A Doll’s House by Henrik Ibsen

AoE: Time & Space

IB English HL 1

The purpose of this assignment is to increase your schema in order to help you
understand the nuances of the historical and cultural allusions and context within the
play. Your goal is to explore each topic through online articles and videos as a form of
investigative research.

A Doll’s House & Henrik Ibsen

For this section, your goal is to

conduct some background research
on the text, without looking at any
spoilers! So let’s start with the
basics:

1. When was the play written?

*Hopefully you are starting to piece
together the relationship between
genre and time period...
A Doll’s House was written in the
year 1879

2. This is a TRANSLATED text! What

is its country of origin and what language was it originally
written in?
After Ibsen was exiled to Italy, he moved to Germany where he
wrote his famous play. The text is originally written in Danish.

3. Apart from being heralded as a “naturalistic modern tragedy,”

the play chiefly falls under the genre of Realism. List FIVE
characteristics that we know about this genre. *You should be
vaguely familiar with it already---think back to Gatsby!

Five Characteristics:

● Realistic characters/setting
 ● Wise/knowledgeable Narrator(s)

● Precise details

● Social Criticism; Global Issues

● Social Class

4. Now, listen to the

pronunciation of our author’s
name so that you don’t sound
silly in class. Then, quickly skim
through Ibsen’s bio and paste
FIVE of the most interesting or
pertinent facts about his life
below:

● Ibsen suffered great depression

during this part of his life. The
varied responsibilities of his job
allowed him no chance for his own creative work.

● Ibsen borrowed the broad outlines of the story for A Doll’s House
from a woman he knew, Laura Kieler
● Ibsen said in a 1898 speech. “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 humanity in general.” Though he was briefly an anarchist,
Ibsen rarely participated in politics and distrusted politicians.
● Though his following play Ghosts was banned in some countries for
its scandalous plot, no future play of Ibsen’s was to catch the cultural
and political zeitgeist to the extent that A Doll’s House did.

● Just as he gave up painting in his youth for writing poetry and drama,
he now stopped composing poems, eventually relinquishing even the
verse form of his earlier plays for the prose of the later works.
 Cultural Context

First, watch this video on Women in Victorian England (though

you only need to watch up to 3:40), and then answer the
following questions:

1. What was education like for women in this time period?

Using your critical thinking skills, what would society look like
today if only one sex was given the opportunity to be
educated? How would this change our relationship dynamics?
During this time period, education was thought to be useless
for women, if they were allowed to be educated they were only
taught subjects such as history and english. If only one sex was
given the opportunity to be educated, society would look down
upon the uneducated and think of them to only be dependent.
There also wouldn’t be any diversity in working fields, schools,
etc. For example, when going to the doctor, some women
prefer (or have to due to their religion) to be examined by a
female doctor, but if only men were given education it would
lead to countless problems and probably even death. In a
relationship they would hold dominance over the
relationship/family since they have more advantages since
being educated.

2. List FOUR qualities of the “Angel of the House” referred to in

the video:
● Devoted

● Submissive

● Graceful

● Powerless

Second, watch John Green’s take on Women in the 19 Century

(only up to 5:00) and then address the remaining questions:

3. Explain the positive and negative aspects of being a “high

class woman”:
Being a “high class woman” came with having lower mortality
rates and being put first (safety wise) . On the contrary, they
were trapped, subservient, degraded, powerless, dependent,
objectified, etc.

4. Specify the principle of Coverture that Green briefly

mentions:
During this time and under the legal principle of “coverture”,
husbands held authority over the person, property, and choices
of their wives.

5. Thoroughly explain the Cult of Domesticity:

The Cult of Domesticity dedicated that a woman’s place was in
the home, their job was to enable their husbands to make stuff
by providing food and a clean living space. Women were to win
everything by peace, love, friendship, and mutual obligation aka
non-market values. Once a woman was beginning to feel
ambitious or powerful, her defense/protection would be gone.

Vocabulary Preparation:
Idioms & Cultural References

Please research each of the following phrases and terms so that

you are aware of their meaning before experiencing them in
the text:

1. “as a matter of course…”: natural or expected thing

2. Plucky: having or showing determined courage in the face

of difficulties

3. Rubbish: trash/waste material

4. Tarantella (also watch this video for a visual image): a

group of various folk dances characterized by a fast
upbeat tempo accompanied by tambourines.

5. Consumption: a wasting disease, especially pulmonary

tuberculosis

6. Parcel: a wrapped package

7. Shilling: a former monetary unit in Great Britain

8. Barrister: a British lawyer who speaks in the higher courts

 of law

9. Spendthrift: someone who spends money freely or

wastefull

10. Capricious: impulsive or unpredictable