A Doll's House
Ratings86
Average rating3.6
Difficult to create a bond with any of the characters. Nora is a completely failed juxtaposition of confused-child and liberated-feminist, stripping her of both relatability and being pitied.
Read it in class. Absolute trash. You mean to tell me a crazy, naive, idiotic woman suddenly has an epiphany regarding her shitty life and leaves her husband? Yeah, no. Not only was this poorly written but completely unheard of during that time. People back then hated it and people know praise it as being ahead of its time. I call it trash.
Edit 03/25/2019: Counting this as my Norway book around the world.
Original Review
I wish the ending was explored more. The whole thing was short, but the end was for sure rushed.
Fell in love with Ibsen when I first read this sometime during my freshman year, in 1966-67. A couple of years later in the Yale Art Museum, some friends and I came across a large portrait of Ibsen – with his large, muttonchop sideburns, he seemed impossibly cool and hip for 1969.
In the first two acts, it almost reads like a sitcom, straight out of I Love Lucy or I Married Joan. (You'll have be of a certain age to get both those references.)
But, in the end, Nora turns any comfortable expectations we had on their heads. I, for one, have to love her.
Reads just as well from my view now as it did in the 1960s foothills of the women's liberation movement.
This play had a slow start but as it carried on it was very sad and very tense. The theme of the Doll House didn't' really sink in until the end and then I found it very sobering and thoughtful.
Format read: paperback
Reading time: 2 hours
Tags: theatre, realism, feminism, social commentary, criticism, problem play
Own a copy: yes
Reread likelihood: 8/10
Summary
Nora Helmer is a bourgeois housewife with a dark secret–she has incurred a large debt without her husband's knowledge. When an old school friend comes to visit her, attracted by Torvald Helmer's new high-paying job at the bank, and Nora's creditor surfaces with new threats, Nora tries everything in her power to keep her secret hidden to the detriment of her own freedom and happiness.
“I believe that before all else I am a human being, just as much as you are–or at least I will try to become one”
-A Doll's House, III.555-556
Review