ADH critics

Question 1

‘the illusion of…

Answer 1

…bourgeois contentment’ Rustin

Question 2

What contemporary scientific and philosophical discoveries/theories influenced the play?

Answer 2

• Determinism/deontology
• Darwin: Evolution by natural selection

Question 3

How does Nora’s repression manifest itself?

Answer 3

• Self-absorption: her petty arrogance/childish boasting with Christine.
• Small acts of hedonism: eating macaroons secretly, teasing Torvald, flirting with Rank, daydreaming of a ‘rich old gentleman who would rescue her’

Question 4

What is the importance of clothing in the play?

Answer 4

• Helmer and Rank are well dressed, a symbol of status.
• Krogstad and Linde represent a degree of harshness.
• Nora’s tarantella dress represents fantasy, and her street clothes at the end are plain and thus represent her transition.

Question 5

What did Erik Bogh say about the play?

Answer 5

It is ‘so simple in its action and so everyday in its dress’

Question 6

What do Nora’s actions signify in terms of gender roles/separate spheres?

Answer 6

• She conflates the idea of separate spheres, signs herself into a man’s world by forging her father’s signature.
• ‘it was almost like being a man’

Question 7

What system is inextricably linked with Helmer’s ego/masculinity?

Answer 7

• The financial system

Question 8

What do women have to do in order to earn money?

Answer 8

Sacrifice something.
Linde: love
Nora: truth, her own needs, happiness
Anne-Marie: her child

Question 9

How is the concept of separate spheres shown in the opening stage directions?

Answer 9

• doors everywhere.
• Office closed off, Nora creeps up to it

Question 10

What stage direction in the opening of act 2 shows the disintegration of their relationship?

Answer 10

• The Christmas tree has become ‘stripped and dishevelled’ - it is exposed, like their marriage will be.
• The candles in the tree are ‘burned to their sockets’.

Question 11

Why does Torvald’s new job arguably lead to the collapse of their marriage?

Answer 11

• She no longer has to restrict her spending and worry financially. She will no longer have to ‘shut [herself] away’ to make ‘flowers for the Christmas tree’.
• She thus loses her preoccupation with financial affairs and also her purpose as almost a provider.
• Previously their economic concerns acted as a scapegoat for her dissatisfaction; wealth can no longer mask apathy.
• Marx in Capital: Accumulation of wealth at one pole is, therefore, at the same time the accumulation of misery’.
• Without a need to pursue financial freedom she realises how powerless she really is.

Question 12

How does Ibsen critique Victorian beliefs about morality?

Answer 12

• Criticises the belief that morality is inherited, dictated by class and social circumstances: ‘respectability’.
• Believes that actions do not have an inherent morality, but rather that their outcomes are what matters: Nora’s actions (and Krogstad’s) are dishonest, however they are done in order to provide or benefit others.
• Nietzschean