Q.) The significance of the title ‘A Doll’s House’.
Ans.) The word ‘title’ indicates the full story that happened in the story in one word or sentence. The word ‘doll’ means a woman who has no mind or will of her own. ‘A Doll’s House’ therefore means a house in which lives a woman who has no mind or will of her own. The word ‘doll’ in the context of this play is applicable to Nora. She is a doll because, during the eight years that she has spent as Helmer’s marriage-partner, she has always been a passive and subservient kind of wife to him. It is true that on one occasion Nora took a bold initiative by entering into a transaction with Krogstad and obtaining the requisite amount of money in order to take her husband to Italy because he was critically ill and the doctors had told her that he could survive only if he were taken to a warm climate.
Nora has regularly been paying monthly instalments to Krogstad against the principal amount and against the interest. This too shows that she was no doll, especially because she has regularly been dealing with Krogstad; and has yet never allowed her husband to become aware of what has been going on between her and Krogstad. Apart from this, however, she has been, more or less, a kind of doll, obeying her husband’s wishes and always conforming to his views and his tastes. At the very beginning of the play, we find Helmer treating his wife as a kind of a pet. He addresses her as the “little skylark” and as his “little squirrel”; and Nora fully responds to these terms of endearment. This is clearly indicates that Nora is a doll of Helmer’s house.
Nora enters into an argument with his husband, Helmer, over the amount of money that should be spent on the occasion of the Christmas festival; but her manner of arguing clearly shows that she has to submit to the wishes of a husband who is conscious of his power over her and who says in categorical terms to her: “No debts! Never borrow!” Immediately afterwards, Helmer tries to humour her by sating: “My little singing bird must go not drooping her wings”. (Ibsen, Henrik, “A Doll’s House” Act 1 ). Helmer’s whole attitude towards Nora consists of a feeling of authority mingled with a deep affection; but the feeling of authority predominates. The authoritarian attitude of Helmer becomes more emphatic when he rejects Nora’s recommendation on behalf of Krogstad. Helmer on this occasion appears as a stern moralist, and his condemnation of Krogstad is so strongly worded that Nora, applying the condemnation to her own case, shudders inwardly. If she had been a self-assertive woman, she could very well have taken up a firm attitude on this occasion and tried to refute Helmer’s arguments. But, far from adopting a firm attitude, Nora begins to think of suicide; and at the beginning of Act II, we find her speaking to the old Nurse as if she had already decided to put an end to her life. Again and again Nora is treated as a doll. Her acts has been refused by Helmer like a child’s wish on his toy.
By the end of Act II, no doubt is left in our minds that Nora is entirely dependent on her husband. She seeks his advice as to what kind of a costume she should wear at the fancy-dress ball. She tells him that she cannot move a step without his guidance in this matter. Previously she wanted to kill herself so as not to continue to poison her home and deprave her children; but now she wants to put an end to her life in order to save her husband from disgrace and scandal. Accordingly, at the end of Act II, we find her saying that she has now only thirty-one more hours to live. Nora has been living in a doll’s house without having ever been conscious that she was a doll. But the awakening comes with Helmer’s totally unexpected reactions to Krogstad’s two letters.
Nora realizes that she has always been a non-entity in this house and that she has been rendering blind obedience to convention and custom all these years in order to keep her husband pleased. Nora’s love for him now drops dead, and her mind now becomes active. She discovers that she is an individual in her own right, but that her individuality has remained dormant and suppressed all these years. She tells Helmer that he has been treating her as his doll-wife just as her father had in the past treated her as his baby-doll. She says that she would now like to know things at first-hand, and in order to do that, she must go out into the world alone. Her most sacred duty, she says, is not to him or to her children, but to herself; and so, Nora makes her exit from this doll’s house. At the end of the play, Nora is no longer a doll. She is a woman and an individual in her own right. She would now discover her own potentialities and seeks to achieve a fulfilment of those potentialities and seek to achieve a fulfilment of those potentialities. She would be facing an uncertain future, but she has now got the necessary self-confidence for the purpose. She has greatly matured; she has grown in stature mentally and morally. There is every possibility that, in the course of a few years, she would emerge as a leader of a campaign for the rights of women. In the course of a few years she might distinguished herself as a feminist leader. After all, great results have been achieved by enterprising individuals who have taken initiatives of this kind.
However, the title ‘A Doll’s House’ for the play is most appropriate because it signifies a kind of life that Nora has led for eight years in her husband’s home. Her exit from her husband’s home is a turning-point in her life; and her exit can prove to be a new starting-point for Nora. Nora is a doll of Helmer’s house, that is truly remarkable achievement of Ibsen’s play i.e. ‘A Doll’s House’.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
• Baseer, A., Alvi, S.D. & Zafran, F., “ The use of symbolic language in Ibsen’s ‘A Doll’s House’: A Feminist perspective language in India”, 2013
• Ibsen, Henrik. ‘A Doll’s house’, (ed) Gloria Lotha, encyclopedia Brithannica, Accessed 25 June, 2021, www.britannica.com
• Ibsen, Henrik. ‘A Doll’s House’, translated by Henrrietta Frances Lord, D. Appleton & Co., New York, 1890
• Northam, John. “ Ibsen : A critical study”; Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1973
• Khurram, Shagufta. “ Criticalness of the title ‘A Doll’s House’ in connection to Nora, in Henrik Ibsen’s play ‘A Doll’s House’”; Benazir Bhutoo Shaheed University Lyari, Karachi, vol. iv, November, 2016, www.euacademic.org
• Paulson, A.C. & Bjqrk, Kenneth, “ ‘A Doll’s House’ on the prepire; the first Ibsen controversy in America”, University of Minnesota Press, vol.11, 1940, Accessed 25 June, 2021, www.jstor.com
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