Thursday, April 16, 2015
2005 AP Free Response Question:
In Kate Chopin's The Awakening (1899), protagonist Edna Pontellier was said to have "that outward existence which conforms, that inward life which questions." In a novel or play that you have studied, identify a character who conforms outwardly, while questioning inwardly. Then write an essay in which you analyze how this tension between outward conformity and inward questioning contributes to the meaning of the work as a whole.
Use A Doll House to respond to and discuss this. You do not need to write an essay - just add to the discussion.
Ibsen apprehensively wrote an alternate ending for his German audience. Read it and explain what changes were made and how they affect the meaning of the play as a whole.
NORA.
... Where we could make a real marriage out of our lives together. Goodbye. [Begins to go.]
HELMER. Go then! [Seizes her arm.] But first you shall see your children for the last time!
NORA. Let me go! I will not see them! I cannot!
HELMER [draws her over to the door, left]. You shall see them. [Opens the door and says softly.] Look, there they are asleep, peaceful and carefree. Tomorrow, when they wake up and call for their mother, they will be - motherless.
NORA [trembling]. Motherless...!
HELMER. As you once were.
NORA. Motherless! [Struggles with herself, lets her travelling bag fall, and says.] Oh, this is a sin against myself, but I cannot leave them. [Half sinks down by the door.]
HELMER [joyfully, but softly]. Nora!
[The curtain falls.)
Tuesday, April 14, 2015
Janet McTeer on her role as Nora in 'A Doll's House' (1997 - Charlie Rose)
You do not need to respond to this! Watch if you like.
This is an interesting review in 1910. I like the comment that the play is the Tarantella. What do you think this means? What is the evidence that this is true? How does this support the theme - or central message?"
A DOLL'S HOUSE: AN ILLUSTRATION OF SYMBOLISM
A DOLL'S HOUSE: AN ILLUSTRATION OF SYMBOLISM
Friday, April 10, 2015
Inside Nora and Torvold's Marriage - a first look
What are your first impressions of Nora and Torvold's marriage?
Contemporary Reviews of A Doll House
Click on this link above. You will find two reviews of A Doll House from Ibsen's time. How do you want to respond to these reviewers? (Note the document is kind of funky - you have to scroll down).
Click on this link above. You will find two reviews of A Doll House from Ibsen's time. How do you want to respond to these reviewers? (Note the document is kind of funky - you have to scroll down).
Contemporary Reviews of Ibsen’s A Doll’s House
Read two reviews of early productions of Henrik Ibsen’s A Doll’s House. Use the questions on the side to guide your thinking. Then answer the blog post.
The premiere of A Doll’s House at The Royal Theatre reviewed in Fædrelandet (The Country), Copenhagen, 22 December 1879.
The Royal Theatre performed tonight, for the first time and of course to a filled house, Henrik Ibsen’s three-act play A Doll’s House, published 3 weeks ago. It was obviously followed with great excitement and fascination, at least up to the last scene, and the applause was strong both after the first and second acts, as it was after the final curtain. But we do want to ask the honourable audience members, if the impressions they received were of the kind they are used to getting from a genuinely poetical work of art, and if the mood in which they left the theatre was the joyful, happy and buoyed one in which the pleasure of such events usually puts them, whether the content is tragic or comic? Perhaps the answer will sound a little different; because the general audience easily becomes, according to its nature, sentimental[1], and Mr. Ibsen is not free from using this weakness to his advantage; but at least it seems doubtful to us, if his latest work, its great technical merit and rich psychological interest not withstanding, is a step in the right direction or — on the wrong track.
A Doll’s House belongs to the same kind of drama as "The Pillars of Society"; it is different in many things, but the same in its basic deliberations. In the former, it was a respected businessman, one of society’s highly esteemed and celebrated pillars, who turned out to be rotten to the core, one who had built his family life and his earthly happiness on a callous betrayal of his best friend, whom he thought had emigrated forever, and who, when the friend unexpectedly returns after many years, from fear of discovery, does not hesitate to commit a grave crime to dispose of the friend; and it is not his fault that it fails to be executed. But here (in Doll’s House) there is a young, beautiful and lively woman (Nora), who apparently has lived in the happiest and jolliest, albeit somewhat temporal[2], marriage, waited on hand and foot and humoured in every wish by her besotted[3] husband, and who has 3 healthy, bright children, with whom she romps like a child herself, but who turns out to have committed a very imprudent[4] action, which she has not dared to divulge to her husband for 7 years, although she keeps suffering its consequences; she has, in fact, falsified her dead father’s signature on a debt certificate. To be sure, morally, she is not on equal footing with Consul Bernick; firstly, she has only done it to obtain money so her husband can regain his health by going to the Mediterranean, and her father was on his deathbed at the time; she has had no clear concept of the illegal aspect of her action, although giving it some reflection would surely have made her better informed, and she has struggled to save her household money, even taking on copy-writing, in order to pay off the debt; she finally justifies it by claiming she was a spoilt child, a doll, whom an irresponsible and egotistical husband has taken over for the same use. So Nora Helmer does not stop behaving charmingly nor does she lose the audience’s sympathy, because she has sinned against the law; what it is most difficult to forgive her, and to understand, is that she fails to conquer her cowardice and find a moment to confide her torment to her husband when she realizes that, having concealed this matter from him for much too long, she has put herself into the power of a man who wants to and can devastate both him and her; because she is utterly entrenched in her belief that he will take everything upon his own shoulders.
But if the author would have allowed what is natural and reasonable to happen, what would his play have been like then? He wanted to keep her, and with her, the sympathetic audience members, in suspense for two and a half, or two and a quarter acts; he has done it well, through a clever and diligent structure, through a fine psychological development, and through masterly dialogue; but it is still painful to watch. One may learn a great deal from it; one gets to hear or understand many truths; but there is nothing uplifting, no one at all who stands on a higher and more assured level than this mutually guilty married couple; one leaves with a despondent[5] feeling of common human frailty, of what is hollow and disappointing in much of so-called human happiness, but — without any of the joy. Because there is no lasting pleasure in watching a great writing talent grapple with tasks which cannot satisfy anyone, or perhaps only the writer himself, according to his individual mood, but hardly anyone else.
But H. Ibsen has wanted something more here, than throwing light on the sorry state of human happiness; he has just as much targeted one of the institutions, by which society is supported (marriage); he has not only wanted to show where thoughtlessness and lack of truthfulness can lead an otherwise charming human being; he has also wanted to portray marriage as an arrangement which, instead of educating the individuals, if not always, but still often, corrupts them, and which they therefore have a moral right to immediately dissolve, as soon as it no longer satisfies them, and especially when they reap this sorry fruit from it, that either through loneliness or through another relationship they become more developed human beings. This reflection upon marriage, in which Mr. Ibsen shows himself to be in accordance with his countryman and colleague Mr. Bjørnson, is false. That it was entered into and was for a while lived in carelessness, and that the married couple either by a sudden discovery or little by little get a different view of each other than they had from the beginning — does not at all entitle them to dissolve it, but refers them solely, through the marriage, to seek the improvement or the "transformation" they need. Least of all should it be allowed, because such a discovery has been made, to dissolve a marriage, in which there are children, because that subjects them to the most awful injustice. It is just a phrase that one just cannot educate them or each other; for one should, and the children also could contribute considerably to their parents’ self-education.
But if Mr. Ibsen had had, we do not want to say a Christian view of marriage, but simply the one which is legal in the whole civilized world, where should he then have found an effective finish to his play? "A Doll’s House" shows, like many of his other dramatic works, that no matter how ingenious his talent, how logically correct the psychological development, and how brilliant his dialogue, he has very often a problem finding an ending, which at once satisfies himself and his audience; and he is then easily tempted to put the effect above the truth which he has sought to portray in all of the preceding action with great success. Certainly, he has an ethical comprehension of human life; however, his own feeling does not always dictate to him the moral law, which in each single case must and should be applied. Besides, as far as the present work is concerned, the effect of the resolution is weakened by the fact that the final scene is too long.
|
1. How did the audience respond to the first production of Doll’s House (up until the last scene)?
2. How would you describe the marriage of the two main characters of Doll’s House, based on the reviewer’s attitude?
3. What is the secret that Nora has kept from her husband, Torvald?
4. Based on the reviewer’s attitude, how would you characterize Nora Helmer?
5. How has Henrik Ibsen portrayed the institution of marriage in Doll’s House, according to the reviewer?
6. Based on what this reviewer says, why do Nora and Torvald consider “dissolving” their marriage?
7. Why does the reviewer seem to be so offended by the production?
|
Premiere of A Doll’s House at The Royal Theatre, in Social-Demokraten (The Social Democrat) in Copenhagen, 23 December 1879.
Finally an event at The Royal Theatre, and an event of the first class! This play touches the lives of thousands of families; oh yes there are thousands of such doll-homes, where the husband treats his wife as a child he amuses himself with, and so that is what the wives become. But what a tragic conflict the great playwright has created from it; each scene is full of suspense for the audience, one trembles for the dreadful day of reckoning. Then it arrives; but is totally different and much more dreadful than expected. It is our own life, our own daily life, which here is brought onto the stage and condemned! We have not, in dramatic or poetic form, seen a better, more powerful contribution to the question of female emancipation! Who, after seeing this play, has the courage to speak scornfully about run-away wives? Is there anyone who does not feel that it is this young and delightful young woman’s duty, her inescapable duty, to leave this gentleman, this husband, who slowly sacrifices her on the altar of his egotism, and who fails to understand her value as a human being. His invocation of religion and morality and consideration of people’s gossip sounds, in the face of the resolute woman’s indignation, like the most hollow and empty phrases. Go and see this play, you mighty supporters and defenders of morality. You clerical gentlemen and chaplains; and let us cordially speak further about these things with these images of life in mind! Or would you enjoy this play on a purely aesthetical level? Hopefully it will not give you a restless night afterwards; because here there are plenty of dolls’ homes.
About the performances, I will only say that Mrs. Hennings, who here carries everything, celebrates one of her proudest triumphs in the role of Nora, and Mr. Poulsen’s performance as the bank manager is among this actor’s finest achievements. Mr. Sofus Petersen acquits himself quite well as the solicitor, and Miss Dehn is a little less maudlin[6] than we remember having seen her on many other occasions. No one, who in any way is able to, ought to neglect seeing this play.
|
8. According to this review, what is a “doll-home”?
9. How does the opinion of this reviewer differ from that of the previous reviewer on the subject of Ibsen’s treatment of marriage as an institution?
|
[1] Sentimental—(adj.) of or prompted by feelings of tenderness, sadness, or nostalgia; emotional.
[2] Temporal—(adj.) the opposite of spiritual; related to everyday affairs only.
[3] Besotted—(adj.) strongly infatuated; in love with.
[4] Imprudent—(adj.) unwise; not thought out carefully.
[5] Despondent—(adj.) in low spirits from loss of hope or courage.
[6] Maudlin—(adj.) self-pityingly or tearfully sentimental, often through drunkenness.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)