As A. E. Zucker ([1929] 1973, 163) points out, A Doll’s House shows a woman “living apparently under the protection of chivalry which . . . failed to operate at the . . . critical moments when [her husband] was tested.” The play’s main action is based on the experiences of Ibsen’s protégée and friend Laura Kieler, who found herself in the aforesaid heartbreaking situation. However, the ending, in which Nora leaves the cowardly Torvald, could have been at least partially shaped by Ibsen’s own betrayal and consequent loss of his first love, whom he had played with like a doll.
The Crumbling of a Real Life “Doll’s House”
Ibsen first became acquainted with Laura Kieler (then Laura Petersen) when she sent him a copy of her newly published Brand’s Daughters, a quasi sequel to his Brand. After he and his wife had formed a close friendship with Laura, he called her a “lark,” a term of endearment that Torvald often addresses to Nora. Years later Laura claimed Ibsen had first used the term “a doll’s house” in reference to her marriage (Koht 1971, 318).
But Laura, like Nora, could not remain a doll. Victor Kieler developed tuberculosis, and his doctors warned Laura that he would die unless he moved to a warmer climate for a while. Without her husband’s knowledge, Laura took out a loan to pay for a trip to Italy. The trip cured Victor’s illness, but Laura found herself unable to comply with her creditors’ demands for repayment.
Laura was afraid to inform Victor, who exploded over mere household expenses, that she owed a large sum of money. So she sent Ibsen’s wife a novel she had penned hastily and a letter begging her to persuade Ibsen to have it published. Ibsen refused, insisting that the book was a rush job and inferior to Laura’s previous writings. He wrote to Laura, advising her to tell Victor the truth. Instead Laura tried to get the money she needed by forging a check. But the bank detected her forgery, so she finally had to tell her husband the whole story of the secret debt she had incurred to save his life.
Instead of helping Laura settle the matter, Victor treated her like a criminal and decided she was an unfit wife and mother. When this caused Laura to have a nervous breakdown, he had her committed to a mental hospital and obtained a legal separation from her so that he could remove their children from her care. Laura was released from the asylum after a month. She eventually got back together with Victor despite his cruel betrayal.
Growth Through Loss of a Disillusioned Doll
Ibsen used Torvald Helmer to satirize not only Victor Kieler and “the ‘superior’ husband” (Zucker [1929] 1973, 163), but also his own former behavior as a lover and would-be husband. When he was twenty-five, he wooed a fifteen-year-old named Henrikke Holst, calling his courtship of her his “little plan to own a lovely maid” (Koht 1971, 82). Instead of conversing with Ibsen as an equal, Rikke laughed merrily at his witticisms and responded to his poetic flights by “turn[ing] her gleaming brown eyes up toward her black-bearded poet” (Zucker, 58). Their romance began when she threw him a bouquet of flowers, asking, “Haven’t you any two-shilling cake for me?” and he replied, “Sit down and try some, you sweet-tooth” (57–58). This response foreshadows Torvald playfully wagging a finger at Nora and asking, “Hasn’t Miss Sweet-Tooth been breaking rules in town to-day?” (Ibsen [1879] 1958, 6).
Like Torvald, Ibsen lost his beloved pet through an act of cowardly betrayal. He proposed to Rikke, but her father vehemently opposed the match and forbade Rikke to spend time with the penniless poet. When he later caught the two of them together, he came after them with a furious face, raised arms, and clenched fists. Terrified, Ibsen ran for his life, destroying Rikke’s love for him. Ibsen was miserable over losing Rikke and disgusted with his own cowardice. His lingering shame may have been reflected in Brand, where Agnes leaves Ejnar because he is not strong enough to risk his life for another person’s salvation.
The theme of weakness killing love is pivotal to the ending of A Doll’s House. Nora had dreamed that Torvald would tell Krogstad to go ahead and publish her forgery to the whole world and that he would then take everything upon himself, saying he was the guilty one. When he instead declares that her “crime” must be concealed at any cost, out of fear for what threatens him rather than her, she sees he is not the man she had thought him. Once Nora falls out of love with Torvald, she realizes that her home has been nothing but a doll’s house and decides to leave it.
Torvald tries to persuade Nora to stay, assuring her that he can change. She answers, “Perhaps—if your doll is taken away from you” (Ibsen [1879] 1958, 71). Learning the distressing lesson that a “doll” would stop loving him when she saw he was not “man enough to take everything upon [him]self” (38) may have been what led Ibsen to accept women as equal partners in the struggles of life.
Ultimate Dissolution of Unequal Unions
Torvald Helmer’s specific actions are based on the deeds of Victor Kieler, who doted on his wife as an adored toy but then became enraged when he found out she had committed a forgery in connection with money she had secretly borrowed to save his life. However, Torvald’s losing Nora through his unwillingness to sacrifice his honor for his “doll” mirrors Ibsen’s own failure to keep his “lovely maid” (Koht 1971, 82) by risking his life for her. The ending of A Doll’s House dramatizes Ibsen’s painfully acquired realization that a marriage cannot survive hard times if it is not a union between equals.
Sources
Davis, Dena Michelle. 2004. “‘Only Connect’: A Journey of Teaching Ibsen’s A Doll House to Play Analysis Students.” Master’s thesis, University of North Texas. digital.library.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metadc4526/m1/1/high_res_d/thesis.pdf.
Ibsen, Henrik. (1879) 1958. A Doll’s House. In A Doll’s House, The Wild Duck, The Lady from the Sea. Translated by R. Farqharson Sharp and Eleanor Marx-Aveling. Revised by Togrim and Linda Hannás. London: J. M. Dent & Sons.
Koht, Halvdan. 1971. Life of Ibsen. Translated and edited by Einar Haugen and A. E. Santaniello. New York: Benjamin Blom.
Templeton, Joan. 1997. Ibsen’s Women. New York: Cambridge University Press.
Zucker, A. E. (1929) 1973. Ibsen: The Master Builder. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston. Reprinted by special arrangement with Holt, Rinehart and Winston. New York: Octagon Books. Citations refer to the Octagon edition.
Rochelle Zappia - I have been an avid reader and a prolific writer for most of my life, and I have thirteen years of experience in educational publishing. ...
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