Doll\'s House: Father Failures in a 19th Century Drama

¶ … Doll House -- Henrik Ibsen

The play by Henrik Ibsen brings to the mind of the reader and the audience that many men in the past and in the present too, see themselves as superior to women, and women in fact should be happy to carry out the wishes of men. Nora Helmer becomes a kind of plaything for her husband Torvald, and in fact he admits to having fantasies about Nora to give him sensual incentive to engage in intimacy with her. But in time Nora has had enough of Torvald's condescending behaviors and she rebels. This story can be seen as a reflection of the fact that women in the late 19th century were beginning to demand fairness and equality in relationships and in society. While Ibsen later discounted that he wrote a play about women's rights, the play can be seen as a search for freedom and independence, a rebellion against subservience to one individual or one way of life.

Nora Helmer: In the early parts of the play Nora seems willing to go along with her husband's chauvinism; maybe "go along" isn't quite the correct phrase, but in any event she is in love with her husband and believes this is what love and marriage are all about. And even though she pretty much behaves according to the way her husband dictates, she shows signs of acting out her own beliefs -- even acting like a child -- and making her own decisions because she forged her father's signature and applies for a loan by that forgery. She also is depicted eating macaroons even though Torvald has prohibited her from eating them. This is apparently Ibsen's way of foreshadowing what will happen later in the play.

Nora doesn't really see her husband's lack of values and his shallowness in terms of his emotion and heart at first, but through the characterization put into the play by Ibsen she gradually comes to be aware of the ugliness of his macho behavior. "I have been your doll wife, just as at home I was Papa's doll child," she states. She goes on, asserting herself: "I must try and educate myself…I must stand quite alone, if I am to understand myself and everything about me… [I have] Duties to myself." In the end, she abandons her husband and children, a total break from the husband who saw her as part slave, part little girl to be manipulated.

Mrs. Linde: Fathers play an important part in this drama. It could be said that fathers are presented as negative characters throughout the play. Nora's friend Mrs. Linde had problem related to the fact that her father was absent in her life. This is just a sub-plot in the play but it brings the playwright an opportunity to bring into focus family stresses and father-daughter dynamics. In the case of Mrs. Linde, because she had no father to help out, she had to find a father figure to take his place, and she wound up marrying a man she apparently did not love. Marrying a man just to have a father figure in her life would be a big mistake in any period of history, and it was a mistake for Mrs. Linde. In her case, Mrs. Linde's father-figure husband turns out to be penniless and an invalid.

Nils Krogstad: This father -- who was once involved with Mrs. Linde -- is another example of the inept, corrupt or self-obsessed fathers in the story. He blackmails Nora, and he tries very hard to raise his children so that he can be seen as something other than a worthless parent. Krogstad, the scoundrel that he is, knows he has done something very bad (forgery), but instead of stepping up and taking responsibility for his crime, he covers it up. Even Torvald Helmer, a bit of a pretender himself when it comes to good fatherhood, lashes out at Nils Krogstad for Nils' crime: "Every breath the children take in his home is filled with the germs of something degenerate," Helmer states.