Victorian Context: A Doll’s House 

Ibsen’s views 

• Considered to be father of modern drama – argued that every person had a right to self actualisation – to be who they wanted to be 
• He wrote the story with a humanist eye – the drama focuses on the real and burning social issue of revolution that had become essential for society to progress
• By the end of the play we are left with a clear image that Ibsen is a humanist who through the lens discusses feminist issues 
• ‘I am not a member of the women’s rights league’  … ‘to me it has seemed a problem of humanity in general’ 
• Templeton believes Ibsen was the first male writer to treat women as people rather than some inferior form of human life 
• ‘A woman cannot be herself in contemporary society, it is an exclusively male society with laws drafted by men’  – Templeton 
• Feminist Emma Goldson: uncompromising demoliser of all false idols and dynamiter of social shams and hypocrisy, Ibsen consistently strove to uproot every stone of our social structure 

Literary and Theatrical Context

General influences

• Ibsen was fond of saying he didn’t read books (wasn’t true – read Dickens and admired Russian novelists )
• Internet was to remind critics and journalists that unlike most of them he hadn’t had expensive education 
• Passionate reader of newspapers and liked to converse with friends and wife about current literary trends across world 
• These sources inspired topicality of dead on issue such as women’s rights and STDs

Rejecting idealism 

• In the late 18th century, drama was shaped by idealism: the idea that art should lead people to perfection by offering a vision of truth and beauty 
• Nora learns to reject in favour of clear thinking 
• Idealist drama – oversimplified characterisation, fills stage with stereotypes – women especially tended to be shown as either saints or devils rather than complex 
• Ibsen wanted a drama that left the audience to draw their own conclusions rather than tie up ends of the story 

Structural model 

• Eugene Scribe = a popular dramatist – wrote many plays appealing to middle class 
• Made with the formula known as the ‘well-made play’: comprised of exposition, a development and compilation then a denouement 
• Ibsen directed many of Scribe’s plays, despised Scribe’s sensational stories and cheap emotion 
• But the discipline of Scribe’s structure had offered a way to contain the disorganised passions of idealist drama

Ibsen

• Father of modern prose 
• Born in Norway, March 20 1828
• His father was a prominent merchant but wet bankrupt when he was 8 – spent most of early life living in poverty 
• 1858: Ibsen married Suzannah Thoresen – had one son 
• Husband and wife should live as equals, free to be their own human beings 
• His critics attacked him for failing to respect institution of marriage and much of his writing stirred up sensitive issues in norwegian society 
• Unlike many of his pieces which were written inverse, A Doll’s House  was written in prose → 
• A Doll’s House manifests Ibsen’s concern for women’s rights and human rights in general
• Moved to italy in 1864 – spent 27yrs in Italy/Germany 

The New Woman/The Woman Question  – Victorian Marriage 

• Raised by Mary Wollstonecraft (Vindication of the Rights of Woman) 
• Influences mid and later Victorian feminists – urged upper class women to obtain proper education and profession to make themselves financially independent and become active in public sphere 
• Charlotte Elizabeth Tonna dealt with The Woman Question in ‘The Wrongs of Woman’ – condemned women’s industrial employment and propagated domestic feminism 
• New women coined by writer and public speaker Sarah Grand – departed from stereotypical Victorian women 
• She was intelligent, educated, emancipated, independent, self supporting 
• End of 19th century: New Woman ideology played a significant role in complex social changes → redefining gender roles, consolidating women’s rights and overcoming masculine supremacy 
• New Woman = source of ridicule in press and popular fiction 
• Henrik Ibsen stated that he didn’t “worked in the interests of the woman question”

Naturalism 

• Eric Bogh – The play is simple in its action and so everyday in its dress, it would be described as naturalistic – displayed human behaviour
• Naturalists abandoned ‘normal’ theatrical conventions

Social protest writing

• Writers portrayed major social issues and implicitly demanded change
• George Bernard Shaw stated that the audience were like guilty creatures sitting at a play

Historical Context

• Born in a time of change – Danish king ceded to Norway to King Karl XIV of Sweden 
• Growing enthusiasm for specifically norwegian culture and for the newly available written form of norwegian language, Landsmaal 
• Danish was still the language of the cultured – no classical plays has been translated to Landsmaal  

Industrialisation 

• At time of Ibsen’s birth – 90% of the population was involved in agriculture 
• By the end of writing A Doll’s House – the economy was capitalism and industrialism 
• Improved transport, population doubled in size, 
• new social groups: industrial working class (largely powerless), expanding middle class (including clerks like Mrs Linde) and more socially mobile bourgeoisie of lawyers specials (e.g Helmer, Krogstad wishes)

Revolution 

• 1948: revolutions in Europe 
• Radical reform movement in Norway defended rights of poor farmers and factory workers – brutally put down by with aid of swedish monarchy → population divided over issue 
• Ibsen sympathised but lacked courage for direct action – narrows norwegian nationalism exasperated him 
• 1864: Prussia invaded Scheswig – Karl of Sweden and Norway offered Denmark his support – but norwegian parl forbade it 
• Ibsen saw danish canon paraded in triumph through Berlin – didn’t forgive his country for betrayal of his fellow Scandanavians
• All these made Ibsen cynical about politics 
• A Doll’s House: Krogstand and Nora’s father shows the corruption to some degree 
• Central character in an enemy of the people 

New sciences 

• Freud was an admirer of Ibsen
• Introduction of photographs – before the ability to record images was only for rich who could afford to commission paintings 
• A Doll’s House written just as Danish translations of Darwin were being published 
• Naturalism was seen as a response to new sciences and was at odds with religion
• Emile Zola: felt naturalism was the proper response to the blossoming of new science 
• Nora’s determination to think for herself rather than accept what the church taught her and Helmer’s shock at the idea would have found echoes across scandinavia 

Norway 1879

• 1979 = A Doll’s House first premiered 
• Women cannot attend university, own their own property 
• Upper Class women not expected to work 
• 1992: women allowed to attend university 
• 1988; statute on marriage – granting women legal capacity/right to manage own earnings (but join ownership remained most common)

United Kingdom

• 1968: vote issues allowing women to attend university but most degree not issues to woan till 1880
• 1882: Married Women’s Property Act – allowed women to keep earrings or property acquired after marriage 
• Literary canon dominated by men 
• 1840: 60% women still illiterate – industrial age only brought opportunities for men 

Ibsen + Naturalism 

• Describes hs era as ‘something new’
• ‘I think that the natural sciences teaching about evolution is also relevant to life’s spiritual elements’ = Reason for not including religion, link to heredity
• Totals sayanora is like how her father used to be 

Morally displeased ( pg 16)

Relationship between crime and sickness was debated 

Darwinism: criminals may have been seen as unhealthy specimens doomed to die out – DR rank is up to date with scientific development 

One of Ibsen’s realism notes on A Doll’s House ‘there are two kind of spiritual laws … one for men and one for women’

• Women: based on emotions – nora doesn’t understand why fraud was bad – importance of family ties 
• Wem: based on logic and rationality – Krogstad using logic to threaten her 

Suffering 

• Once married – under complete and total supervision of her husband 
• Refusal of sex was grounds for annulment of the marriage
• Husband allowed to beat wife without fear of prosecution 
• Not till 1991 that similar ruling denied him the right to rape her 
• 1891: high court ruling prevent husband from imprisoning his wife in order to pursue conjugal visits 

Alfred Lord Tennyson – Princess 

• Represents ideas of them occupying different spheres 
• The Princess is a serio-comic blank verse narrative poem 
• Tells the story of a heroic princess
• Prince who she was betrothed to in infancy enters, disguised
• They’re discovered then batter for her hand – they look wounded but the women nurse them back to health 
• In a time where women were not really allowed in universities 
• In the end women do come back to nurturing role 

The Tarantella 

• Dance of the spider
• When bitten – highly poisonous  
• Only cure was to engage in the frenzied dancing ritual of the tarantella 
• Townspeople would surround the tarantata with instruments
• Move in an erratic way – dance alone until exhausted = thought to be cured 

• Origin- town of Taranto in Puglia, bite of the local wolf spider (the tarantula) was widely believed to be highly poisonous and led to a condition known as ‘Tarantism’
• Only lower stated women were affected- ‘fishergirl’

Darwinism 

• Darwin’s theories of evolution contradicted Church teaching about a literal ‘creation’.
• Darwin explained that all organisms must adapt and change to survive.
• This led to controversy. The Church was reluctant to accept that God’s design was not fixed and unchanging
• Nora’s own development suggests that she is adapting to a changing world.

More Context 

1879 Norway

• Women cannot attend university
• Women unable to own their own property
• Upper class women expected to not work

Some progress was made in 1870 when the Married to Women’s Property Act came into effect 

• This allowed women to keep earnings or properly acquired after marriage. It wasn’t until a further Act in 1882 that they were allowed to retain what they owned at the time of marriage.

Nineteenth century Norwegian theatre

Naturalism

• Pre-Raphaelite tradition characterised by intensity and colour 
• Zola regarded people as the products of their hereditary and environment e.g. Nora + Father, ‘Spendthrift’
• Realist drama focus merely on depicting everyday life, naturalist drama involved this scientific approach, usually exploring taboo subjects, eschewing (except) supernatural or religious elements, and examining how the character’s hereditary and environment shapes and dooms them

Laura Kieler – inspiration to A Doll’s house

• Fellow writer and friend of Ibsen (nickname was Skylark), forged a cheque to clear debt she had acquired when borrowing money to send her husband to a warmer climate
• When the bank discovered this, Laura’s husband threatened to divorce her, temporarily incarcerated her in a mental asylum and denied her access to her kids for two years

Queen Victoria in a letter dated 29th May 1870

• ‘God created men and women different-then let them remain each in their own position’
• Enshrined by religious doctrine 
• Solidifying the rigid, seperate social structure 
• Epitomised femininity and domesticity 

Female as a non-sexual object 

Queen Victoria epitomises this- a woman’s place was in the home, as domesticity and motherhood were considered by society at large to be a sufficient emotional fulfilment for females

Marriage 

• Complete supervision of her husband, control of possession
• Control of her body, refusal on sex was grounds for annulment
• Allowed to beat his wife, rape her, without fear of prosecution
• 1891: cannot imprison his wife in order to pursue his conjugal rights
• 1991: marital rape

Alfred Lord Tennyson

‘Man for the field and woman for the hearth:

Man for the sword and for the needle she:

Man with the head and woman with the heart:

Man to command and woman to obey;

All else confusion’.

The Contagious Diseases Act 1864

• Allowed for the forcible detainment of prostitutes in ‘Lock hospitals’ while the men who frequented prostitutes, in a ghastly example of double standards, remained at liberty to spread any disease they happened to be carrying.
• It was widely accepted that men would be unfaithful to their wives; penalised for their sexuality- ‘The other woman’

In 1840, 60% of women were still illiterate. The industrial age meant that education increasingly offered men the opportunity.

POLARISING – Augustus Egg

• The theme of the triptych is the discovery of the woman’s infidelity and its consequences
• An apple has been cut in two, the one half (representing the wife) has fallen to the floor, the other (representing the husband) has been stabbed to the core. (in the picture)
• The position of her arms and the bracelets round her wrists give the impression that she is shackled. In Victorian England a man could safely take a mistress without fear of recrimination, but for a woman to be unfaithful was an unforgivable crime. As Caroline Norton, an early feminist, wrote, ‘the faults of women are visited as sins, the sins of men are not even visited as faults’ (quote in Lambourne, p.374).

• Past and present, women are outcast in society. Presents the wife in and around children and animals, almost mirroring Nora’s obsession with her own children which infantilizes Victorian women as it presents them as only capable of caring for children and restricts them within the domestic sphere therefore heavily limiting their actual power.
• Contrastingly, the movement of ‘The New Woman’ threatened conventional ideas about ideal Victorian womanhood. They were free spirited and independent, educated and uninterested in marriage.
• Linked to freedom of sexuality 
• 60% of women at the time were illiterate 

Madonna Whore Complex

• Women are either the virginal wife or are a fallen woman
• Once you are a whore, you cannot redeem yourself

The Male Gaze Theory 

• Women in the media are viewed from the eyes of a heterosexual man and that these women are represented as passive objects of male desire

High Anglican 

• Well versed in the dogmatic, rigid doctrine
• Rejected one of her suitors due to his religion
• Religious mania
• Worked in Highgate; reform fallen woman, setting of the church. Prostitutes to Nuns

The stamp of masculine approval was placed upon ignorance of the world, meekness, lack of opinions, general helplessness and weakness.

Lack of self-autonomy deriving from institutionalised inequality, enshrined in laws such as the Property Act of 1870

• Fervent rejection of the status quo, instead acknowledging the limitations of a socially acceptable trajectory

The New Woman

• Free-spirited, educated and uninterested in marriage and children, the figure of the New Woman threatened conventional ideas about ideal Victorian womanhood.
• Radical – increasing number of opportunities becoming available to them in a male-dominated society.
• With educational and employment prospects for women improving, marriage followed by motherhood was no longer seen as the inevitable route towards a level of financial security.

Fin de siecle

• Pursuing new sensations – sex and sexuality played an increasingly important part in the search for new experiences

Punch magazine made the New Woman a figure of fun, presenting her as an embittered, over-educated spinster perpetually stuck on the shelf