A Doll's House: Interpretations (OCR A Level English Literature)

Interpretations

AO5 assesses your ability to understand different ways of reading and interpreting texts. Those different readings can take different forms, from interpretations by critics to watching and analysing different productions of a text.

There are numerous ways to explore different interpretations in order to meet the AO5 assessment criteria, and you must explore a range of secondary reading and perspectives to supplement your understanding of the text. These can include:

• Exploring critics

• Interpretations over time

• Dramatisations

Exploring critics

Different critics will offеr variеd insights and intеrprеtations of A Doll’s House, and citations will lеnd crеdibility and authority to your analysis. Rеfеrеncing well-known critics demonstrates that your interpretation is groundеd in literary criticism. It will also еnhance thе validity of your argumеnt. By citing multiple critics, you can prеsеnt a morе comprehensive and balanced analysis and demonstrate the different range of perspectives and interpretations surrounding the play.

Below are two notable critics who have commented on A Doll’s House:

Ronald Gray: “Ronald Gray’s Ibsen: A Dissenting View” (1977) 

• Ronald Gray, dramatist and literary critic, argues that A Doll’s House “cynically” exploits “popular drama”

• Gray believes Ibsen’s presentation of Torvald is “grotesque” and reduces the pathos of the tragedy inherent in his characterisation

• Gray’s criticisms centre around the invasive themes depicted in each scene and through each character:

  • He argues that the play’s themes are presented too obviously, which takes away from a subtler portrayal of domestic life

• He suggest Nora’s character lacks substance and is a villainous portrayal of a melodramatic female:

  • He says of Nora’s departure, “Her leave-taking” is “too theatrical”

• He argues that Nora shows “no sign of having seen the kind of man Helmer is”:

  • He suggests Torvald’s character is too exaggerated to be taken seriously

• Gray argues that Nora’s flirtation with Dr Rank, something her friend notices immediately, hints at the evident façade of a happy marriage:

  • He says that it hides a wilder nature beneath her demure obedience

Joan Templeton: “The Doll House Backlash” (1989)

• Jean Templeton’s critique explores the play as a feminist work

• Specifically, she considers it in terms of what she believes is a reductionist interpretation of the play as only a feminist work

• Templeton considers whether Ibsen “meant to write a play about the highly topical subject of women’s rights”:

  • She believes, instead, it is a play that speaks a “truth of the human soul”

• As part of a modern backlash to feminism, Templeton’s research suggests the play was used as a form of “propaganda” for feminists

• In her work, Ibsen’s Women, written in 2015, she says that the play can be considered as universal and canonical, as well as feminist:

  • She states that the “power of A Doll’s House lies not beyond but in its feminism”

  • She goes on to suggest that the play can be considered universal through its themes of “equality in the relation between women and men”

• Templeton praises the characterisation of Nora as one who “embodies the comedy as well as the tragedy of modern life”:

  • In this way, she views her as relatable and likeable

Interpretations over time

Since its release in 1879, Henrik Ibsen’s A Doll’s House has been performed across the globe, second only to Shakespeare in its popularity. Since its first production though, society and thinking has changed greatly. Below are some examples of critical reactions that have evolved in relation to the key themes and ideas in A Doll’s House.

Reactions on early performances 

• Early European responses to A Doll’s House focused on its ending

• Progressive interpretations praised its accurate depiction of what one critic called “thousands of families”, going on to add, “Oh yes there are thousands of such doll-homes”

• These interpretations see Ibsen’s resolution as hopeful, illustrating Nora’s release from “her inescapable duty” to leave a husband who “slowly sacrifices her on the altar of his egotism”

• However, traditional interpretations criticised Nora’s character as less than noble and maternal and, in this way, “unrealistic”:

  • It was perceived by many as an attack on marriage

• After a premiere in Copenhagen critic M.W. Brun suggested a “real wife” would accept her husband’s forgiveness and “throw herself into her husband’s arms”

• Such interpretations believed Ibsen’s play had “screaming dissonances” and sympathised with Torvald’s confusion in the final scene

• In 1879, critic Fredrik Petersen, a theologian, criticised the “lack of a reconciliation scene” adding that this made the play “ugly”

• An article in 1889 written in the Daily News suggested Nora’s change was strange:

  • It criticised “her conduct in the end in deserting her home, her husband, and above all her children, simply because she finds that her husband is angry with her”

• Ibsen was accused of “loving the repulsive” by contemporaries in Europe who argued that the play was “illogical and immoral”:

  • Debates suggest Ibsen proves Torvald correct in his depiction of a fickle woman

Reactions by the author

• In The Critical Heritage, published in 1997, Ibsen is quoted as suggesting “marriage must be wholly cancelled”, arguing that “every imperfect relation should be eradicated in order to make way for a better” 

• Ibsen argues that the play’s intentions were not to “further a social purpose”

• His philosophy on his role as a dramatist is “most of all to see”

• A Doll’s House has been praised as a work of feminist literature, however Ibsen states he did not write the play “consciously for the cause of women” 

• His defence to the feminist reading of the play is his lack of clarity on “what the cause of women really is”

More recent reactions

• In a review of a recent adaptation produced by Jamie Lloyd, The Guardian pays tribute to the minimalist interpretation of the play’s dark themes:

  • The review suggests the play’s “reverence” is accurately portrayed by Nora’s “real grief” at the corruption of her life

• In another review of this adaptation in Frieze, Rhoda Feng suggests the play’s “inner spirit” is its inevitable truths, “like the idea that the key to a long-lasting marriage may be a willful blindness to a spouse’s faults”

• Smallwood wrote in The New York Review that Lloyd’s version emphasises that “everyone in Ibsen’s play suffers under the binding ties of patriarchy”:

  • Recent interpretations of Torvald perceive his casual cruelty as particularly hard to watch

• In The New York Times, Jesse Green suggests the play’s “ingenious plot demonstrates that marriage is not the only cage”:

  • Green writes that Lloyd’s version illustrates how “any woman who dares to venture beyond the security of the place society has made for her — who tries to discover herself as a full human — will meet with disaster”

• Michael Billington, of The New York Times, writes of Carrie Cracknell’s production in 2012, reminding us that the play is “about domestic revolution”:

  • He calls the play a “timeless study of the need for domestic honesty and spiritual liberation”

Dramatisations

Examining various productions on stage and screen of A Doll’s House will enable you to appreciate different interpretations of the characters and themes, and also how they may have evolved over time, reflecting shifts in society and culture.

Patrick Garland: 1973

• In Garland’s film adaptation of Ibsen’s play, A Doll’s House, Nora’s animalistic associations are exaggerated:

  • Nora imitates the sounds and actions of animals in response to favourable reactions

  • The film dehumanises her to present her vulnerable and diminished identity 

• In this adaptation, Garland shows audiences the tarantella dance:

  • This highlights Torvald’s pride at his “treasure” and his obvious sexual desire

• Garland’s adaptation portrays Torvald even more unsympathetically than Ibsen’s original play:

  • Torvald slaps Nora after reading Krogstad’s letter

  • The addition of physical violence stresses his lack of respect for her

• Claire Bloom's performance was praised as “interesting in that her Nora displays a self-awareness of the role when she is confronting to her husband, which makes her final scene quite believable”

• Anthony Hopkins is cast as Torvald Helmer, portraying what has been called a “thoughtful portrayal” of the authoritarian husband 

• The photography depicts the Norwegian setting accurately, making the most of the cold atmosphere to highlight darker themes

Lee Breuer: 2007 

• In Breuer’s film version of the play, his alternate interpretation of the characters has been widely debated

• It has been argued that his version makes the dramatic play comedic to highlight gender themes:

  • Male characters are played by dwarves while female characters are played by very tall woman

  • It is suggested that this stresses the absurdity of social order and highlights subversive forces in the play

• The Washington Post reviewed the version as “avant garde”

• Other critics suggest it “shocks and enlightens audiences as never before”

• In Breuer’s version, Torvald’s patronising tone becomes comedic and ironic as he looks up to a towering Nora

• The stage setting symbolises a dollhouse as a man’s world:

  • Only doll-like women can fit in the confined space

  • Breuer makes his female characters so large they struggle to fit into the small set

  • He argues that this parallels the way women are not accounted for in male-dominated societies