A Doll's House and Frankenstein: A Literary Comparison

Introduction to Ibsen and A Doll's House

Henrik Ibsen's A Doll's House (1879) became a landmark of realism, the prevalent genre of theater during Ibsen's time. Realism is the literary movement that strives to portray life as it truly is, with accuracy, and avoids idealizing it. A Doll's House is a modern prose drama that established Ibsen's reputation as a major Norwegian dramatist. He used themes and structures drawn from classical tragedy to write about ordinary people while expressing his concern for women's rights and human rights more broadly. Ibsen believed that husbands and wives must live together as equals and be free to become their own selves. His unconventional treatment of marriage earned him the disapproval of critics, and this unpopularity drove him out of Oslo to live in Italy and Germany for the next 27 years.

A Doll's House is a sad, serious, and intense modern prose drama centered on Nora Helmer's struggle to keep her secret — that she illegally borrowed money — from her husband, Torvald. She attempts to do this by preventing Krogstad, a bank employee who knows about the loan, from revealing it. Meanwhile, Torvald wants to dismiss Krogstad because of his poor reputation at the bank. Krogstad coerces Nora to stop her husband from firing him, threatening to expose her illegal borrowing if she does not. Despite Nora's efforts, Torvald eventually learns her secret and accuses her of being a hypocrite, a liar, and the destroyer of his happiness. He withdraws his accusation, however, upon receiving the forged contract related to her borrowing. But by then, Nora has been shaken too deeply to recover. She finally confronts her true conflict — against her husband's selfish and oppressive behavior and against the society to which he belongs. She tells him that, despite their eight years of marriage, they have never truly understood each other, and that she is tired of being treated like a doll, a mere object of his delight and admiration. She decides to find herself, and to that end she leaves her husband and children.

Supporting the household inhabited by Nora and Torvald are Nora's childhood friend Kristine Linde and Torvald's best friend Dr. Rank. Kristine Linde is not only the keeper of Nora's secret, but her poverty also provides a sharp contrast to Nora's comfortable and pampered life. Dr. Rank, unlike the other characters, is unconcerned with what others think of him and speaks freely about his "diseased nature" and his affection for Nora.

Overview of Shelley's Frankenstein

Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley's novel Frankenstein (1818) is a celebrated Gothic science fiction work about a monster created by Dr. Victor Frankenstein from the body parts of dead persons. Its settings shift across Geneva, the Swiss Alps, Ingolstadt, England, and Scotland. The story is narrated by the explorer Robert Walton, who encounters a weak and dying Victor Frankenstein and learns about his creature from him. The novel is romantic, tragic, and fatalistic, and it revolves around the themes of dangerous knowledge, the sublime nature of man, secrecy, and monstrosity. Other characters include Victor's bride Elizabeth Lavenza, Alphonse Frankenstein, Henry Clerval, Victor's youngest brother William Frankenstein, and Justine Moritz, the Frankensteins' adopted young girl.

Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin was 16 years old when she joined her lover Percy Bysshe Shelley and Lord Byron's circle in the summer of 1816 in the Swiss Alps, where she composed the novel as her contribution to the group's literary project. Mary was the daughter of Mary Wollstonecraft and William Godwin, a radical thinker who counted among the progressive voices in English letters, including Thomas Paine and William Blake. Mary met and ran away with Percy, although he was already married to a woman named Harriet. Harriet later took her own life by drowning, and Mary and Percy eventually married.

Percy edited Mary's manuscript, which immediately became a bestseller. The success, however, came at a painful cost. Three of their four children died in infancy, and Percy drowned off the shore of Tuscany, leaving Mary a widow and single mother. She spent the rest of her life writing and publishing until she died of a serious illness.

Comparing the Two Works and Their Authors

A Doll's House and Frankenstein were written in two different periods of the nineteenth century. A Doll's House, published in the final decades of that century, is a modern prose drama that strives to portray life accurately — without idealization or misrepresentation. It introduced realism as a movement in the theater of Ibsen's time and became its defining landmark. Frankenstein, by contrast, is a Gothic science fiction novel that exposes what lies beneath the surface of monstrosity. It was written and published in the opening decades of the same century. A Doll's House satirizes the social performance of duty within the institution of marriage and the traditional position of well-kept women in wealthy and comfortable families. Many believe that Mary Shelley wrote Frankenstein partly in honor of her father, William Godwin, who held that the true purpose of education is to prepare a generation capable of saving the human race. Mary created a monster to highlight and condemn the social defects that Godwin identified in his time. Both works of fiction expose and mock the dishonesty and cruelty of society, though they do so differently — Ibsen directly and courageously through his characters Nora and Dr. Rank, and Mary Shelley obscurely yet powerfully through her nameless, confused, and despised monster. Ibsen condemns the hypocrisy of his time through the person of a woman, while Shelley exposes human weakness and ugliness through the person of a man — Frankenstein's creature.

Nora Helmer lives a lie inside a comfortable home, surrounded by adulation from friends and society. Frankenstein's monster, in contrast, seeks to uncover the truth about himself by reading the mirror of society's behavior toward him. Both Nora and the monster are playthings in the hands of those who support or create them. Torvald Helmer cultivated Nora in a gilded cage for his own pleasure, while Dr. Frankenstein produced his monster in pursuit of his ultimate ambition — the selfish pleasure of playing God by creating life.

Henrik Ibsen fashioned a female character, Nora, to express his ideal that every person should be free to become whatever he or she chooses. Mary Shelley, on the other hand, fashioned a male character from hideous sources to express her innermost desire to discover the truth about human beings and life. While a wife, Nora is made utterly dependent on her husband for all her needs, including the need to please. The relationship resembles that of a parent and child, in which the child must depend on the parent to survive. Shelley similarly constructs a father-and-son relationship between Victor Frankenstein and his creature, who depends on his creator not only for survival but also for his very identity.

Nora, the creature of Torvald in Ibsen's play, is light-hearted, whimsical, pretty, seductive, and pleasant. In exchange for an easy life and an adoring family, she must remain confined within the household and within the restrictions that society imposes on acceptable women and wives. In contrast, Shelley's creature is, from the very beginning, oversized, hideous, and fumbling — a waste product of Victor Frankenstein's misplaced genius — who seeks his identity, his place in the world, and a place in the hearts of those responsible for his existence.

The Role of Women in Society

A Doll's House and Frankenstein share several important themes. One is the role of women in society. In A Doll's House, the woman is an integral part of the home, where she owes allegiance to her husband and dutifully cares for her children in exchange for financial support and a comfortable existence. If she plays this role well, she receives social approval and respect. But her personal independence is sacrificed in return for these rewards. She has no personality, will, or existence beyond what her husband and society have established as her destiny and worth. In A Doll's House, Nora's prime duty — her very reason for living — is her husband's pleasure, which is in turn shaped by the society Torvald pays allegiance to. A woman in Nora's position must surrender all autonomy to fulfill that predetermined role. This passive, self-sacrificing role of women is also present in Frankenstein through the character of Elizabeth Lavenza. Elizabeth's sole and all-consuming purpose in life is to belong to Victor Frankenstein. She subverts all individualism and personal concerns to that single, overriding life purpose of dedicating herself entirely to Victor.

Bibliography

Ibsen, Henrik. A Doll's House (1879). Dover Thrift Editions. Paperback, February 21, 1992.

Shelley, Mary Wollstonecraft. Frankenstein (1818). Bantam Classics. Mass Market Paperback, June 1, 1984.