By Henrik

Ibsen
 Context
• Born in 1928 in Skien, Norway. His family was of Danish descent.
• When he was 6, financial ruin completely changed his family life and deeply
affected his parents, which created a tense family environment for him to
grow up in.
• The Bible was his favourite book even though he was not a practicing
Christian and he was known to love Religion and History.
• He was extremely popular with the ladies but not so much with the boys as
did not enjoy rough games
• In 1978 he was in Rome. He regularly got into arguments with Theologians
of the time and attacked the teaching of orthodox churches.

• He asked the club to make a post of paid librarian open to women and that
they should be allowed to vote on all club’s matters.
• It is believed that in one of his impassioned speeches at the club he said: ”...
is there anyone in this gathering who dares assert that our ladies are inferior
to us in culture, or intelligence, or knowledge or artistic talent?
• Ibsen believed that women needed to transcend the social role that
subjugated them to be a housewife and inhabit the private sphere of the
home into a more public sphere which was then solely inhabited by men.
Interesting fact
• Ibsen’s plays do not provide neat solutions, and
often leave questions provocatively unresolved.
They are full of hidden resonances and richly
layered subtextual meanings, but a moral
framework is implied in the action and
audiences are invited to judge the behaviour of
the characters. They had a profound impact on
20th century playwrights concerned with social
issues.
 Quick plot overview
• It’s Christmas time and Nora is presented as a jocund housewife who is presented
as carefree and happy in her “doll’s house” but who hides a huge secret: without
her husband’s (Helmer Torvald) consent she has borrowed a large amount of money
to pay for his trip to Italy to recover from a serious illness.
• She has borrowed this money from Krogstad, an usurer, by forging her father’s
signature just after her father passed away. Since then, she has been repaying the
loan by the meager financial resources she gets from copying documents or save
from the budget provided by her husband.
• Unfortunately for Nora, Krogstad works at the bank which her husband is about to
become a manager of and whom Torvald ends up sacking in order to give the
position to Mrs Linde, a family friend.
• In order to keep his position, Krogstad blackmails Nora and threatens to tell Torvald
the truth which will both tarnish Torvald’s reputation and destroy their family as
forgery is a serious crime.
• Nora only sees two ways out of her conundrum: either saving her husband’s
reputation by committing suicide or assume full responsibility for her crime.
• However, when Torvald finds out, he has outrageous reaction and full-blown
humiliation of Nora clearly establishes the purpose of the play: Nora’s sacrificial
love for her love and her family has earned her nothing but she stands denigrated
by her husband’s feelings of hate and contempt towards her. The play ends by her
making the highly controversial decision at the time of deserting her family and
children in search of her “true self” which she says it’s “her higher duty”.
 Nora’s development
• Act 1: Ignorant of her individual
needs
• Act 2: Emerging self-awareness,
attempting to free herself
physically and psychologically from
her asphyxiating constraints
• Act 3: Becomes self-aware of her
individual needs (forcefully refuses
to conform to social expectations)

• POPPLET (individual brainstorming

tool) AND MINDMEISTER
(collaborative brainstorming tool) –
Characterisation make a copy and then edit it
 What’s the goal?
Misplaced emphasis may lead students to rely on the views of others, rather than developing their
own informed view.
Exploring the perspectives of others, and discussion and evaluation of how the prescribed text has
been received in different contexts should enhance rather than overshadow a student’s personal
engagement with and close analysis of the prescribed text. The view students develop must continue
to be supported with detailed textual reference from the prescribed text.

To develop student’s

OWN RICH INTERPRETATION of the text

Product: