Notes on a Doll's House
by Frank McGilly

A Doll's House was completed in 1879, when Ibsen was 51. The League of Youth and Pillars of Society had established him as a serious (if nonetheless entertaining) playwright, who obliged his audience to examine the cracks in the foundations of society - the costs to the individual man and woman of obsolete ideals and institutions. There came storms of abuse from offended quarters - but nothing compared with the reception given A Doll's House. Of all of society's sacred cows, none is more sacred than the institution of marriage and the family, with a rigidly defined role for woman as wife and mother.

As Ibsen put it, "A woman cannot be herself in the society of the present day, which is an exclusively masculine society, with laws framed by men and with a judicial system that judges feminine conduct from a masculine point of view."

This was the first successful play of its era to affirm a married woman's right to her own individuality. There had been feminist writers before, but the involvement of the audience in the theatre was a different experience from reading a book. Outrage was predictable. (Even the actress who created the role of Nora in the German premiere insisted that she could not convincingly act as Nora acted, and demanded a more conventional ending. Ibsen reluctantly acceded.)

The die was cast, however. The representation on stage of women was freed of long-standing restraints - whether or not all succeeding playwrights exploited their renewed liberty. Elizabeth Robins, the first to play Nora in English, declared that no playwright had meant more to women in the acting profession than Ibsen.

Yet Ibsen stoutly declared that he did not consider himself a campaigner for women's rights. "I do not know what the women's rights movement is all about", he said. This is not as paradoxical as might appear. A Doll's House is neither a sermon nor an editorial. It is a play that still grips audiences, whatever has changed in the status of women. And that is precisely the point: the theatre turned a corner with Ibsen because he put important questions into compelling dramatic form.

Born in 1828, Ibsen, by his mid-twenties was manager of a professional theatre in Bergen, Norway. His contract called for him to write an original play each year; he learned his art by doing. Aspiring to be a poet, he composed his first plays in verse. Though some were moderately successful, few of them are known today.

Travel abroad, in Italy and Germany, enabled Ibsen to find himself as a playwright. His first success came in 1866 with Brand, followed in 1867 by the anti-heroic Peer Gynt, whose popularity was later enhanced by the music of Edvard Grieg. Both, however, have proved difficult to stage.

By their unblinking inspection of social conventions through characters who confronted them, Brand and then the commercially successful The League of Youth aroused fierce controversy, as did most of his later plays, including A Doll's House. In many countries (including Great Britain) performances of some were forbidden for years. Professional critical opinion was divided, but theatregoers responded to real situations faced by real human beings - not the romantic heroes, dastardly villains and virtuous heroines long familiar on the European stage. One can hardly think of another playwright of Ibsen's time, other than his contemporary Chekhov and his younger disciple Shaw, whose works have cast an equal spell on audiences worldwide.

Famous, revered, Ibsen died in 1906. In one of the most egregious oversights in literary history, he was never awarded the Nobel Prize.