Doll\'s House Henrik Ibsen\'s 1879

¶ … Doll's House"

Henrik Ibsen's 1879 play "A Doll's House" puts across an account related to conditions in the nineteenth century concerning the role of women, money, and social status. Ian Johnston's interpretation of the play firstly emphasizes some of the main concepts that the playwright was interested in demonstrating that people's passions can be the reason for their problems. This critique speaks about how society is similar to a game that one needs to play perfectly in order to achieve success. Even though Johnston considers that every character ultimately fails in life because he or she did not manage to live in accordance with society's legislation, he tends to ignore the fact that most of the characters in the play eventually come to understand the world more thoroughly because of their problems.

It is certainly difficult to determine which is more important: social status or self-interest. Society was a harsh place during the nineteenth century and people had trouble experiencing progress as long as they did not act in agreement with the social order's law system. Johnston claims that Nora is not actually free consequent to the moment when she leaves Torvald. From his perspective, the fact that she leaves is "a self-destructive assertion of her uncompromising and powerful ego, a necessary expression of her Romantic quest for freedom" (Johnston, 2). Surely, it would be absurd for someone to claim that freedom can always be exercised without experiencing harm. The social order promotes the belief that people sometimes need to sacrifice their resources in order to be able to live comfortably. For example, many people have to perform tasks that they do not enjoy in order to get paid. The fact that they do not do what they want can be interpreted as evidence that they are not free while they are working. However, this is a divisive topic and Nora's condition can be considered to be slightly different from the condition of a person doing something that he or she does not enjoy doing. She does not have a choice regarding the way that society sees her, as her contemporaries are generally inclined to consider that women are inferior to men. While a worker can experience progress and eventually reach a point where he or she enjoys what he or she does, Nora cannot change people's opinion all by herself. Even with that, she risks losing a lot of the things that she previously appreciated in favor of what she perceives as being freedom. It is not necessarily that she wants to be an unsuccessful individual in a demanding society, as she actually prefers to trade material values for values that she considers to be more important. Her experiences taught her that it is better for her to live as a free woman than as an individual who constantly depends on someone else. Torvald's outburst only contributes to making her understand that it is essential for her to act before it is too late. Surely, people like Johnston might consider that it is only natural for people to accept being treated as if they are inferior as long as they profit from the matter. However, it is most certainly better for a person to live life free than to be subjected to a dehumanizing process throughout their lives in exchange for things that he or she perceives as being "good" for him or her.

Although Nora experiences success as a result of the fact that she breaks away from society's spider web, she suffers as she realizes that Torvald is unable to look beyond material values. She hopes that he will eventually acknowledge that he needs to change. "The dramatically active question of the last act is whether the "wonderful thing" will happen or not. The scene in which Nora realizes that it won't is one of the great scenes in modern drama, not only in precipitating the same mordant speeches" (Bloom, 32). Nora rapidly discovers that she cannot save Torvald and sadly leaves him as she knows that she needs change in her life and that she needs to do it with or without Torvald, as he does not deserve to join her as long as he does not understand what the most important values in life are.

In contrast to Nora, Torvald is exactly what society wants him to be: an individual who acknowledges the importance of material values and who considers his self-interest to be more important than anything. This character's personality is shaped by traditions and he is largely unable to understand concepts that are in disagreement with what he learned during his life. Not only did life teach him to be merciless in regard to his peers, but it also influenced him in believing that he should trust no one. Moreover, he developed a strong sense a prejudice during his life, this trait being most obvious at the moment when he discovers Nora's crime, as he claims that "I ought to have suspected that something of the sort would happen" (Ibsen, 253). Torvald is not very different from a robot, as he plans each of his actions and knows what to expect from life. However, as Johnston clarifies, Torvald does actually acknowledge the meaning of feelings, but wants everyone around him to like him and is determined to do everything in his power in order to upgrade his social status. Torvald's behavior is generally determined by society's rules and he is unwilling to break these respective legislations, regardless of the circumstances.