ADH the MOST key quotes Flashcards
‘How like a woman!’
Nora was denied access to education, Torvald’s view of women
‘I’ll get him in the right mood.’
Limited toolkit, only weapon she has. Reductive and demeaning.
‘When Torvald no longer loves me as he does now’
Nora anticipates a time when she will need something else to keep him - no real love between them.
‘It was almost like being a man.’
No subtlety from Ibsen.
‘Dogs don’t bite lovely little baby dolls.’
The naïve view that bad things don’t happen to good people, misinforming her children.
‘Corrupt my little children! Poison my home!’
Nora is vulnerable here, and is afraid of hurting her family - true morality.
‘I am man enough to bear the burden for us both.’
He lives the stereotype of masculinity and yet this is not actually true - he is not actually masculine.
He feels as though he is taking the moral high ground despite not needing to - he feels superior.
‘Her hair works loose and falls over her shoulders.’
Nora passionately dances the tarantella to distract Torvald from Krogstad’s IOU letter - enhancing her stereotypical feminine sexuality and helplessness to draw Torvald in.
Shows her willingness to perform in the social sexual roles put upon her.
Her hair being down = 19th century connotations of female madness (madwoman in the attic).
‘A long multi-coloured shawl’
Playful, part of the costume, actual performance illustrates the fact that her life is a performance.
The multicoloured shawl is a powerful visual symbol.
‘I’m a shipwrecked man, clinging to a spar.’
The semantic field of abandonment helps us to understand them. Hyperbolic. He has not previously been overly emotional - this helps us to believe them and makes it more affecting. Emphasis on how society abandons people too quickly.
Krogstad, without money or a wife, is desperate.
‘Give me something - someone - to work for.’
She’s not willing to change herself for him. She’s not looking for an easy way out. Purpose - work validates her. This is very big for a 19th century woman - not many women took joy from work. Work as a purpose could be considered a little bit Marxist.
‘As you stand there young and trembling and beautiful’
Torvald breaks bourgeois respectability by exposing his forbidden sexual desire.
He’s not content with the real world - he doesn’t want a real relationship - their relationship is too shallow for the ‘miracle of miracles’ to take place.
‘I believe that I am first and foremost a human being.’
Ibsen said that ADH was not about feminism but about humanity LOOK UP SPECIFIC QUOTE IN WIDER READING BOOKLET
‘You think and talk like a stupid child.’
Whenever she makes a good point he reverts back to infantilising her.
‘Miracle of miracles’
It’s pretty much impossible for their relationship to be fixed.
