A Doll's House as a modern tragedy
Henrik Ibsen’s most renowned work of drama was undoubtedly A Doll’s
House, a three-act masterpiece written in simple prose that manages to cast a scathing
lens on the conventional roles assigned to women in a patriarchal system stacked
decidedly against the fairer sex. The plot of A Doll’s House centers, like much of
Ibsen’s work, on the power dynamics which exist between married couples, and
indeed, between men and women in general. Authors and playwrights today still
strive to emulate the form and function of Greek tragedy in their own work, and a
close reading and textual analysis of A Doll’s House clearly demonstrates that Ibsen
also derived much of his inspiration from the classics to come before him. A critical
examination of A Doll’s House shows this concern to be unfounded, however, as
Ibsen produced what many literary critics consider to be one of the most significant
works of modern tragedy ever penned and published.
As Ibsen himself wrote in Notes for the Modern Tragedy, “there are two kinds of
moral law, two kinds of conscience, one in man and a completely different one in
woman … (and) the wife in the play ends up quite bewildered and not knowing right
from wrong; her natural instincts on the one side and her faith in authority on the
other leave her completely confused”. The internal conflict experienced by Nora
filters the classical conception of tragic sacrifice through the decidedly modern lens of
a woman abandoning her family to preserve her own identity.
A seemingly simple work of art, A Doll’s House stands today as a lasting testament to
ability of literature to capture the essence of a particular historical era through the
distinctly powerful form of modern dramatic tragedy. The miserable decline of
Torvald Helmer, who begins the play in full control of his home and his wife, the
picture of traditional authority as it existed in the minds of so many empowered men,
before ultimately succumbing to powers outside of his control which render him
ineffectual and abandoned – is intentionally designed by Ibsen to evoke the
deterioration of the patriarchal social construct. Conversely, Nora’s newfound pursuit
of liberation after a life spent dutifully playing a role similar to that of a children’s
doll, is presented as a further extension of the thematic crux of modern tragedy to A
Doll’s House, because although she eventually discovers the futility of her prior
existence, she is forced to accept that her life has largely been devoid of actual
meaning.
As scholars continue to study the import of Ibsen’s contribution to modern literature
even to this day, the prevailing opinion holds that A Doll’s House is the first full-
blown example of Ibsen’s modernism as it contains a devastating critique of idealism
entwined with a preoccupation with the conditions of love in modernity. Fredrik
Petersen, a professor of theology and a contemporary opponent of Ibsen based on the
scandalous nature of Nora’s defiance in the dénouement of A Doll’s House, expressed
a similar sentiment in 1880 after watching the play for himself. Stating his belief that
Ibsen’s play failed in its attempt to emulate traditional forms of tragic literature,
Petersen observed that “one does not leave this play in the uplifted mood which
already in the time of the Greeks was regarded as an absolute requirement for poetic
or artistic work … Having seen something profoundly ugly, we are left only with a
distressing feeling, which is the inevitable consequence when there is no
reconciliation to demonstrate the ultimate victory of the ideal”, and in doing so, he
unwittingly revealed the work he despised so much to be a nothing short of a flawless
example of modern tragedy.
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