A Doll's House

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.

Blog # 1

by Caitlin O’Neill

When Nora and Torvald interact, the power dynamic is startlingly disturbing. The deeply seated power plays prior to Act 3 were rather hazy to me in my first few readings of the play. However, upon watching the exchanges between the actors as they puzzle through the psyches of their respective characters, the misogyny has clarified and morphed into a clear detailing of daily pressures by Torvald, which act to slowly belittle and stagnate Nora. Her opinions cannot find encouragement, or even purchase, in her own home. Rather, all must be in accordance with Torvald, the patriarch.  Socially he has been conditioned to act as he does—as she has been as well. Blame cannot easily be dealt out when the reality of their society has, in large part, led to their present relationship.

Nonetheless, this dynamic is, happily, not the only one put forth in A Doll’s House, because we see a strong contrast to it in the Act 3 reunion of Krogstad and Mrs. Linde, as they create the bounds of a mutually beneficial relationship where both are respected for their contributions. It should be noted though that Mrs. Linde had already undergone her own degradation of sorts through her marriage to a man with monetary prospects which could provide for her family. As Mrs. Linde says, she “sold herself once” (pg 94), and learned she could not ever do so again. Such a lesson undoubtedly accounts for a large portion of her self-assurance and consistent composure, which far outstrip that which is possessed by any other character.  Mrs. Linde parallels quite well with the present time and atmosphere, especially regarding the confidence of women and how it often requires some form of catalyst to crystallize and strengthen.

The general state of society does not produce such confidence in equal measures across gender lines. The aspect in today’s culture I find most disquieting is the way in which women are valued in society—and the similarities between Ibsen’s time and ours. This trailer put things in terribly clear perspective for me.

Gender disparity in powerful positions throughout industries is a direct reflection of how women are portrayed by media. The focus on the physical body of the woman matches the Tarantella scene of A Doll’s House because Nora’s goal is to beguile the men of her life, especially Torvald. Likewise, advertisements portraying women in piecemeal outfits seek to similarly fascinate and trap attention, never utilizing the intelligence behind the pretty face in that pursuit. Marian Wright Edelman, Founder & President of Children’s Defense Fund, said, “You can’t be what you can’t see,” and this is unfortunately too true. Mrs. Linde escapes this norm following her experiences of falling into it, and Nora struggles to slip out from the trap, requiring her breakage from the only life to which she has ever been accustomed. Her final scene challenges me to take a difficult review of the media and messages I consume, and hopefully to begin to recognize the subliminal, as well as overt, messages which seek to stagnate society from gender equity in every plane.

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.”

By Kim Solow

Jules asked me to go over a book of reviews on Henrik Ibsen’s works to find quotes for our interactive wall in the Link. I found it really fascinating how many people really did not like A Doll’s House and the message it presented about gender roles within society, but also how truly scared they were about the implications this play could have on their marriages and wives.

Many Europeans found the ending scandalous and inconceivable. One notice from June 1889 in the Daily News read, “…but stranger still is the change that comes over her character and 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, and inclined to take a selfish view of the dilemma when the exposure comes.” (103, Henrik Ibsen: The Critical Heritage) This was a common critique of the play, as the audience felt that Nora’s decision to leave was ridiculous and only disproved Ibsen’s message, by showing how women are fickle and do things on a whim, rather than thinking things through like their male counterparts.  They also saw Nora as a monster and unnatural woman who indulged in –god forbid– her self, rather than considering her family’s needs.

The critics also felt that this behavior set a dangerous example for women of the time by teaching that, “marriage must be wholly cancelled, and all the relations it has brought with it must be broken through, if ever the ground is to be cleared for anything better in the future…[and] every imperfect relation should be eradicated in order to make way for a better.” (112, Henrik Ibsen: The Critical Heritage) The theatrical reviews posed the question whether Ibsen was trying to tell their wives that they could do better by leaving everything they know, in search of some truth that they have been hidden from. People viewed his play to be a direct attack on the custom of marriage and family life. Even the Earl of Jersey, Governor of Australia and his wife refused to see A Doll’s House. According to the Era, his wife wrote a letter stating, “she had heard too much about Ibsen’s play to wish to see one of it, and that she did not think that any actress who would appear in them could be considered a lady.” (7)

Ibsen’s work was looked down upon for some of the reasons we admire it today – it was revolutionary and spoke the truth that no one wanted to hear.

In Jim’s discussion about the video scape for the show, there was another mention of “the wallpaper.” Which reminds me of other mentions made over the past couple of weeks of The Yellow Wallpaper (1892) a short story by Charlotte Perkins Gilman.

Gilman, circal 1900.

The story is told as a series of journal entries in which an unamed female protagonist narrates her encroaching madness embodied by women who she comes to see “living” in the wallpaper of the upper bedroom of the summer home her husband, a doctor, has rented. The narrator is urged to stay in the room by her husband so she can recuperate from depression and “slight hysterical tendencies” (a detail that connect this piece with our trip next week to see In the Next Room). By the end of the story, the narrator has decided that she too is a part of the world of women in the wallpaper and locks herself inside the room (in a complete reversal of Nora’s exit of the house at the end of A Doll’s House) crawling around and around the periphery, pulling off strips of wallpaper almost pushing herself into the walls becoming “one” with her space. When her husband retrieves the key and bursts into the room, he’s so shocked by her state that he faints. Undeterred, she continues making her circuit around the room crawling over his limp body as she goes.

This idea of confinement, an environment coming alive, and madness has been reflected in various illustrations that invoke Gilman’s protagonist and her mental and physical world.

An early illustration (circa 1899) from a publication of the story.

An image from an 1989 installation, "The Yellow Wallpaper" by artist Marlene Angeja.