Mrs. Linde as Foil in Ibsen's A Doll's House

Introduction: Christine Linde as Foil

In Henrik Ibsen's 19th-century drama A Doll's House, the character of Christine Linde acts as a foil for the main protagonist Nora Helmer. In most dramatic interpretations of the play — such as in the 1973 film version directed by Patrick Garland — Christine appears to audiences as dour, inhibited, and accepting of her fate, in sharp contrast with Nora's vivacity. Christine married a man she did not love out of duty to her poor family, and her life has been one of unceasing toil. She believes her existence stands in sharp contrast to Nora's carefree one.

However, Nora — unbeknownst to Christine — has been toiling herself to repay a debt she incurred in order to enable her husband to take a vacation, an act she believes saved his life. Still, Mrs. Linde never expresses female solidarity with Nora and even allows Nora's husband to discover that his wife borrowed money without his knowledge. Ultimately, it is Christine's unquestioning self-sacrifice that most fully embodies what Ibsen believes to be the false ideal of a woman giving herself entirely to marriage and asking nothing of her husband in return. It is the brave Nora who attempts to live a more honest ideal, away from the confines of this patriarchal institution.

Although Christine claims to have spent her life working, she has done so entirely for others — a role coded as conventionally feminine — and the fruits of her labor have ultimately been barren: her supposedly wealthy husband, who was meant to provide for her and her family, died penniless. Nora comes to understand the falseness of the ideal that men can protect women; Christine never does. As Margaret Stetz observes, "Nora… does not follow Kristine's example, does not leave the doll home to sacrifice herself for others. Hers is the more selfish and ruthless decision to re-create herself in truth, if possible, whatever the consequences" (Stetz 156). By the infamous slamming of the door at the end of the play, Nora makes the decision to leave even her own children so that she may be fully realized as a human being, rather than live as a self-sacrificing wife.

The Irony of Work and Self-Sacrifice

There is an ironic contrast regarding the value of work throughout the play, as embodied by the two women. Nora appears to be the idealized angel of the hearth — the non-working wife — yet it is she who is actually working like a man, unbeknownst to Torvald, taking on labor at night to repay the loan she secured to save her husband's life. Christine's primary "work," for all her seriousness and contempt of Nora, was simply to marry a man; she was only forced to seek employment at Torvald's bank to support herself after her husband's death.

Together, the two women illuminate the unfairness of women's condition in 19th-century society: women are expected to marry, and society offers them little real economic recourse outside of marriage. Women do work in the capitalist sense, but that work is rarely acknowledged. The only labor women are presumed to perform is the act of getting married. Both Christine and Nora work, but the true cost of that work to each woman goes overlooked by the world around them. This dynamic connects to broader historical debates about women's unpaid and unacknowledged labor that extend well beyond Ibsen's fictional Norway.

Christine as the Anti-Feminist Heroine

Christine is thus far from a feminist when contrasted with Nora. She could even be called the "anti-feminist" heroine of the play, given that her primary romantic interest is Nils Krogstad — Nora's nemesis — to whom Christine gives herself unquestioningly. Krogstad attempts to blackmail Nora, demanding that Torvald reinstate his job at the bank or he will expose her fraudulent signature on the loan she took out without Torvald's knowledge. In the patriarchal world of 19th-century Norway, this effectively also means disgracing Torvald, given the husband's presumed dominance over his wife's behavior. Far from censuring Krogstad, Christine ultimately decides that there have been too many lies between the Helmers — even though Krogstad no longer wishes to pursue the matter legally and is content to leave with Christine and begin a new life.

Interestingly, Krogstad reproaches Christine for his own moral decline, claiming that had he been married to her, he would never have sunk so low. This once again demonstrates how the concept of woman as domestic angel shapes even Krogstad's worldview — and Christine implicitly accepts this framing. By choosing to leave with Krogstad, Christine once again finds fulfillment through others: she will be given the opportunity to rehabilitate a "fallen man." This further highlights her difference from Nora, who at the end of the play refuses to play the role of self-sacrificing woman any longer and departs alone.

Conclusion: The Door That Never Slams

A Doll's House was shocking when it was first performed because of the gripping realism with which its story was presented, echoing the lives of so many women (Mazur 29). But to see Nora merely as a silly character who becomes sensible is to understand only half the play's meaning. The supposedly sensible Christine is even more ensnared by the trap of idealized self-sacrifice than Nora — a trap from which she never escapes. There is no final slamming of the door on the doll's house for Christine.

Works Cited

A Doll's House. 1973. Directed by Patrick Garland.

Mazur, Ann. "Victorian Women, the Home Theatre, and the Cultural Potency of A Doll's House." Victorians Institute Journal 41 (2013): 10–34. Humanities International Complete. Web. 13 Nov. 2014.

Stetz, Margaret D. "Mrs. Linde, Feminism, and Women's Work, Then and Now." Ibsen Studies 7.2 (2007): 150–168. Humanities International Complete. Web. 13 Nov. 2014.