Nora: Feminist Icon or a Bad Mother?
This essay was read on life September 20th on the lovely hannah_g's show MonkeySparrow, which aired on CKUW 95.9 FM. I really enjoyed participating and highly recommend checking out the show! If you are interested in listening to the reading of Nora check out the links at the bottom of the page.
During a time in my life when I felt trapped and that choice had been taken away from me, I was assigned Henrik Ibsen’s A Doll’s House. This play changed my life Nora’s decision to leave in an attempt to find herself gave me the freedom to do the same. Through her I learned the ultimate value of finding your personal identity beyond all the expectations of family and society. A few years ago I discovered Goodreads and started looking up different authors to see what others thought of my favourites. When I looked up A Doll’s House I was disappointed to see a trend of disparaging comments, much of the negativity had to do with her leaving her children. This is a sampling:
“No wonder people hate feminists!...Women don’t have to abandon their children to free themselves from this patriarchal society. It only makes you look like a bad, selfish mother.” – Carlie’s Review
“What is feminine about walking out on your children?” Lisa’s Review
“I don’t find it heroic for a woman to walk out on her family...” &--‘s Review
“I have no respect for a woman who leaves her children.” Leah’s Review
These are just a few examples, scattered among many positive reviews, but it got me to thinking.
First, did Nora really abandon her children? She deprived them of her company, but as a woman of an upper middle class she would not have been principally responsible for the raising of her children, who would most likely have been raised by their nanny or governess and would have had a stronger bond with the ‘help’ then with Nora. Also she left them in the care of a financially secure husband. In Ibsen’s day she would have had no legal right to the children and could not have taken them without Torvald’s consent and even if he had given it Nora would have had no way to financially support or care for them. Taking them with her on her journey of self discovery would be condemning them to a life of poverty and social ostracization. She recognized this herself when in the last act just before leaving she says, “Goodbye Torvald. I won’t see the little ones. I know they are in better hands then mine. As I am now, I can be of no use to them.” The play does end with optimism as Nora hopes that miracles can happen for herself and Torvald and perhaps they can grow beyond their social rolls and become a true family.
I don’t think it would be right to discount Ibsen’s work or the power of this play because Nora leaves her children. This would be giving credence to the notion that a woman’s first duty is to her children even at the expense of herself. Kate Chopin in Awakening, another work that often receives similar criticism, points out “They were women who idolized their children, worshiped their husbands and esteemed it a holy privilege to efface themselves as individuals...” this is what women were expected to be in this time. Cesare Pavese in Among Women Only has a female character point out, “When a woman has a child she’s no longer herself. She has to accept so many things, she has to say yes.” Women do not cease to be individuals after they have children. Nora was expected to give her whole being to her family. “I would give my life for my children, but I wouldn’t give myself,” as Chopin said; a sentiment I am sure Nora would understand and which I definitely do having been asked to give up self for others. The above reviews show we have not yet moved beyond thinking that when a woman becomes a mother she ceases to be a person with her own needs and goals. Ibsen recognized this discrepancy and gave Nora an identity beyond wife and mother and he also realized that this would have costs to Nora and her family, but doesn’t allow that to deter her.
I don’t think Ibsen was ever intending to say women need to leave their homes and families in a quest of self-discovery. The Doll’s House, written in 1879 was both the first of his social plays and the first to gain international success. According to translator R. Farquharson Sharp, “The theme of the play, with its insistence on the woman’s right to individual self-development, provoked a storm of discussion, and in some quarters, an outpouring of violent abuse.” He goes on to point out, “Though it may seem to some that, in his statement of the case, Ibsen thinks too much of a woman’s rights and too little of her duties, it must be born in mind that in all his ‘social plays’ he contented himself with stating problems as they appeared to him, and did not attempt to answer them.” Ibsen himself declared that he “couldn’t countenance the self-styled ‘emancipated’ woman,” yet he was an active advocate of a woman’s right to develop her own individuality.
Nora’s story is first and foremost a play that draws on Ibsen’s own perception and experience of society. In his notes on A Doll’s House Ibsen states, “A woman cannot be herself in contemporary society, it is an exclusively male society with laws drafted by men, and with council and judges who judge feminine conduct from the male point of view.” Rather than being a story advocating for the destruction of families it is a story pointing out the societal infantizing of women, while denying them the ability to grow outside of their narrow and assigned roles, which is demonstrated by Torvald’s many childish pet names for Nora and his own inability to grow as when he declares, “No man would ever sacrifice is honour for the one’s he loves.” Ibsen recognized the cost of gendered rolls on a society not just for women, but men and children and well. He is telling one story and one possible outcome, pointing out faults and wanting to engage the audience in discussion to explore what he saw as issues, much as he would later highlight political corruption in A Public Enemy.
His efforts to create discussion could definitely be termed a success with Doll’s House, which has never been out of print since it was written and has been translated throughout the world. Nora is a coveted role and has been played on every major stage in the western world and made into three major films with another one in the works. Its role in feminism and gender politics has been hotly debated with proponents on both sides; Ibsen created a platform for discussion that has lasted for over a hundred years, which in my mind makes it a success!
I think taking a work out of its social and historical context is to blind oneself to its worth and to ignore the journey of progress, an error I see a lot in reviews of classic literature. Also to enforce our current ethics and morals is to be ignorant of the privilege we have due to the sacrifices made in the past. Many of our celebrated texts of today will, hopefully, be looked at with a degree of disappointment in the future. It’s a road map of where we are going and where we have been. In a perfect world children would never be abandoned and there would be no need to even consider it, but the world isn’t perfect.
In the end I don’t think it matters if Ibsen intended to write a great work of feminist literature or not. He wrote a piece to stimulate conversation and to encourage freedom of identity. It continues to accomplish both of these goals and that is the mark of a great work of fiction: to remain relevant long after it is written. I would like to finish with the conversation between Torvald and Nora at the end of the play.
“Torvald: it is shocking. This is how you would neglect most sacred duties?
Nora: what do you consider my most sacred duties?
Torvald: do i need to tell you that? Are they not your duties to your husband and your children?
Nora: i have other duties just as sacred.
Torvald: Indeed you have not. What duties could those be?
Nora: duties to myself.
Torvald: before all else, you are a wife and a mother.
Nora: I don’t believe that any longer. I believe that before all else I am a reasonable human being, just as you are – or, at all events, that I must try to become one.”
Works Cited
Chopin, Kate. The Awakening. Avon Books, July 1972.
Ibsen, Henrik. A Doll's House. Translated and edited by R. Farquharson Sharp, Everyman's Library, 1964.
Pavese, Cesare. Among Women Only. Translated by D. D. Paige, The Noonday Press, 1959.
Links:
Nora: https://ckuw.ca/128/20160920.22.34-23.00.mp3
hannah_g: http://hannah-g.com/the-monkeysparrow/
Ckuw 95.9 FM: https://ckuw.ca/