Symbols and Search for the Authentic Self in “A Doll’s House”

While character’s motivations may be expressed in a variety of ways, it is the details that reveal their conscious and subconscious decisions to act. In Ibsen’s “A Doll’s House” the reader’s examination of women’s stockings, a slammed door, bird imagery, a desired miracle, and the implications of inherited sin that reveal the most about the Nora Torvald’s search for her authentic self.

When Nora sits in a near dark room with Dr. Rank and flirts with him using a pair of stockings she is attempting to manipulate him, however, she ends up expressing more about her unhappy marriage than she had set out to do. In her day to day life, Nora is engaged in a perpetual waltz with her husband, regressing to a helpless puppet-wife when Torvald is around but an able and manipulative woman when she is alone. In Act I, she acts as a “sulky squirrel” (Ibsen 5) until her husband gives her what she wants. The constant desire to act as a doll wife shows that she knows how to play the game; act helpless and receive affection, money, and material possessions. However, when she is attempting to manipulate Dr. Rank, she doesn’t use her “sulky squirrel” act but rather engages in a scene of teasing and flirting which seems rather more adult. She is disturbed by Dr. Rank’s admission that he loves her and she admits to Rank that “surely you can understand that being with Torvald is a little like being with papa-” (Ibsen 47). This quote is one of the very few honest things that Nora expresses and, if she had not been interrupted, would probably have continued to describe her real feelings of unhappiness and oppression. She even admits to Rank that “There are some people one loves best, and others whom one would almost always rather have as companions” (Ibsen 47). Ganz suggests that the reason Nora rejects Dr. Rank’s offering of money once he has declared his love for her is that she is showing “genuine sensibility” (15) and is “prepared to use her charms to get money” (16) until she realizes that the feelings are deeper than she had imagined. While Nora is using this conversation to ask Rank for money, there is likely truth in that she is more able to be her true self when around him. She acts more like an adult than she has previously in the play and it is the silk stockings that act as a symbol of attempted maturity.

As a symbol, the silk stockings reflect a part of her that is much more mature than the tarantella costume as a whole. In costume, Nora is a continuation of her role as a doll wife to Torvald, but somehow the silk stockings, when shared alone with Dr. Rank seem more personal and intimate. At first appearances, Nora seems to be flirting with Dr. Rank, teasing him with a piece of clothing and the audience knows that she is attempting to manipulate Rank so she can ask for money to pay off her debts; the motive for flirting. However, Brunnemer suggests that Nora is presenting Rank with the stockings because she is revealing her authentic self to him, something that she is mostly unable to reveal to her husband. There is likely some truth to this and her motivation may be similar to the reason that she expressed a desire to swear, “I’m damned” (Ibsen 20) in front of Helmer. While the critic is correct in that Nora is revealing her authentic self by showing him the stockings but there is also another possibility, the stockings could act as a symbol for womanhood or adulthood. The reason this is feasible is because she has been treated as a child and her desire is to be treated as an adult by other adults. Her desire actually grows to the point where she is pushed to leave her husband so that she can learn to be a whole individual.

In the final moments of the play, Nora leaves her marital home and slams the door. A slamming door can represent many things; anger, finality, abandonment, and even strength and Nora’s final action can be a combination of several emotions. Marker and Marker, quoted by Ganz disagree, suggesting that the change has been too swift and that “her door slamming could be written off as silly theatrics” (85-87). There is some disagreement on this point, one of the major themes of the work is of pursuing and obtaining the authentic self, and this is a likely start for Nora. Since the door slamming was preceded by a declaration of her own freedom and her decision to leave forever and discover her true self, the action is about finality. Ganz agrees, “The closing door at the end of A Doll’s House [announces that Nora is leaving] a life of dependence and deception; for Nora the signal inaugurates a new quest for the self” (11). Nora is walking away from everything she has known because she must break away from the familiar that has imprisoned her. However, more can be said about this action and there are other implications for other characters. The slam is also a response to Torvald’s question of hope, “The miracle of miracles…?” which Ganz describes as near “farcical”(14) because it is Torvald’s waking from his dream; his perfect life has collapsed in front of him and the jarring harshness of reality is upon him. While leaving her home will greatly impact Nora, it will also affect Torvald and her children and the slamming of the door seems to be the ending punctuation of these relationships as well. Or, perhaps, it is a change for all of the characters, if Nora is able to maintain her independence, her children and her husband are going to face a difficult change.

However, there are other critics who see “A Doll House” as being feminist propaganda with the slammed door being a final statement about the social oppression of women. Haldavan Koht argued the opposite, saying that once the “topical controversy died away; what remained was a work of art, with its demand for truth in every human relation” (323). This statement has a great deal of truth in it, there is more than the freedom of women at stake in the play, and it is about Nora as a human being. The slammed door is instead the human being who deserves to be treated as an adult and to have the freedom to explore her authentic self. Koht has a point since the themes relating to feminism only truly appear when they are relevant to the society who is reading it. In a society that does not suffer from the specific ill, the theme focuses more on individuals who are suffering oppression in their own household or by their own relationship.

Joan Templeton’s article blasts Nora in many aspects, pulling together sources that call “Nora and ‘A Doll House’ unimaginable” (31) and that her transformation is “incomprehensible” (29) because she is such a weak character whose change in character happens too quickly. To consider Nora a heroine may be, as Templeton asserts, not entirely honest. However, while she may not be a true heroine Nora is a character who is struggling to change and with that comes the awkward and uncoordinated journey that often accompanies adolescence. She is human and she is faulted but she understands how important it is for her to find her authentic self and leave safety of her gilded cage.

Ibsen uses repeated bird imagery for many of the characters and there are several possible reasons for this imagery. Traditionally, birds are symbols of freedom or escape, representations of beautiful women or, if caged, dead or bound, be symbolic of imprisonment or destruction. There are many cases where birds are mentioned in “A Doll’s House” and the reason for the use evolves slightly over the course of the play. Even in the first few pages of the play Nora is compared several times to birds and Torvald’s use of “spendthrift” (Ibsen 2) or “featherbrain” (depending on the translation) shows ownership. Nora is her husband’s pet and he addresses her thus, “little songbird” and “little bird” throughout the play. In these cases, not only does the use of such pet names minimize Nora as an adult, they show her as being a bird that is trapped in a cage for her husband’s entertainment. May-Brit Akerholt discusses this further, pointing out that Torval does not just call her a bird but uses the word “spillefugl” with means “‘playful, ‘gamble,’ and ‘perform’” (117). Whatever word is used, Torvald is using the pet names to minimize Nora as an adult and Akerholt continues to say that his names for her “depersonalizes Nora [and] distances his own feelings from her” (19) which has a great deal of truth behind it. When he uses these pet names for Nora he is continuing the game that he has been playing with her for their entire marriage. He calls her “featherbrain” or “spillefugl” or “little bird” but he is keeping her as a child in their relationship, asserting his dominance and ensuring that Nora is oppressed in their marriage. However, by Act III, Nora’s responses to her husband’s attempts to maintain this relationship are rejected, especially with the miracle does not occur.

Nora’s hope and expectation of the “wonderful thing” or “miracle” shows her desire for Torvald to give up everything, including his reputation, for her. It seems almost contradictory when Nora realizes that someone must take responsibility for the crime she has committed and she expresses that she is waiting for “a miracle” -for her husband to sacrifice his reputation to protect her. However, there is doubt that Nora actually wants to be saved by her husband because, in the end, she leaves the marital household. It is highly unlikely that Nora decided to leave on a whim, while she may be flighty in some ways, she has thought through where she would live, where she would work, and has built up enough steam to decide to leave her husband. Ganz discusses the line “I don’t believe in miracles any more” (Ibsen 56) is not a reflection of one evening’s thoughts but instead, “A dream long treasured in secret” (Ganz 18). Nora has put thought into this desire but has finally decided to act upon it. Since she felt she was saving her husband’s life when she forged the signature, she probably reasoned that her husband would return the favor. This is not what happened, though, and she was so crushed by the denial of her miracle that it may have compelled her to leave.

There are some critics who feel that Nora’s desire for the miracle showed weakness in Nora’s character. Pearce offers an interesting modern perspective of the miracle and mentions the “pathetic limitations of Nora, a woman of more than average potential who must choose between the masks of the doll and the romantic heroine. Neither mask really fits Nora” (340). This is true of Nora, she is not an innocent doll and takes part in illegal activities and consorts with the unsavory Krogstad but she also lacks the strength to be empowered and act as a true hero. Instead, she struggles with her husband’s inability to give up his reputation for her and realizes that the only person she can rely on is herself. In some ways, Torvald’s denial of Nora’s desire pushes her to move toward her goal of finding her authentic self. If he saved her, she would be indebted to him and he would be a further oppressive figure in her life. This has been a theme of Nora’s entire life, even before Torvald, and there are questions of inherited sins in Nora and Dr. Rank that are mysterious.

When Dr. Rank admits to Ms. Linde that he is suffering from an illness because of his father’s hedonistic lifestyle, it brings a few questions for the audience. He is a victim of his father’s decisions- and there is little to suggest that he himself indulged in the same ways. This is curious, that a person would suffer the sins of their fathers. However, when Torvald mentions that Nora is a spendthrift like her father, parallels begin to appear. Has Dr. Rank indulged in some of his father’s weaknesses in the same way that Nora spends money the way her father did? Or is this to show the impact of nature versus nurture; that somehow the behavior was genetically or behaviorally passed on to their children? When Dr. Rank is explaining his illness to Nora he says, “These past few days I’ve been taking stock of my position- and I find myself completely bankrupt. Within a month, I shall be rotting in the churchyard” (Ibsen 42). Pearce examines this statement further, “Dr. Rank gathers the major themes of the play [and portrays the interconnectedness of the] physical world, the moral life, and the business domain” (336). What Dr. Rank appears to be is a microcosm of what it means to exist; he has components of himself that are physical, mental or emotional, and financial. All of these components have also been impacted by his surroundings; he is a victim of his father’s venereal disease, he is in love with his best friend’s wife, and has little money saved because of his illness. Soloski discusses this further “the play manifests frequent anxieties about parental legacies [with Torvald eventually telling his wife that] ‘[A]ll your father’s flimsy values have come out in you’ (187). This is further troublesome for Nora, she is also a puppet of her father’s shortcomings and must take some time to discover whether or not this is true. Part of the struggle for Nora is that she is unable to have the time and space to figure these things out on her own. Instead, her identity has been polluted by the opinions of both her father and her husband and she is unable to understand who she is and understand her own deficiencies as Dr. Rank has figured out his own.

Nora Helmer faces many difficulties in her search for her authentic self and the symbols of her desire for change are present in her actions with the stockings, her slamming of the door, pet-names involving birds, her desperate desire for a miracle, and the implications of inherited sin. Ibsen has offered the audience a flawed heroine, one that is silly and flighty at times, but one who desires change, even in the awkward way that she attempts it. She wants to be her authentic self, she plays the games her marriage has provided her and she expresses her need to feel useful and purposeful. While critics may argue about Nora’s strength and potential, she still leaves Torvald to discover her authentic self, punctuated by the slamming of a door behind her.

Works Cited

Akerholt, May-Brit . "Playbird or Featherbrain?" Forum for World Literature Studies 2.1 (2010): 117-120. Literature Resource Center. Web. 29 Nov. 2013.

Brunnemer, Kristin. "On A Doll's House by Henrik Ibset." Human Sexuality, Bloom's LiteraryTimes 14 (2009): n. page. Bloom's. Web. 28 Nov. 2013.

Ganz, Aruthur. "Miracle and Vine Leaves: An Ibsen Play Rewrought." Modern language association 94.1 (1979): 9-21. JSTOR. Web. 1 Dec. 2013.

Ibsen, Henrik. "Henrik Ibsen's "A Doll's House" Full Text." Wednet.edu. N.p., n.d. Web. 20 Nov.2013, http://www.skitsap.wednet.edu/cms/lib/wa01000495/centricity/moduleinstance/9509/a%20doll's%20house%20e-book.pdf.

Soloski, Alexis. "Staging Syphilis in A Doll House and Ghosts." Modern Drama 56.3 (2013):15-20. Project Muse. Web. 1 Dec. 2013.

Templeton, Joan. "The Doll House Backlash: Criticism, Feminism, and Ibsen." ModernLanguage Association 104.1 (1989): 28-40. JSTOR. Web. 29 Nov. 2013.