A Doll's House

I had to close this production blog by sharing a story that I found in The Guardian during the winter break. It seems these events have been burbling in the Norwegian press for a while and were picked up by the British papers as part of a robust UK interest in Ibsen after recent successful productions of his plays in 2011 such as National Theater’s premiere of Emperor and Galilean, Arcola Theatre’s revival of A Doll’s House, and the Jermyn Street Theatre revival of Little Eyolf, starring none other than our recent visiting guest artist, Jonathan Cullen!

The scandal bears all the hallmarks of Ibsen’s dramaturgy if not his actual hand: forged documents including fragments of a “lost” Ibsen play, supposedly titled The Sun God, were bought by collectors and national archives in Norway throughout the 2000s. After much conflict and suspicion over their authenticity within circles of scholars and collectors, police now seem satisfied that all the pieces were the fabrications of a Norwegian scriptwriter and actor named Geir Ove Kvalheim.

In addition to a “signed” first edition of the Ibsen play John Gabriel Borkman, which had a dedication from Ibsen to Edvard Munch, Kvalheim also sold multiple WWII era “artifacts” from Nobel-prize winning author Knut Hamsun (a Nazi sympathizer) to Norway’s national library. His friendships with various Norwegians who worked with the Nazis during the second world war, seemed to have protected him from charges until, according to The Guardian, in a plot twist worthy of Ibsen:

[His] relationship with [Fredrik] Jensen [a former member of the Waffen-SS] broke down after Kvalheim passed the police footage of interviews he had carried out for a documentary, which he claimed proved that Jensen had helped shelter Nazi war criminals. In 2007, Norwegian courts ordered Kvalheim to pay Jensen £40,000 in damages for this claim, which resulted in Jensen being accused in newspapers of sheltering Aribert Heim – the Austrian nicknamed “Dr Death” for his gruesome medical experiments on inmates at the Mauthausen concentration camp – at his home in Málaga, Spain. But by the time Jensen died, aged 90, in July last year, it was believed that Heim had in fact died in Cairo in 1992.

Kvalheim is due to stand trial in April 2012.

I always find that the most rewarding and exciting part of putting on a play is seeing how the audience receives your work and their reactions.  The performance of the show really tied my work on the piece together and it was fascinating to watch the other audience member’s responses. Earlier, I looked at reviews of “A Doll’s House” and examined how the original critiques of the work consisted of issues with Nora’s behavior and decision to leave Torvald.  Throughout the rehearsal process, we discussed how the expectations of women in society have changed.  However, when I saw the show, it was so interesting to see that the audience not only sided with Nora, but hated Torvald. The men and women around me were cringing and looked so uncomfortable after Torvald read Krogstad’s letter. They were appalled by Torvald’s abusive reaction, rather than Nora’s decision to leave. I think the thing that would have been the most shocking to this audience would have been if Nora came back, like in the revised version that Ibsen wrote. Nevertheless, the production was successful in turning the tables and making Torvald out to be the bad guy.

The gestures were also extremely powerful. Nora’s squirrel-like hand trembles really conveyed a sense of urgency and worry. I felt uncomfortable just watching her. Her fast jerky motions as compared to the rest of the cast’s much slower and calmer gestures also intensified her nerves. Ms. Linde especially contradicted her with her steady and smooth actions, tranquil diction and sensible manner when she was next to Nora.

One of the most common threads that I saw in my research of past and current productions of “A Doll’s House” was that productions all over the world aimed to somehow speak to the culture and people of their time period. They tried to push audiences to think about women’s rights and gender inequality in a modern setting, not just the 1800’s. Even productions that were not staged in the modern day, such as this one, tried to put a mirror up and ask how far women have come in society. This performance really succeeded in questioning the audience with the exchanges between Torvald and Nora in Act III, Nora and Linde’s initial discussion in Act I and Nora and Rank’s weird relationship. I talked to the people next to me in the performance and it was clear that the message of the piece really resonated with them.

Kim

I don’t want to give away the vision that greets the audience when they enter the space, but it does so much to heighten the anticipation for the top of the show.

I’ve been wondering why I’ve been such a Scrooge about holiday commercials showing up on my television screen, but I think it is because it’s been Christmas Eve in our rehearsal room and stage since September! But there is something about seeing this set that makes me feel that holiday giddiness.

So tonight I told a couple of you that I was going to listen carefully and see what I heard more than what I saw, to get back to the root of this thing — the text. I’ll say in advance I’m sorry if was at all annoying, tapping away in the audience.

ACT 1

Gosh that theremin is just the right kind of eerie. A nice counterbalance to the giddiness I just mentioned. A way to signal that I should temper my anticipation because the things that are coming might not all be good, happy.

I’m struck by the picture Torvald paints of the roof tile falling. How does that square with this particular perspective on aesthetics? Is it something horrible that he’s telling her to shock her into realizing? Does it pain him or please him to use such graphic terms.

Great bored husband on the couch, Torvald, while Nora is showing all the toys. “Oh the unbearable suspense,” came across as an indulgence. Something you say because you know she expects it.

Ah, the macaroons. You had such a nice moment looking down at Nora in the chair, Torvald, and she smiles up at you at the end of that exchange about inheritance and her father. Is it seeing her teeth that inspires your interrogation about the candies?

Helene, when you come in and check the stove, is it a chance for you to warm yourself? It dawns on me that the maid’s quarters are probably much chillier than the parlor.

Wow. There is a terrific Real Housewives vibe in this scene between Nora and Kristine. Really terrific changes in dynamic and how you take in what you perceive as insults, Nora and how you look down on what you think is Nora’s story, Kristine.

Nora, do you know you’re making Kristine a bit uncomfortable as you press the line “he didn’t leave you anything?”

Nora, you are so conspiratorial with the line, “You didn’t love your husband at all..?” Are you at all genuinely amazed? You have convinced yourself you have married for full and true love. Can you imagine, esp. in Act 1, anyone not doing the same?

“I saved his life.” I really heard this assertion in new ways tonight. I think you say it about 6-7 times in the space of 4 pages.

Ah! “It would be so humiliating and upsetting to him to admit he owed me anything.” I heard this with particular resonance. It’s the foreshadowing of what comes in Act 3, but amazing by Act 3 Nora is so startled by the extent and vigor of his rage.

Love those little finger rolls on “quarterly interest” and “installments,” Nora.

Don’t forget the extra little emphasis on the “e” at the end of “Linde”.

Nice touch to eat a macaroon Krogstad.

I missed “It’s not the first of the month.” It just got rushed a bit. We need it because it confirms what we’re supposed to be realizing about your relationship with Krogstad.

Nora, really nice assertiveness with Krogstad. There was a hint of this backbone in your scene with Kristine, but the idea that the flighty woman from the opening of the act could be this strong was surprising and compelling.

The interrogation about the promissory note was particularly well done. It made me connect the early line of Nora’s “I wouldn’t think about them [the men we'd borrowed money from].” Now we see the aftermath of not thinking about the man from whom you borrowed money.

“Any lawyer knows that.” Hmm. Interesting how both Krogstand and Torvald uses their experience as lawyers to “school” Nora about the workings of the ‘real’ world.

Wow. Terrific work ya’ll. The energy, the overlap but also the clarity and the discoveries. YAY!!

ACT 2

Nice getting the idea about Dr. Rank, Nora. A creeping realization about the solution right in front of you.

What a great break down of the real (?) reason behind why Torvald must get rid of Krogstad. “Boy hood friend … one of those relationships that kicks you in the face… doesn’t hide it in front of those who count.” A whole new layer of Torvald gets made in that speech.

Dr. Rank … what prompts your line, “There’s something I want to say to you.” It got kind of merged into the line before it. Is this the reason you’ve come over? Does her moving away from you give you the courage to say this?

Really great tension between Rank and Nora. The yes yes no no begging and the refusal. “You get nothing from me now.” So simple and so crushing.

Got a great sense of how Nora overwhelms people, physically. Poor Helene almost fell over backwards on the chair and it just gave me the full sense of Nora’s energy washing over her, over us in the audience by proxy.

The suicide imagery has a nice shape to it. The way they take on a new sense of kindred spirits in this scene (the groundwork of this connection laid in Act 1 with the revelation of the mutual forgery) is something that slowly catches the audience.

“Be my own recognizable bird again.” Love these little lines of Torvald’s. He admits, so subtly, that he only recognizes her when she’s a bird, a squirrel, etc. A great foreshadowing of how when all those masks get dropped, he can’t really see her.

ACT 3

Jenny, are you familiar with the silent film actress Theda Bara?

I get such a strong sense of her in the film of your Tarantella dancing.

“Life has taught me not to believe just words.” “Then life has been a good teacher.” There is such a resonance in this exchange. It helps us see why Kristine is so intent on forcing Nora to confront what she’s done with Torvald. It is also a further indication of how much these two characters deserve each other and will be our hope for a union of equals.

“Have you really got the courage?” This sent me back to the discussion with Nora. How many different kinds of  “courage” does Krogstad recognize, believe in?

The imagined lines to Torvald demanding the letter back nicely echo the kind of familiar tone Krogstad takes that drives Torvald crazy. Nice.

A great oafish drunk, Torvald! You’re making me wanna just punch you. Good. A magnification of his puffed up personality from earlier Acts. The knitting vs. embroidery exchange was particularly gooey and awful.

Telling little slip of the tongue, Rank. “Let your child … wife wear what she wants.”

The pointing to the cushion as if she’s a dog … whoa. That’s low. And right on the money. (There I go using financial metaphors!)

I got such a sense of how much Torvald manages his own feelings and public presentation. Especially during his harangue of Nora when he mentions being still in love … and then stops himself. It’s hard because Ibsen’s made him such a foil, but Torvald is a doll too.

Wow. How the phrase “guide you” goes from ominous to fearful to disgusting in the course of this Act. Torvald first employs it sexually, as he’s managed her performance and then turns it around to the threat/worry that he will be implicated in her crimes and then, when the danger has passed, how he’ll clamp down even more, managing her every move, her rehabilitation into his life.

And we come full circle. “Think of what people will say.” “I can’t think about them. I can only think of what is necessary for me.” And for the first time, we can cheer Nora’s assertion of this kind of selfishness. Previously it was the key to her undoing. Now it is essential to her survival.

Oh this is such good work ya’ll. Such resonance and energy and even though it’s not a “happy” story, it’s so joyfully told. And by that I mean commitment, energy, and intelligence. Now, let’s get the people in here to share it.

A childhood friend of mine who is now a Presbyterian minister had this intriguing link on her FB page today. It was something called a “money autobiography.” This device, developed in 2001 by a financial planner named Richard B. Wagner, poses questions so that individuals can explore the personal and cultural roots of their perceptions about money. Interestingly, in just the limited research I’ve done, I’ve found Wagner’s exercise reprinted almost exclusively by churches as part of programming for parishioners who are struggling with money, communication, and relationships.

So it’s in that vein that I offer Wagner’s questionnaire from which one builds the “money autobiography.” I can’t help but wonder how the characters in A Doll’s House might answer these questions. Ibsen uses a family’s financial (and legal) catastrophe to diagnose the power inequity at the heart of the marriage upon which the family has been built. I’m not quite sure that Wagner’s diagnostic moves much beyond the personal and emotional, but it does raise interesting questions to consider especially in this time of economic turmoil.

To understand your relationship with money, it is important to be aware of your self in the contexts of culture, family, value systems and experience. These questions will help you. This is a process of self-discovery. To fully benefit from this exploration, please address them in writing. You will simply not get the full value from it if you just breeze through and give mental answers. While it is recommended that you first answer these questions by yourself, many people relate that they have enjoyed the experience of sharing them with others who are important to them.

As you answer these questions, be conscious of your feelings, actually describing them in writing as part of your process.

Childhood:

• What is your first memory of money?
• What is your happiest moment with Money?
• Your unhappiest?
• Name the miscellaneous money messages you received as a child.
• How were you confronted with the knowledge of differing economic circumstances among people, that there were people “richer” than you and people “poorer” than you?

Cultural heritage:

• What is your cultural heritage and how has it traditionally interfaced with money?
• To the best of your knowledge, how has it been impacted by the money forces? Be specific.
• To the best of your knowledge, does this circumstance have any motive related to Money?
• Speculate about the manners in which your forebears’ money decisions continue to affect you today?

Family:

• How is/was the subject of Money addressed by your church or the religious traditions of your forebears?
• What happened to your parents or grandparents during the depression?
• How did your family communicate about money?
• How? Be as specific as you can be, but remember that we are more concerned about impacts upon you than historical veracity.
• When did your family migrate to America (or its current location)?
• What else do you know about your family’s economic circumstances historically?
• What was the original primary source of your money?
• What gifts were shared with others in return for this money? (goods, services, establishments, etc?)

Your parents:

• How did your mother address Money?
• Your father?
• How did they differ in their money attitudes?
• How did they address Money in their relationship?
• Did they argue or maintain strict silence?
• How do you feel about that today?
• Please do your best to answer the same questions regarding your life or business partner(s) and their parents.

Childhood: Revisited:

• How did you relate to Money as a child?
• Did you feel “poor” or “rich”?
• Were you anxious about Money?
• Did you receive an allowance?

Credit:

• When did you first acquire a credit card?
• What did it represent to you when you first held it in your hands?
• Describe your feelings about credit.
• Do you have trouble living within your means?
• Do you have debt?

Adulthood:

• Have your attitudes shifted during your adult life?
• Why did you choose your personal path?
• Would you do it again?
• Describe your feelings about credit.

Adult attitudes:

• Are you Money motivated?
• If so, please explain why? If not, why not?
• How do you feel about your present financial situation?
• Are you financially fearful or resentful? How do you feel about that?
• Will you inherit Money? How does that make you feel?
• If you are well off today, how do you feel about the Money situations of others?
• If you feel poor, same question.
• How do you feel about begging? Welfare?
• If you are well off today, why are you working?
• Do you worry about your financial future?
• Are you generous or stingy? Do you treat? Do you tip?
• Do you give more than you receive or the reverse? Would others agree?
• Could you ask a close relative for a business loan? For rent/grocery money?
• Could you subsidize a non-related friend? How would you feel if that friend bought something you deemed frivolous?
• Do you judge others by how you perceive they deal with their Money?
• Do you feel guilty about your prosperity?
• Are your siblings prosperous?
• What does the word “retirement” mean to you?
• What part does Money play in your spiritual life?
• Do you “live” your Money values?

Exterior

• What is your income from all sources?
• Is your income reliable?
• What are possible threats to your income?
• Do you have contingency plans in the event your income is disrupted for any reason?
• What is your net worth? (The sum total of the sale value of all of your assets less your debts.)
• What sorts of assets do you own?
• What is the purpose of these assets?
• Do you understand the financial implications of these assets? (i.e., what is a bond? What is a stock? What is a collectible? What is real estate? What are commodities? What is a“start-up”? What is an IRA or other pension oriented account type? Etc.)
• Do you have insurance sufficient to meet anticipatable, foreseeable, not easily absorbable risks?
• Do you understand the financial implications of an extended life span?
• Do you have a will? Do you have documents explaining your intentions for personal care in the event of a debilitating illness? For administration of your assets?
• If you own a business or people are relying upon your continued life, do you have a succession plan?
• Do you have people you can trust in your life?
• Do you understand how money works?
• Are you carrying debt of any sort? Why?
• Are you having trouble paying your bills?
• Have you analyzed your spending patterns/habits?
• How many credit cards do you have? Why?

As you look around at your possessions:

• Do you understand why you bought each one?
• Do you understand its current value to you?
• Do you wish you had your money back?

There may be other useful questions to pose to you. Others may occur to you as you progress through your life’s journey. The point is to know and understand your personal money issues and their ramifications for your life, work and personal mission. This will be a “work in progress” with answers being both complex and incomplete. Just incorporate the fine tuning into your life’s processes and practices and share the good ones with us or others.

Wager is linked with WorthLiving LLC and the Nazrudin Project, a group of financial planners inspired by Jacob Needleman’s 1991 book Money and the Meaning of Life and organized by George Kinder. The Nazrudins turned questions of financial planning (esp. for retirement) inward, away from “how much do I need?” to “what will bring me satisfaction and joy?”

In our research for the Nora “biography,” a version of this will be in the program and on the LINK wall, Kim and I found a video project titled Nora, Leaving Torvald. This nine minute film ran at Scotiabank Nuit Blanche in Toronto in October 2010, sponsored by Laluqu Atelier Gallery and Blackcurrent Productions. The piece was shot at Hillbrow Grand Masons Lodge, South Africa. It stars Steve Pillemer as Torvald and Mbali Kgosidinsi. Directed by Myer Taub with Nadine Hutton as Director of Photography and editor.

As I watched Thursday night’s run, it struck me that we’ve not really discussed period etiquette in detail especially protocols of greeting. Just to start off on a light note, here’s a clip from Penn & Teller’s Bulls#*t that cuts right to the heart of the power dynamic between men and women in the Victorian era. It features Walter Nelson, an “expert” in Victorian etiquette, whose website, The Gentleman’s Page, I reference below.

Here is a short list of basic protocols between Ladies and Gentlemen:

• Gentlemen, rise to your feet when being introduced, or when someone, particularly a Lady, enters the room.
• “Between gentlemen, an inclination of the head, a gesture of the hand, or a mere touching of the hat is sufficient; but in bowing to a lady, the hat must be lifted from the head. [...] The body is not bent at all in bowing; the inclination of the head is all that is necessary.” From Our Deportment 1881.
• Ladies make a small curtsey in response to a Gentleman’s greeting, especially if they are meeting for the first time.
• Hostesses greet invited female guests cordially, shaking hands, making all feel welcome.
• “In passing through a door, the gentleman holds it open for the lady, even though he never saw her before. he also precedes the lady in ascending stairs, and allows her to precede him in descending.” From Polite Society at Home and Abroad 1891.
• Never turn your back on someone.
• If you have to remove yourself (to answer a door or look out the window) always asked to be excused.
• Ladies are never seen opening their own doors in the presence of a man, or carrying anything heavy.
• Ladies do not call on gentlemen except on matters of business. Gentleman call on one another with little ceremony but still an awareness of class and public position.
• Gentlemen, never sit beside or in near proximity to the hostess on a sofa unless expressly invited to do so.

Given this list, we can see how Nora breaks the number one rule of all interactions: avoid arousing “the passions.” She’s also a bit with a number of these interpersonal conventions (perhaps not surprisingly since all the scenes we see happen in her space of the home) perhaps with the exception of Krogstad.

For their first scene in Act 1, I think Krogstad is scrupulous about manners, so he’d bow to start off, and Nora responds by coming towards him and speaking more informally until she gestures for him to go to Torvald’s office. Christine moves away to the window and, since Nora doesn’t bother to introduce them, Jamie you don’t make any kind of greeting gesture or acknowledgment. Just know that if you turn your back on the two of them suddenly without asking to excuse yourself, you too are breaking a code of manners.

For the second scene in Act 1, Krogstad knows he’s breaking the rules by coming alone to her house, but when their moment begins he seems apologetic for the breach. Since they’ve been engaged in this “business” for a while, it seems logical that they go through the motions of behaving according to proper rules. However, by Act 2, as they both become more desperate, most if not all pretenses to decorum have vanished, and Krogstad really breaks into her physical space in ways that are really gross breaches of behavior.

We can see how Nora’s situation influences her behavior when, by the beginning of Act 2, we find her coming back in from going out alone, to call on Kristine. Being unescorted on the street is a big no-no. That’s why Torvald’s shows his gentlemanly character when he offers to “go down the road together” with Kristine towards the end of Act 1 and we get to see how far that mask of the gentleman has slipped by Act 3 when he lets her go off into the night alone: “It would be my pleasure to … but you don’t have such a very long walk have you?” (99)

As a widow, Kristine has more ‘freedom’ to be on her own in public (and to work outside the home) than Nora. But, while she might not be assumed to be a prostitute since she is unescorted and looking for work, Kristine must know that a woman alone still needs the sanction of Gentlemen. So I think that upon her meetings in Act 1, first with Dr. Rank and then with Torvald, both men would bow their heads and Kristine would courtsey. She probably continues her part of the etiquette in Act 3, when Torvald and Nora return from the party (maybe a curtsey to accompany her line of “Good evening”?). However, in the first part of Act 3 when she is alone with Krogstad I think they might start out acting more formal with each other (but dispense with any bowing or curtsey) and then that melts as they get to the heart of the matter.

Just for extra information, here are a few pieces of advice from The Essential Handbook of Victorian Etiquette that also touch upon the Doll’s House world

• No gentleman should use his bare hand to press the waist of lady in the waltz.  If without gloves, he should carry a handkerchief in his hand.
• Swinging the arms when walking, eating upon the street, sucking the parasol handles, pushing violently through a crowd, talking and laughing very loudly and boisterously on the streets, and whispering in public conveyances are all evidences of ill-breeding in ladies.

If you’re feeling gutsy, you can try this interactive game hosted by the McCord Museum (Montreal, Quebec) where you gain points by how well you navigate social situations (as either a man or woman) according to Victorian rules of etiquette.

According to OldandSold.com, following the annexation of Norway to Sweden in 1814, Norway was granted a separate currency. Each country therefore adopted the practice of placing the country name first after the king’s name. During the reign of Oscar I (1844-59) on Swedish coins it reads OSCAR SVERIGES NORR. GOTH. OCH VEND. KONUNG and on Norwegian coins: OSCAR NORGES SVER.G.OG V. KONGE (Oscar, King of Norway, Sweden, Gothland and Vendalia). This practice continued until Norway gained independence in 1906.

1890 1 Kroner coin. Image from Coinquest.com.

The krone was introduced in 1875, replacing the Norwegian speciedaler at a rate of 4 kroner = 1 speciedaler. In the original text, the amount that Nora has borrowed is 1200 speciedaler, so Lavery has used the 4 NOK conversion rate to get us to 4800 NOK. But this is 1870s NOK so it’s not as simple as converting 4800 NOK to contemporary dollars to know, in today’s financial terms, the size of Nora’s debt.

Front of 5 Kroner note (1877). Image from Janeriks.no.

Back of 5 Kroner note. (1877).

Front of 50 Kroner note (1877). Image from Janeriks.no.

Front of 500 Kroner note (1877). Image from Colnet.com.

Back of 1000 Kroner note (1877). Image from Colnet.com

I’ve looked at a number of sources — including the amazing website Measuring Worth — to figure this out. Using that site’s conversion data, the best strategy I’ve decided upon is to treat the 4800 as British pounds. If I do that, the figure for the “relative worth” of that amount in 1876 comes to £350,000 in today’s money. That seems like an amazing amount, an amount that Nora has no chance of ever paying back. If we consider that Krogstad is probably charging her an exorbitant interest rate, it might even be a larger sum than this calculation. One source I found (A History of Interest Rates by Sidney Homer & Richard Eugene Sylla) indicates a general 4% interest rate in 1870s Germany but that was for typical lenders. I wonder if Krogstad was as much of a “shark” as a British man who escaped jail time in 2009 even though he charged a woman £90,000 on an initial £500 loan.

To gain a perspective on cost of living at the time the play was written: a day’s wage for manual labor in 1876 Norway was 80 øre. Approximately 100 øre make 1 NOK (Kroner) and we can think of 1 Kroner like 1 dollar, the base of paper money. Just to give you a sense of inflation, in 1968 a day’s wage for manual labor is 6000 øre/60 NOK, about 75 times as much as 1876.

Today the hourly wage in Norway’s building/construction fields is 150 NOK an hour/1050 NOK a day. Using conversion figures to dollars that’s about $27/hour and that hourly rate adds up to a yearly salary (based on a 40 hour week/50 work weeks a year) totalling around $54,000

In terms of household costs, a loaf of rye bread in 1876 cost 18 øre and in 1968 it is 140 øre. To put that in context, in 2011 a latte is priced at 30 NOK (Kroner) or about $5.73. That figure is courtesy of Ali’s recent travels to Norway!

Now I am no economist and, like I mentioned above, I find it still hard to believe that Nora’s debt at the time could be the equivalent of a figure like £350,000 today. If anyone finds errors in my calculations, please let me know!

The image below is from feminist and critical race theorist bell hooks (if you aren’t already, you should get familiar). It’s been making the rounds on Facebook and I share it here because it touches on the continued debate over whether Nora’s uniquely female position makes her a feminist figure and, by extension, Ibsen a “feminist” playwright and whether the label of “feminism” excludes men from identifying with and advocating for the character and her actions not to mention detracts from the playwright’s stated humanist mission and politics.

From bell hooks' FB feed.

I think hooks is trying to disentangle some essentializing assumptions in her chart. One being that feminism means just one thing; it is multi-faceted, particularly if one defines it as a political movement based in progressive social theories that connect multiple aspects of individual identity (of which gender is only one) to the struggle for social, economic, and interpersonal equality.

And with that assertion, I’ve probably just outed myself as a feminist who attaches particular value and self-interest to this definition of the term. But like many terms that characterize politics and identity – e.g., conservative, liberal, independent to use the big three floating around the mainstream media today – once one pushes beyond the surface assumptions and impressions invoked by the terms themselves, one finds great variety in individual beliefs and actions within such groups. I think back to one of my very first slogan t-shirts; I think I bought it when I was a sophomore in college (back in the day). It read: Feminism is the radical notion that women are people. I hear echoes of that slogan when Nora says, I am first and foremost a human being just as much a one as you are. It’s a simple, powerful line and one among many that makes A Doll’s House a “feminist” play.

Still another assumption challenged by hooks’ graphic is the idea that all women, by virtue of being women, are inclined towards feminist political interests. There are multiple examples of women in public and private life that benefit from opportunities that exist because of the influence of feminist theories, social movements, and political organizations but who eschew “feminism” because of the movement’s negative, essentializing connotations.

There are also women who reject “feminism” precisely because the policies and activities of feminist academics and activists do not benefit all women equally. They key in on the fact that while the chart below asserts feminism as a philosophy that sees gender as interrelated to other facets of identity (including class, race, ethnicity, sexuality), feminism as a political or social movement organizing principle has tended to place particular emphasis on the concerns of upper-middle-class, educated, white women with male partners and children. (Interesting to note that a contrasting stereotype of a “feminist” that appears frequently in popular culture and talk radio is a lesbian of any race who eschews not only traditional femininity but also any/all traditional institutions from churches to corporations.)

Finally, I think hooks’ chart begs the assumption that only women can be feminists. This idea is perhaps the most pervasive and most difficult to disentangle from conventional wisdom because it seems impossible to conceive that men would be participants in a movement or subscribe to a theory that wants to dismantle male privilege. Unless one realizes that “male privilege” itself is unequally distributed; not all men, simply by virtue of being men, gain access to power in the same way. While they may have preference over women in certain circumstances, men too are constrained by other facets of identity (race, class, sexuality, ethnicity), constraints which feed, in hooks’ terms, the “ideology of domination” that thrives on pitting individuals and groups against each other, scrabbling for resources and privileges versus banding together to dismantle oppressive systems of power.

Ibsen insisted to the Norwegian feminist group that tried to honor him in 1898 for his work on the “woman’s rights movement” that he was looking at the larger “humanist” picture.

I thank you for the toast, but must disclaim the honor of having consciously worked for the women’s rights movement. I am not even quite clear as to just what this women’s rights movement really is. To me it has seemed a problem of mankind in general. And if you read my books carefully you will understand this. True enough, it is desirable to solve the woman problem, along with all the others; but that has not been the whole purpose. My task has been the description of humanity. (Speech reprinted in Ibsen Letters and Speeches, editor Evert Sprinchorn, 1964.)

As Joan Templeton argues in the article we read towards the beginning of the semester, however, when you put Nora’s actions and dialogue in the context of early feminist writers (e.g., Mary Wollstonecraft, Margaret Fuller, Harriet Martineau are a few that Templeton mentions specifically) and Ibsen’s own circle of “personal” feminists (Templeton cites his wife Suzannah Thoresen Ibsen, Magdalen Thoresen–Suzannah’s former governess!–and Camilla Wergeland Collet) one sees in their texts and struggles “a compendium of everything that early modern feminism denounced about woman’s state” (Templeton, “The Doll House backlash,” 32, 36). Also, Ibsen’s 1898 speech is not his sole musing on the matter. He wrote this when sketching out an early draft of the play:

A woman cannot be herself in the society of today, which is exclusively a masculine society, with laws written by men, and with accusers and judges who judge feminine conduct from the masculine standpoint. (Ibsen qtd. in William Archer’s introduction to an anthology of Ibsen’s Works, qtd. in Templeton, 36).

The more I write this, the more I think of the end of the play when Nora insists to Torvald that they both must change in order for the “wonderful thing” to happen. He would have to be willing to learn lessons himself instead of continuing to “teach” or “guide” her. I have to educate myself. And you’re not the right man for the job.

When he appeals to known structures (education, religion, social mores) to convince her that these institutions can lead her to self-knowledge, she insists that only she can determine what her education will be or when it will be finished. I don’t know anything more than Pastor Hansen passed on at my confirmation! He said religion is this and is that. When I leave all this and I’m on my own I’ll examine this matter too. I’ll see if what Pastor Hansen said is right or if it is right for me.

Templeton notes that critical views of A Doll’s House either try to rescue a great play from being consigned as a “feminist” work by asserting the universality of Nora’s struggle or deny her the mantle of feminist because, ironically, she’s simply too much of a flighty, flawed woman. The first trend is often attributed to George Bernard Shaw, who was keen to say that Ibsen was too great of a playwright to focus on “issues,” instead “he was a poet of the truth of the human soul” (Templeton 28). The other trend emerged from the moment of the play’s publication and performance and continues through contemporary theater history. Templeton notes, “All female, or no woman at all, Nora loses either way” (30). Ironically, the binary divide is similar for Ibsen. Either he is a feminist champion or unfettered observer of human nature; either a playwright steeped in his time and place who used the theater to illuminate issues of the day or a playwright whose dramaturgy of essential human truths allows his works to exceed any specific time and place. Just as bell hooks’ graphic tries to maintain the broadest conceptualization of feminism, one that is diverse and can admit a number of different “kinds” of feminists under its mantle, perhaps can we conceive of Ibsen and Nora. Both/and instead of either/or. To my mind, you can’t get more feminist than that.

I’ve been on the look out for doll houses, when they are invoked as metaphors as well as when and how doll houses appear in popular culture. Just this weekend, my daughter went to Marbles Kid’s Museum in Raleigh and in their farm/agriculture display she discovered a doll house for animals. Not a barn but a pink, two-story, 4th-wall-open “house.”

Then, on the way in to school today, I was listening to a NPR Morning Edition report on the end of fighting in Libya and the death of Moammar Gadhafi. Correspondent Lourdes Garcia-Navarro spoke with some still shaky Libyans about the decimated town of Sirte, Gadhafi’s birthplace and the city where he was found hiding in a drainage pipe before, it appears, he was assassinated by his rebel captors. Mass graves have also been uncovered in the city as the chaos of daily fighting subsides and the damage of this civil war can be assessed.

One of the Garcia-Navarro’s informants, who stands in front of his bombed out home, refutes the notion that Sirte was “blessed” by Gadhafi. When the dictator came to power in the late 1960s, Sirte was a simple fishing village. Gadhafi set about transforming it into a place befitting his birth. In 1988 he moved all government offices and the toothless Libyan Parliment there. Even with all this development, it remained a town with no factories, no port, no sources of income for its citizens, completely dependent upon the generosity of Gadhafi for its prosperity. The man Garcia-Navarro interviews says that Sirte was a kind of “doll house” for Gadhafi, “an homage to his vanity.”

An great example of Gadhafi’s use of Sirte as a “doll house” is the multi-million dollar Ouagadougou Conference Centre. When built it was an ediface to rival any similar building in the West. Today it lies in ruins, footage of its capture, along with Sirte University, can be found on YouTube which shows rebel fighters blasting the front of the buildings with gunfire, unleashing their rage at the dictator on his monuments.

Exterior of Ouagadougou Conference Centre in Sirte, Libya. Image from McClatchy Blog.

Interior of Ouagadougou Conference Centre. Image from McClatchy Blog.

The Centre’s state-of-the-art facilities bought him good will from neighboring countries, and he did his best to house them in gracious and lavish style.

Sirte has been punished for its “special” standing with Gadhafi. The “doll house” has been nearly obliterated, and the remaining, very real human beings fear they too will be discarded like used toys by the new regime. “Now we are really lost,” Garcia-Navarro’s interviewee says, “we are really confused. We don’t know what to do. We don’t know if the new government will help us, if they even care about us.”

PHILIPPE DESMAZES/AFP/Getty Images

PHILIPPE DESMAZES/AFP/Getty Images

Thaier Al-Sudani. Reuters.

Kim’s previous post surveyed the range of (negative) critical reaction to A Doll’s House when it premiered. In the years since, the play has proven a potent story for women who struggle with gendered constraints in public and private.

In the past couple of weeks, there have been a couple of news stories that have caught my eye about women struggling with and, like Nora, breaking these constraints.

In the same week that saw King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia announce that women would be allowed to vote and run as candidate in elections, a court in the country sentenced a woman to 10 lashes for defying the law, set in the 1990s, prohibiting women from driving  a statue that itself went officially undeclared until more recent challenges by women to the country’s strict social/religious conventions). King Abdullah quickly set aside the sentence but it is noteworthy that he also announced women’s new voting rights the same week when municipal elections were scheduled to take place. Saudi Arabia’s first “co-ed” elections won’t happen until 2015.

The announcement came that though there were no women awarded prizes in any other field of recognition (medicine, literature, chemistry, physics, economics) three women will share this year’s Nobel Peace Prize: Leymah Gbowee, a key organizer of a non-violent campaign to end Liberia’s 15-year bloody civil war and the founder of the Women Peace and Security Network Africa in Accra, Ghana (2007); Ellen Johnson Sirleaf the first woman elected president (Liberia, 2005; she is fighting hard for a second term) in modern Africa; and Tawakkol Karman, a journalist and pro-democracy campaigner in Yemen.

Karman is perhaps the least well-known of the three and, beside the fact that she’s the mother of three children, I found this detail about her struggle (from a profile in The New Yorker) of particular resonance thinking about Nora:

Early on in the protests, [Yemen President] Saleh tried to silence Karman the way people do in societies dominated by men: by appealing to a male member of her family. “Control your sister,” Saleh told Karman’s brother, Tariq. “Anybody who disobeys me will be killed.” Tariq broke with Saleh, and Karman kept going into the streets. She is still in mortal danger. But the canvas tent where Karman makes her home is surrounded by thousands of others now, and by tens of thousands of Yemenis who responded to her call.

And, though decidedly different in degrees of power, the article’s post-script couldn’t help but make me think about Torvald’s self-serving speech after Krogstad’s second letter frees Nora from her debt. “I’m saved!” he crows. Seems like President Saleh had a similar perspective on the accolade given to a woman he’s done so much to silence.

Postscript: A few hours after the Nobel announcement, President Saleh was quick with the congratulations—to himself. “This,” the president’s office said of Karman’s Nobel Prize, “is attributed to the man of peace and unity: Ali Abdullah Saleh, the president of Yemen.”