even present in Nora's eating of macaroons in a furtive fashion, again against her husband's wishes -- which she lies about. Her husband sees Nora's constant lying as evidence of her father's legacy, much like the softened spine of his doctor. The letter from the creditor popping through the door forms a connection between Nora's misbehavior as an inheritance of the father's immorality, and when the letter comes, first with a black mark to indicate the family friend's suicide, and then from Nora's creditor.

Given that Nora's school friend Cristina's intervention, however unintentionally, lays the seeds the financial if not the emotional destruction of Nora's happy home, it might be best to not read the central theme of "A Doll's House" as the simple need for female liberation. After all, Cristina has worked hard all of her life, and even her marriage was a kind of work, falsely chosen for financial remuneration rather than love. Ironically, Cristina's early hard work and self-sacrifice for her family formed her own happiness in later life as a woman, as she finally marries a man who loves her, while Nora's feminine wiles and deception in pursuit of her husband's health ruins her own domestic bliss.