Ibsen's A Doll's House (1879)

I'm going to say that with this play Ibsen established himself as one of the most influential Norwegians to live since the time when Vikings dawned their horned helmets and invaded England.  Then I'm going to say that yes, I know that Vikings didn't, in fact, have horns on their helmets.  But the first part remains true: this play rocked Europe in a manner it's difficult to comprehend or compare to contemporary artistic "events".  Perhaps the closest analogy would be the Beatles, or, more recently, Mel Gibson's The Passion.  Of course Gibson's film comes at its subject from a deeply religious and conservative perspective while Ibsen's work is staunchly, radically liberal, but, still:  these were works of art suddenly everyone had an opinion on, and there was little room for middle ground:  you hated it or you loved;  it would liberate society or it would lead to its destruction.

As usual, we're interested in situating A Doll's House in the major themes and philosophies we've been discussing so far:

Identity And Authenticity vs. Ideology And Role Playing:  We're interested more in how all of the play's characters, men and women alike, everyone and all of us, find themselves, ourselves, struggling to balance our Romantic, Roussuean drive to be "true to ourselves", to be honest and open about our feelings and ideas while maintaining our social lives and living up to our societal commitments and responsibilities.  All of the principal characters seem to prove Rousseau's theory that "man is born free yet everywhere lives in chains,"  and Marx gives us a means of discussing the nature of those chains: Ideology, the means by which society "corrupts" (in Rousseau and Marx's terms) our innate goodness and forces each of us to play out a predefined role.  Eventually, the play suggests, it becomes nearly impossible for any of us to differentiate between that role and our authentic selves.  Ultimately, that becomes Nora's quest, but only after realizing how deeply committed others are to simply sticking to their given lines.

Economic Primacy:  More briefly, we're interested in noting the influence of Marx's theory of Historical Materialism: how Ibsen locates economic primacy and the struggle for power in even the most commonplace of all human relations:  marriage.  Remember that Marx was the first to reveal economics as the driving force behind all struggles -- not just between nations or religions, but more commonly, within the most minute functioning of our daily lives. 

Modern, Ideological Tragedy:  In his own notes on the play, Ibsen describes the plot in specifically traditional tragic terms: "The catastrophe approaches, inexorably, inevitably.  Despair, conflict, and destruction"  (Lucas, 150).  This should remind us that Nora (and perhaps all the other principals) is a tragic hero, not (just) and feminist hero:  in tragedy, it's fate and history that doom the characters, not evilness or stupidity.  She and the others  are caught in a social web that they've inherited and yet remain blind to (a definition of not only fate but Ideology), and their destruction looms at exactly the point where they make the right, not the wrong, but the moral and just, decisions.

Keep this last point in mind before you judge her too harshly;  she has much more in common with Romeo, Juliet, Hamlet and Oedipus than she does with Mary Wollstonecraft or Virginia Woolf.

Modernism, Realism and Psychology:  Like Heart of Darkness and much other "Modern" literature, our daily lives and, most importantly, our daily thoughts and why we think them, become the focus;  this is a story about normal, real people living normal, real lives, because following Rousseau and Wordsworth, that's where the interesting stuff happens (that's "Realism"):  you need look no further than a single room or two in your own home to find the most important and interesting human conflicts.  Your own daily life is the locus of a powerful, compelling adventure, and how you have shaped your ideas, your beliefs, your definition of yourself as yourself is itself perhaps the most important issue of all.  In this way, much Modern Realism is mainly simply interested in Rousseau's question: how is it that inherently free, good people, become corrupted?  And can we return to our "state of nature" and rediscover and take back control of our "true selves"?

Modernism And Deepening Shades of Gray:  Within this modern, economically-driven context, there are no real villains here, just people trapped in difficult situations seemingly beyond their own control.  Nora's final choice suggests exactly how difficult and destructive it may be to actually gain that control.

Feminism:  Once you've reached the play's conclusion, it's impossible to miss the play's concern for "feminism" as the logical continuation of Enlightenment appeals for human freedom and equality.  I suspect most of us will be shocked by Nora's concluding choice, and many will be outraged, but to understand the issue, it's worth asking ourselves: what if she had been a man?  Would we have condemned her choice?  I'll open that discussion by arguing that we couldn't even write a play on a man making that choice for the simple reason that men have always been making that choice and so the topic doesn't even interest us.  If that's the case, I think we'll find that we still, today, give men and women radically different degrees of freedom.