The Door Slam Heard ‘Round the World: Ibsen’s “A Doll’s House”

Nora Helmer begins Act I as a devoted wife to her respectable husband, Torvald, and a devoted mother to her young children. She ends Act III by walking out on all of them and closing the door behind her. The emotional distance covered in these three acts (representing a span of just a few days in the lives of the Helmers) makes Nora one of the greatest and most coveted acting challenges in the theater. How might we mark out a route between the Nora of Act I, the charming toy of the men in her life who seems to desire nothing more than the comfort and ease her husband’s recent promotion is set to provide, and the Nora of Act III, an independent woman willing to sacrifice everything in pursuit of her own self-determination? Wes & Erin discuss Henrik Ibsen’s “A Doll’s House.” Upcoming Episodes: Jaws, Ibsen’s “An Enemy of the People.” Pre-order Erin’s forthcoming book “Avail” here: http://subtextpodcast.com/avail For bonus content, become a paid subscriber at Patreon or directly on the Apple Podcasts app. Patreon subscribers also get early access to ad-free regular episodes. This podcast is part of the Airwave Media podcast network. Visit AirwaveMedia.com to listen and subscribe to other Airwave shows like Good Job, Brain and Big Picture Science. Email [email protected] to enquire about advertising on the podcast. Follow: Twitter | Facebook | Website Transcript 0:19 Erin: or patreon.com/subtextpodcast. Nora helmer begins Act 1 as a devoted wife to her respectable husband, Torvald and a devoted mother to her young children. She ends Act 3 by walking out on all of them and closing the door behind her. The emotional distance covered in these three acts, representing a span of just a few days in the lives of the Helmers, makes Nora one of the greatest and most coveted acting challenges in the theater. How might we mark out a route between the nora of Act 1, the charming toy of the men in her life, who seems to desire nothing more than the comfort and ease her husband's recent promotion is set to provide, and the nora of Act 3, an independent woman willing to sacrifice everything in pursuit of her own self determination. Today we're discussing Henrik Ibsen's A Doll's House. This is Erin O'Luanaigh. This is Wes Alwan, and you're listening to Subtext. So, Wes, just before we started recording, you mentioned that your cat really likes treats. 1:34 Wes: And 1:37 Erin: my understanding is you make her work for them. Is that right? Like you put them in little gold envelopes on the Christmas tree and you make her do the tarantella. 1:47 Wes: Well, she actually left me recently. She had a very stern talk with me. She was like, meow, meow, meow, meow, meow, meow. 1:57 Erin: And you were like, I don't understand you. It's like we're speaking different languages. And she was like, meow, you've never respected me. 2:04 Wes: Now we're strangers. You don't understand my species. And she slammed the door. Somehow she managed, with a little paws. It was the slam heard round the block. What is it? Who came up with this? The door slam heard round the world phrase? You've heard that? 2:27 Erin: No. 2:27 Wes: Some critic must have come up with that. Yeah, that's how the end of the play is often characterized. 2:32 Erin: Oh, that's great. Have you read much criticism on A Doll's House in preparation for today? Because I did at one point, many years ago. So we'll see how much I remember. 2:42 Wes: Not much. I just went and looked at contemporaneous criticism. I always find it fun to look at the critical heritage books. These are Routledge books. And this is One on Ibsen by Michael Egan. And basically they go through major works and then responses to those major works. So Doll's House, there's like. I read all of what was available, like an unsigned notice in the Daily Telegraph and the Daily News. So this is for the performance in England, which happened in 1889, I think a few years after he published it. And one thing I think I learned from reading on background is how important translation is to Ibsen. And he very quickly became much more than a Norwegian playwright. Right. He's Norwegian. Just get confused because Denmark and Norway were. Right. They were unified up to a certain point. But, yeah, so he started, you know, I think he made a big international splash eventually. And certainly this play, Doll's House, made a big splash in England and was the source of some critical controversy. I read something by Janet Achurch on the difficulty of being Nora that she published. She was the actress in that first English language rendition in London. And it's very typical actress talk like this took so much out. This is the hardest but most rewarding role I've ever had. And blah, blah, blah. And then William Archer, his, I think, first English translator, published a defense in a newspaper. I think it's to Clement Scott. But anyway, yeah, there's a critic, you know, who's very strongly anti Ibsen. And as you can imagine, this play caused some controversy, not, as you might think, because of the feminist message. I think I mentioned this to you when we last talked that I think it's Scott who's kind of offended at the idea that anyone would need to be lectured about women's rights in their day and age when it had been solved for 100 years, at least in England. Maybe in Norway you still have problems, but here in England, we don't need to be lectured. But then he goes on to. There's a typical objection to Nora's seemingly sudden transformation at the end of the play. So that's a sort of craftsmanship type of objection. There's an objection to him being too preachy. Art shouldn't be this preachy. But then there is the kind of moralistic objection to the horror of her leaving her kids behind. 5:14 Erin: Sure. 5:15 Wes: Which made me think of Medea a bit. I started thinking about Medea when I was rereading. I think I read this three times in preparation for this, and the third time took notes. I'm like, huh, this is interesting. This is. You know, there's a lot of differences, of course, and she's not a sorceress, she's just a Spendthrift. She does have the tarantella. Is that how you pronounce it? The tarantelle? 5:37 Erin: Tarantella, yeah. 5:39 Wes: Tarantella. But anyway, we can get into all that. But, yeah, that's my summary of the contemporaneous critical reaction. 5:46 Erin: My understanding, and correct me if I'm wrong, this is a bit hazy, was that it was actually a bigger scandal for her to leave her husband. I know there been differing reports on this, but it was a bigger scandal for her to have left her husband than for her to leave the children. Because of the way that Norwegian society was. I mean, the children are already kind of being raised by Anne Marie anyway. It seems they just, you know, they come in for Nora to play hide and seek with them and et cetera. Though it is noted she spends a lot of time with the children. More time than most mothers do. But it seems that the bigger scandal in the minds of certain critics, I thought, was leaving the husband. That isn't to say that, you know, maternal feeling didn't exist and that it was a bigger. Emotionally, it would have been more higher stakes for her to leave the children. But in terms of propriety and what society might have demanded, it was perhaps more scandalous for her to leave the husband than the children at that time. 6:43 Wes: Yeah, maybe it was in Norway. My impression from the English reaction was it was more about the. It was about both, but more about the children. So actually, now that I'm looking at this, I think it'd just be fun to give you a little bit of a taste of some of this criticism. Should we do that? So this is Clement Scott in Theater, the journal Theater in 1889. It is an unlovely, selfish creed. But let women hear it. Nora, when she finds her husband is not the ideal hero she imagined, determines to cap his egotism with her selfishness, which he takes to be vengeful. Pardon. She cannot grant humiliation. She will not recognize the frivolous butterfly. The Swedish Frou-Frou, the spoiled plaything has mysteriously become an Ibsenite revivalist. There were no previous signs of her conversion, but she has exchanged playfulness for preaching. So this is one of the more technical criticisms that she had too sudden a transformation, forgets all her responsibilities and does a thing that one of the lower animals would not do. A cat or dog would tear anyone who separated from its offspring. But the socialistic Nora, the apostle of the new creed of humanity, leaves her children almost without a pang. It is self, self, self. This is the ideal woman of the new creed. Not a woman who is the fountain of love and forgiveness and charity. Not the pattern woman we have admired in our mothers and our sisters. Not the model of unselfishness and charity, but a mass of aggregate conceit and self sufficiency who leaves her home and deserts her friendless children because she has herself to look after. 8:19 Erin: And is this guy the basis for the character Torvald or just. Is that just a coincidence? Wow. That's pretty incredible. 8:27 Wes: Yeah. So you get there's a more reasonable, nuanced. Some unsigned notices which are more reasonable. But you get the idea of what my general sense was. The thing with the children was more objectionable to this English response. But this was. I think this is six years after it came out in Norway. You know, I think there are significant differences. There were very significant differences at the time between those. Norway was a much more conservative culture at that point. 8:52 Erin: Sure. 8:53 Wes: Than England. Yeah. 8:54 Erin: Well, listeners will have to forgive me. My thinking on the play probably has been heavily influenced by a couple of people who I'll name in just a minute, but I have not read their writings on this in a very long time. I thought it would be actually better for me to kind of come in a little bit fresher because A Doll's House was my first Ibsen play and I know it a little too well or something. I don't know. I was worried about being too influenced by criticism on it. So I, in the past have read Hardwick on Nora, which I think I mentioned in our Hedda Gabler episode. I think we read a little bit from Hardwick on Hedda and Stella Adler's lectures on A Doll's House, which I really, really recommend. I think the reason why I read Ibsen for the first time and why I read this play first was because of Hannah and her sisters. Right. Because it's mentioned that Hannah plays Nora in A Doll's House and her mother says something about how it must be hard to act like Torvald's little chipmunk without making a total ass of yourself. Or I know that it's hard, you know, like she. She mentions something about making an ass of yourself, like it's difficult to play Nora without doing so. And then I remember having done a little reading about A Doll's House after, because I was curious the first time I had seen Hannah and her sister. The great acting challenge that playing Nora represents. I think that probably is then what inspired me to start reading Stella Adler on Nora, because I have a great many of Stella Adler's books, which I just really recommend. In general, she's kind of a hero of mine. But anyway. Yeah. So the question is. I mean, I suppose the big question of this play is how we link the Nora of the first act and the Nora of the third act together. 10:34 Wes: Yeah, good question. Yeah, good. 10:36 Erin: I believe that Hardwick. And this is why I didn't want to revisit it, because I thought it would be difficult for me to come up with my own answer to this. I believe that Hardwick identifies her innate freedom and sense of independence from the very beginning, as exemplified in her generosity, as being the sort of connective tissue. I noted a few places where she. I mean, she never tells Torvald about her sacrifice. And that, to me, is indicative of the fact that she is actually a little bit more. That the condescension between them goes both ways. And it reveals the fact that she was never comfortable enough to divulge her secret to him, to really have this. This open communication between them. And so she gets to kind of have this little secret that she's. I mean, it's a noble one, but that she's, in a sense, taken care of him, knowing that she's taken care of him, even as he believes that he's taking care of her in the confrontation scene between the two of them. We're reading from the Penguin Classics edition, A Doll's House and Other Plays, which is. I believe it's the first one on Amazon. When you search for A Doll's House. I like this translation quite a bit. It's translated by Deborah Dawkin and Erik Skuggevik. Excuse my pronunciation there, but anyway, so this is on page 185 in that edition. Helmer asks her, if religion can't direct you, then at least let me stir your conscience, for surely you have some moral sense. Or answer me. Perhaps you have none. And Nora replies, oh, Torvald, that's not easy to answer. I simply don't know. I'm in such confusion over these things. I just know that my opinion is very different from yours on such matters. So an indication that she's been disagree. She's actually disagreed with him all along and just has not felt comfortable enough to say so, or has just been lying to herself about these disagreements or hasn't been fully aware of them. So something in her, in other words, has kept her from sharing parts of herself with him. An innate distrust, an innate sense that perhaps he wasn't equal to being in this. This full understanding with her even before she was quite aware of that impulse in herself to hide it. She didn't know that she was hiding these things, but she was. 12:52 Wes: So it came out in Copenhagen in 1879, ten years before the British premiere. So I got that wrong. And then I forgot to mention, I also watched version that I actually watched was the 1992 BBC version with Juliet Stevenson. And I thought of this just because you were talking about how difficult it would have been to perform that part. And, I mean, it's an amazing version. Is there one you recommend? 13:19 Erin: No, I haven't seen one I like and I've never seen that BBC version. I think I saw the one with Jane Fonda ages ago. 13:26 Wes: Okay. 13:26 Erin: Which is a very loose, from what I remember, very loose adaptation of the play. 13:31 Wes: So check it out. I mean, I just. I think it's great. And they play Torvald more aggressively than I actually read him, but it works. And then I thought, oh, it's interesting how there's quite a range for how you might play the Torvald character, either accentuating his weakness or accentuating some of his aggressiveness. And it reminds me, we're going to read next time we're going to read Enemy of the People. Right? 13:53 Erin: Yeah. If you'd like to. 13:54 Wes: I don't know of a good. There's a movie version of that with what's his face. It's not Paul Newman or. 14:02 Erin: Oh, Steve McQueen. 14:05 Wes: Steve McQueen, yeah. But I don't know of any available. I couldn't find anything available, like, any rendition of the play that's easily available online, except for, like, you know, high school productions and stuff like that. 14:18 Erin: On Criterion, there's an Indian adaptation directed by Ray, which is quite interesting, though it really, I think, makes Stockman a far more straightforward hero. The assembly scene is kind of butchered, and then the ending is sort of butchered as well. So it's a much more straightforward. So it's sort of a disappointment, which I hesitate to say, because I love Ray. This is a late film in his career, I want to say. Came out in 89. It's an interesting film to watch. 14:46 Wes: There's also a BBC adaptation. Just again, talking about Enemy of the People. You know, it's based on the play, but it's quite different, so I didn't watch that. 14:54 Erin: But I'd recommend people watch Jaws if they want to see an Enemy of the People. 14:59 Wes: Well, Jaws is what I was suggesting that I was going to suggest that we do Jaws since it's the big anniversary now after Enemy of the People. 15:08 Erin: Okay, sure. We could. Or we could do it in between. I mean, a Lot of. I think a lot of people will see. 15:12 Wes: Or we could do it in between. That's a great idea. 15:13 Erin: The connection. If they're not already aware of, of the connection between the two. 15:17 Wes: Let's do that. We're going to need a bigger podcast. No, I'm just kidding. I was thinking, is this going to be too gory for Erin? And I thought, well, they couldn't get the shark to work, so you never see it, so it's the perfect horror movie for you. 15:31 Erin: I was just going, I was just going to watch it a couple nights ago and then I realized I was too scared to watch it. So I'm going to have to. 15:38 Wes: You have to force your. Yourself. 15:40 Erin: Force myself. I've seen it before, but never like the full, you know, I've walked out of the room. Etc. I'll have to put on my big girl pants. 15:48 Wes: Yeah. Prepare by listening to the soundtrack and then you'll be, you'll be ready for the terrible thing, the miraculous thing. Speaking of. 15:55 Erin: Yeah. 15:56 Wes: All right, so see how I brought that back around? 15:58 Erin: Very, very clever. 15:59 Wes: All right. Sorry for that long, that long detour. But the question you're asking is about how do we, how do we connect who Nora is or seems to be earlier on in the play with who she becomes later on? How do you can we defend Ibsen against these critics who say this is far too rapid a transformation and is just kind of ad hoc in serving the political message that he wants to give? And I thought it was interesting that in a way, the transformation begins offstage. It begins before the play begins, and it begins with her committing fraud in order to get the money to take, to basically take a one year vacation, which is supposed to save Torvald's life. Right. Is this how people really got off work for one year? So I'm going to die unless I get a one year vacation. We have to go to some hot springs somewhere because we don't have real medicine yet. So. 17:00 Erin: Yeah, yeah. Why have I not used this Before? 17:04 Wes: Got the 19th century version of cancer called, you know, consumptive degeneration of my liver or whatever. Get some hot springs and it'll be cured. 17:15 Erin: No, he goes to Capri. Even better. 17:18 Wes: To me, it seems like a bit that, like this is a delusional idea on her part that this vacation was actually something life saving. But I put a kind of bookmark in that because maybe it would seem more plausible to the audiences at the time. But in any case, it strikes me that we learn in the play that she is Very proud of doing that because it was an assertion of her independence. So let me just find the place. When she's telling Christine. We're going to call her Christine. When she's telling Christine about it, I think what induces her to talk about it is that Christine is sort of being condescending to her about, oh, you don't, you know, you've never seen any real problems in life, and you think the handiwork that you had to do was real work and blah, blah, blah. You know, Christine, of course, is the one who said real problems and tragedy in her life and has had to work her ass off. And so Nora will say, and this is, unfortunately, I read the same translation as you, but my pagination is different because I used an electronic version. But this is about 14 pages in. But now I'm going to tell you something, Christine. I also have something to be proud and happy about. And then she'll go on to say that she saved Torvald's life, basically, and that she didn't rely on her father's money to do it, she raised it herself. So she's pointing there to her own resourcefulness, her own independence and something that she can be proud of. And in doing that, right, she sets up the chain of events that will lead her to actually become independent. Because it's by doing that that she'll find out that Torvald is not the person that she thought he was. And the person that she thought he was was a person who would take the guilt onto herself. Right. That the she. Throughout the play, the various points in the play, she's talking about the miraculous thing that she's waiting for. And Torvald directly gives her this idea by suggesting that he wants to sacrifice himself to save her and that she ever got in trouble, he would, you know, he would be there to do that. So she gets that idea eventually in her mind that, you know, if this were all found out, he would take the guilt upon himself. And it's not just a miraculous thing, but a terrible thing because she would not let that happen. And she would have to commit suicide to stop that from happening. Turns out suicide wasn't necessary because Torvald was not that kind of man. Completely throws her under the bus. Later on, she'll say to Torvald, Torvald will say, yes, I love you, and there's a lot of things I would do for you, but no one would ever take dishonor on themselves for the sake of love. 20:01 Erin: Yes. 20:01 Wes: And she's like hundreds of thousands of women do that every day. So when she's committing the fraud and gets the idea that he will, you know, she's doing something dishonorable, maybe. Depends on what you think of the law, right? Is it dishonorable if it's for the sake of love, but she's doing a thing that could harm her reputation, harm his reputation, but it's an invitation to him in a way, to be put in the position that women, on her view, are being put in. Right? A position of dishonor, which in her case is a position where her independence and autonomy have been compromised. So that's what she seems to be doing unconsciously by engaging in this activity. And she's going to find out that he won't join her there. And if he can't join her in the dishonor of her dependence, at least empathetically, then she will have to assert her complete independence and reclaim her honor that way. So she sets. Do you see what I'm saying? It's a really cool catalyst that gets all this stuff going, this idea that she has that she's gonna put honor at risk for the sake of love and then see what comes out of it. And it gets her out of a bad relationship. It's one way to do it. Right. Ultimately, it sets the dominoes in motion. So I think that is part of what joins the earlier Nora to the later Nora, which is that it seems to be unconscious, but at a certain level, she is ruminating on her independence and acting on that urge for independence. 21:45 Erin: Just to be clear, the dishonor enters on the mere fact of her having borrowed money. Is that what we're to. 21:53 Wes: Well, it's mainly the fraud, Right? So the dishonor is about the fraud. So it's one thing the way it's cast at various points in the play. Yeah, it's a bad thing to be in debt. Torvald doesn't like that. But it's another thing altogether to have signed her father's name as a co signer in order to get that money and essentially to have done the same thing that Krogstad had done to get himself in trouble. Right. So there's a object lesson, right, in the form of a character in the play. What could happen if I do something like this? It's to become Krogstad, who is cast by Dr. Rank as. And by Torvald to some extent, as the sort of emblem of moral sickness which is manifested in ranks, right? Syphilitic sickness that he got from his. From his Father. 22:44 Erin: Right. 22:45 Wes: In parallel to Nora getting her extravagance and loose morals from her father. Right. There's a lot of little. 22:53 Erin: Supposedly. Right. 22:54 Wes: Neat tricks in this play. There's a lot of really, really cool stuff. It's such a tightly. You know, once you start looking at it, it's such a tight, well done piece of work. I don't know. Do people need me to tell them that? 23:05 Erin: Yes, of course. 23:06 Wes: To tell them that Ibsen is a really. Right. But anyway, that's what I'm referring to. With the possibility of dishonor. 23:12 Erin: Yes. Yeah. So she forges her father's signature because she needs a man's signature to give her permission to take the loan. Is that right? A woman can't take a loan herself. 23:24 Wes: Okay. I think I misunderst. I thought maybe he was co signer. But that makes. 23:29 Erin: Or he has to co sign the loan because a woman can. 23:31 Wes: Just because she can't do it. Okay. 23:32 Erin: Right. So she takes on her father's patriarchal authority by signing his name. I like this idea that that act is the way that she sets this plot in motion. Right. Something that's happened long before. 23:46 Wes: Let me correct it, actually. Sorry, I'm just looking at it. So Krogstad says, beneath that I added a few lines in which your father stood as guarantor for the debt. So it sounds like he was actually a co signer. As in the. 23:59 Erin: He's a cosign. 24:00 Wes: Yeah. She's taken out a loan and you know. So she doesn't have the credit. I think your point is well taken. She might not have the credit because she's Principally because she's a woman. Or clearly she doesn't. In two senses. Right. 24:13 Erin: Married women were formally with. This is from a note to. A wife can't borrow without her husband's consent. This is a note in our edition. Married women were formerly without independent legal status and were not allowed to enter into economic transactions on their own. Although this was not always adhered to in practice. So this is why she had to have a co signer. She gives herself permission, she acts as her own father to give herself permission to take the. To borrow. So there's the idea of her having committed this fraud, and then there's the idea of her having borrowed money at all. Both of these things are seen as dishonorable to Torvald, who's very concerned with wholeness. This is one of the themes that comes up again and again for him. He does not like to owe anything to anyone and he likes things to Be whole. There are a few indications of this. He has a speech about borrowing, which we could go back to. But later on, Nora tells Christine to leave the room because Torvald's about to come in. And she says he can't bear to see mending and darning. Part of this is because he can't. He has an allergy to certain elements of feminine activity. He does not like, for instance, to be around Nora when she's with the children. He even separates Nora from Christine in that regard. He invites Christine to leave the room with him because he can't stand to be around mothers. So rather than assigning this, rescribing this as a sort of female trait, in which case Christine would be subject to it as well. It's as if Nora as a mother is a different species. And he invites Christine to leave with him because Christine is not, in fact, a mother, right? She's had sort of like a motherly responsibility by acting as a surrogate mother to her younger brothers and even, in a way, to her own mother. But she has not given birth and therefore is like a different species from Nora in that instance. So he has this dislike of certain elements, either of feminine activities or of activities indicative of motherhood, which we could say, psychologically, he sees Nora as being his predominantly his sexual plaything. And motherhood stands in the way, I think, of that, whatever we want to call it, his idealization of her, his objectification. That's the word I wanted to use, his objectification of her. But this mending and darning. So we can associate that, on the one hand, with his dislike of these network of activities which suggest that a mother has to do with shaping, giving shape to things, which seems to stand in competition with his sense of superiority. And his idea that he, as a father, is really the prime mover. He's the God of the household. And the mother's authority seems to stand in contrast to that. So anything that has to do with a lack of wholeness or with turning something into wholeness that is also at the same time a feminine activity is indicative of motherhood and therefore of a force which competes with his authority. And then this is on page 151. Rank talks about his illness, and he notes that he won't tell Torvald about it because he has such a marked loathing for anything hideous. I don't want him in my sick room, he says. So this I also take as his dislike of people in some state of disarray or things not being whole. As I said, he doesn't like to owe things to other people. He doesn't like to see people mending something. He only likes to see it in its full and sort of resolved, you know, fully constituted state. And he doesn't like to see people ill, somehow reduced from a state of perfection, because he himself is so obsessed with perfection and also of his own. His own moral authority. I'm throwing a lot at you there, but I'm trying to sort of like, tie these things together in real time, because it's connected to this, I think, this dislike of the maternal. But it also has to do with his own sense of satisfaction, for instance, at being a better man than Krogstad, a better man than Nora's father. So it has to do with him as an individual as well. And of course, he only sees other men as being individuals. 28:32 Wes: You're reminding me that later on he'll see Christine knitting and he'll say to 28:38 Erin: her, she should take up embroidery instead. Yeah, yeah. 28:43 Wes: So you knit, do you? She says, yeah, you know what? You should embroider instead. She's like, why? Well, because it's much prettier. Look, you hold the embroidery like this with the left hand, and then with the right, you guide the needle like this out in a delicate, extended arc. Isn't that so? Christine says, yes, free, possibly. And Torvald says, whereas knitting, that can never be anything but unlovely. Look here. The cramped arms, the knitting needles that go up and down. It's got something Chinese about it. 29:14 Erin: God, what an asshole. 29:16 Wes: Yeah, yeah. I mean, it seems to go with your thesis about wholeness. 29:20 Erin: Yeah. I wonder if embroidery is about adding to ornamenting something which is already whole. Right. And knitting is about creating something. And it's also. It's indicative if it's ugly looking to him. And that kind of. I'm almost seeing what he's describing as being like legs giving birth. Right. There's something about childbirth that's recapitulated, perhaps in the posture of the hands and the needles. 29:45 Wes: Yeah, that's good, I think, right? Yeah. So embroidery, first of all, he wants to be the instructor there, so you could presume he just happens to know more about embroidery than knitting, and he wants to be the one in charge and in control and telling them what to do. Right. And he. Right. He has this relationship to Nora in which he's going to instruct her and then the tarantella and correct her. It's part of the whole theme of him treating her like a doll and a plaything and a helpless Child and all of that. But, yeah, as you point out, whereas knitting, right, you're creating something out of nothing, and it is more akin to childbirth, embroidery. You're embellishing and decorating something. It's more akin to, you know, him dressing, right. He's the one to choose her costume for the masquerade and to essentially dress her in it. His role is to embroider or embellish Nora in order to turn her into an erotic spectacle, let's say something that's appealing to him. That's not just a matter of her appearance, but that's part of it. But also her character, right? There's the suggestion in the end that he can bring her up to be a different sort of wife. At a certain point, he says, you're not going to be allowed to bring up the children when he finds out about what she's done. And in the end, right, she says, yeah, you're right. I'm not equipped to bring up the children, so I'm going to leave them here. So here's what he says. He says there's some truth in what you're saying, however exaggerated and emotional it may be. This is after she's accused him of treating her like a doll in a playhouse. But from now on, it will be different. The time for playing is over. Now comes the time for upbringing. Whose upbringing? Mine or the children's? Both. Yours and the children's. My darling Nora. Oh, Torvald, you're not the man to bring me up to be a proper wife for you. And he says, and you're saying that. She says, and I. How equipped am I to bring up the children? You know, he wants to embroider her to have the kind of appearance that's gonna titillate him and turn him on, right? To kind of accentuate her feminine mystique. But that's all he knows how to do. They're not going to get into the guts of each other. I mean, that's part of the significance, I think, at the final conversation, right, where she says, we've never had a serious conversation. That's more like knitting. That's more like getting. Tearing apart and reconstructing and doing something that's not so superficial as embroidering. 32:12 Erin: That's right. 32:12 Wes: And they would have to change each other and bring each other up or. I mean, her point in the end is that they would both have to be very, very different people to get back together. And they can only become different people by being apart. He, in particular, has to be deprived of his doll if he's gonna grow up. 32:27 Erin: Yes. In that scene, Nora describes herself and the relationship that she's had with him prior to the part that you read. He promises to forgive her for having committed this, you know, terrible sin of saving his life. You know, which I think. I think we're meant to take that very seriously. And my understanding is that the climate was so inhospitable to human life that people did have to go, you know, and kind of like, dry out if they had tb. So we're just gonna have to take that seriously in the same way that we have to take seriously the idea that, you know, that Ibsen really believed, for instance, that syphilis was passed from. From father to son. And it's a. It's a point, a plot point, not only here, but in Ghosts, for instance. 33:16 Wes: Oh, that didn't. That didn't happen. 33:18 Erin: The only way that it could have happened was if the mother of the child was infected and that therefore the syphilis could be passed from mother to child, specifically, I believe, through the vaginal canal. But the idea of inherited syphilis from father to son is not accurate, medically accurate, but it is interesting, you know, so we have to take this as being, I think, for this whole plot to work and for Nora to not be, I don't know, to have done all this for nothing or to not be, like, completely pathetic. We have to understand that this was medical advice she was given and this was taken as a fact that Torvald had to go to Italy to save his life or to a warmer climate. And, I mean, wasn't this done all the time? People with TB had to go to deserts to dry out, et cetera. Right. 34:07 Wes: No, I mean, certainly people were. Yeah, yes. They were getting sick and going off to spas and spring waters and. I mean, Nietzsche just traveled around Europe, kept. He never stayed put after getting sick. So, yeah, I take that seriously. So I was a little bit tongue in cheek by calling it a one year vacation. But on the other hand, what I wonder about is that he doesn't have a specific disease, does he? It's just overwork. It's just like the guy works too hard. Torvald, you're burning the. 34:38 Erin: I thought the subtext was that it was tb. 34:40 Wes: Oh, really? 34:40 Erin: But perhaps I'm bringing. 34:43 Wes: No, Maybe. I think probably I'm the one who's just reading into it. Yeah, that makes more sense. I just. I want to see her as delusional. Right. That's the patriarchy speaking through me. 34:54 Erin: Oh, boy. 34:55 Wes: That was my impression of her early on. Right. She does come across as very frivolous 35:00 Erin: and, oh, I totally dismiss. 35:02 Wes: Added out of touch with reality and out of touch with what she's done with the loan and. Yeah, no, but we can. Okay, let me not derail you. We can discuss that. 35:13 Erin: Well, no, I mean, I think that's a really important point and maybe this will help us get there because I do think she reveals certain key elements of her. I mean, her life with Torvald has not been easy. I think this is important to note. They are just about to come into money. Things are finally turning around for them. But the. The description of previous Christmases in which she was given so little and was working herself all night, and all Torvald could think about was the fact that she was depriving him of her company and she was working herself like crazy to give the children a good Christmas on the very, very little money that 35:46 Wes: they had caused the results. Meager quote unquote. 35:49 Erin: Right, right. And then we learn, for instance, she's 35:51 Wes: trying to make, what, ornaments out of paper or something. She's making do with the best they have, their gifts. 35:56 Erin: She's trying to give the children some nice gifts. And it seems to me that they lived quite a degraded. She's trying to please him with what little he has, and at the same time she's staying up late doing copying and various other things to try and pay back this loan. The other element of this is the way that he treats her with such indignity. So at the bottom of 182, when I look at it now, I think I've lived like a pauper here, just from hand to mouth. I've lived by doing tricks for you, Torvald, but that was how you wanted it. So she's a beggar. And we see this early on. We see that Torvald treats her with tremendous condescension and that she has to hide things from him like she's a child and she has to distract him. She plays upon her looks. She's very aware of her own attractiveness. It's something that she mentioned several times in her conversation with that early conversation with Christine. The ways in which she's traded on her looks in order to get what she wants, or the way she fantasizes about trading on her look to have a wealthy, older benefactor give her money things, things of that nature. Obviously she's thinking in the back of her mind of rank, but it doesn't occur to her that this is what actively in her conscious mind that this is what she's thinking of. At any rate, she's aware of her attractiveness and she's aware of the effect that it has on Torvald. And she basically has to distract him and manipulate him just to be able to eat what she wants to eat. She's not allowed to eat macaroons because he says they're going to be bad for her teeth. She's living with someone who is emotionally borderline abusive and she has very, very little dignity. 37:32 Wes: I agree. I just think that she's conformed. She herself has conformed to it. Right. She's not self aware underneath and scheming to get by, but she is. 37:41 Erin: She's scheming a bit. She's. She's scheming to get what she wants. And I think she is self aware, but. 37:47 Wes: Well, in a. I don't think she knows at the beginning of the play that she's been wronged. No, she doesn't know the things that she, you know, she has an epiphany and then she sees it at the end. But before all that, you know, it's all unconscious and she's just complying and. Yeah, she's scheming in the sense of. And she's doing some lying too. It's not just the fraud. But what does she do? She says that rank or Christine brought the macaroons or something. I forget. 38:13 Erin: Yeah. Very, very childlike defense. 38:16 Wes: Yeah. But she can get away with that, right? Yeah, because she is treated like a child and she's in the position of a child and they have a. You know, I think that's one of the interesting things about the beginning of the play where especially if you see it acted, it's like, okay, is this some cute, fun little banter that this husband and wife have? You know, is it kind of endearing? Do they have a nice little relationship going? And then it just gets kind of sickening. 38:42 Erin: Oh, yes. 38:44 Wes: You know, has my little spending bird been out frittering money again? But it gets sickening in various ways. In a way it's too. Right. There's the element of condescension involved. It's involved. There's her kind of hyper feminine conformity to his condescension. But also. Right. As we learn more and more about what you've called his borderline abusiveness and that becomes more and more apparent and the ways in which she's confined by all this. 39:14 Erin: That's right. And I think that at the very. At the beginning of the play, we see her through Torvald's eyes. You know, we're getting all of this information about her. I mean, he assigns all of these, in addition to the inhuman nicknames he has for her, namely that he repeatedly calls her a squirrel, a bird, various other things that can't speak. Right. 39:37 Wes: She's one. Right. You know, is she a squirrel or a bird? Make a choice. Squirrel or a doll. What's that one? 39:46 Erin: In addition to these pet names he gives her, he's also assigning her the characteristic of being a spendthrift. And I don't take that seriously for one moment. If you look at the evidence, she's not a spendthrift at all. What he's describing, for instance, he says, you're a strange little one, just as your father was. You're forever on the lookout for ways to get money, but as soon as you get it, it's as though it slips through your fingers. You never know what you've done with it. Well, we must take you as you are. It's in the blood. Oh, yes, it is. These things are hereditary, Nora. So he ascribes her father with this flaw as well. Of course, we learn later that this is money, that she's essentially stealing from him to pay. Because it's not her money, it's his money. Right. That's the other element of this. He has no sense of sharing. 40:30 Wes: Well, he also. He ends up counting out money to her shortly after that. So Right. Shortly after he accuses her of frittering it away. He basically is using money. So he says, hmm, is my squirrel standing there sulking? And then he takes out his wallet. What do you think I have here? 40:47 Erin: Yes. 40:47 Wes: Well, it's like he's a stripper and he's going to rain down some dollars on his money. 40:52 Erin: That's exactly. 40:53 Wes: And he's like, here you are. And then 10, 20, 30, 40, which is really in the BBC production. The way they pull that off is really interesting because it's very flirty and very sexual. You're exactly right to be skeptical about his accusations of her extravagance. We don't really see any evidence of that in the play, except for the vacation, which, as you've argued, is probably necessary and is not just a vacation. But anyway, I'm already falling into the trap by calling it a vacation. So we don't see any evidence of that. But we do see evidence of his participation in this whole money thing and his use of that to kind of control her. It's a game. It's the same Sort of game as the tarantella and all the rest of it, the embroidery, it fits into the same game where he can use it to control her. 41:47 Erin: Well, we see someone with a tremendous amount of pomposity and control who accuses someone else of being a spendthrift. Instantly, we know, well, someone like that, a spendthrift, to them is anybody with a normal kind of relationship to money. We can just as easily turn it back around and say, well, how are we to know that he isn't a miser and that she isn't perfectly normal? 42:10 Wes: Yeah, I mean, I do think we get that sense that he is obsessional and the whole thing with debt. He's a bank manager, but he doesn't seem to understand how debt might work to their advantage, which it can. But if you know something about money, it's not a very sophisticated financial position to say, oh, no debt ever. Right. That betrays his flaw. But. Sorry to interrupt you. 42:34 Erin: That's right. No, but she, you know, as Nora says, there's something called quarterly interest, you know, to Christine, and she says, let's see. 42:44 Wes: It's very mysterious and magical and who can keep track of these things? 42:48 Erin: She said, they're terribly difficult to get hold of. 42:50 Wes: Yes. 42:50 Erin: Yeah. So I've had to save a bit here and a bit there, wherever I could. You see, Naturally, I couldn't put much aside from the housekeeping money since Torvald had to live comfortably. Torvald has to live comfortably, but she gets to have little things handed out to her. Naturally, I couldn't put much aside from the housekeeping money, since Torvald had to live comfortably and I couldn't let the children go badly dressed. Whatever I got for them, I had to use every bit. So Christine says. So I suppose your own necessities took the brunt of it. My poor Nora. And she says, yes, of course. But I was also best placed whenever Torvald gave me money for new dresses and the like. I never used more than half of it, always bought the plainest and cheapest thing. It was a blessing from heaven that everything suits me so well. So Torvald didn't notice. But many a time it weighed heavily on me. Christine, she has been living like a beggar and living in such a way as to really reduce the comforts that she had to pay off this loan, while not giving any indication to Torvald that anything was amiss by not letting his quality of life suffer at all, while her suffered tremendously. The first thing that we see her do is be generous and There's a big difference between being a spendthrift and being generous. Of course. The porter comes in with a Christmas tree and she asks, how much? And he says, half a crown. And she gives him a full crone and tells him to keep the change. That's generosity. Then when Helmer comes in, when. Sorry, I keep going back and forth because he's Helmer in the. 44:19 Wes: It's fine. Yeah. 44:20 Erin: In the script. 44:21 Wes: And she's Mrs. Helmer. 44:23 Erin: Sorry, she's Mrs. Helmer. That's right. We have several words for her relationship to money that he gives us, which is that she fritters things and that she's extravagant. These are two words. We have spending bird. But when he's. When he's talking about her spending, he calls it frittering and he calls it extravagance. Whereas when she talks about spending, she says, letting ourselves go, Torvald, surely we must be able to let ourselves go a little this year. After all, this is the first Christmas we don't need to save. So there's this implicit idea of freedom, openness. We can relax now. We can let things go a little bit. We don't have to be so restricted. Instantly, he turns that into frittering and extravagance. I think that's key because I think this has to do with Nora's generosity of spirit, her freedom, her sense of wanting to have freedom versus what Torvald is all about, which is control and trying to reign her in constantly. She's not allowed to be herself, to follow her own light at all. She has to react to him. She has to. You know, he has to constantly tell her she's always doing something wrong, you know, and he is. He's constantly punishing her in these little tiny ways. And so, yeah, I do think it's. I mean, I think abuse is such a. You know, it's not a word I want to say because it's overused, but I do think it's abusive. 45:49 Wes: Yeah. I think it's interesting, these kind of names that he has for her, because a squirrel, right, is actually stores up the nuts, right? It doesn't just eat the macaroons. 46:02 Erin: Yes. 46:03 Wes: It takes them somewhere and stores them. But squirrels also, you might think of a squirrel as a sort of scavenger. So, Right. She's kind of rummaging around, picking up bits and pieces. So you get the image that she's a scavenger in her own home. And that's when he counts out the money to her. That's one example. She's dependent on what she can get from him. So it highlights her lack of independence, as does, of course, the bird names. Right. So she's like a bird, like a caged bird, but also she's a skylark chirruping for him. She's there to be pretty, she's there to be an ornament. She's there to not be free and fly and spread her wings. Right. Ultimately, the end, he's gonna think of her as wounded and he's gonna want to spread his wings over her. I can protect you. Right. But on the other hand, she's a quote unquote spending bird, which I think you're right. I don't think we can take that seriously. Based on what the evidence that we get in the play. What we do see is that in a way, her desire to spend, it's just normal housekeeping stuff, but it's also a bet on the future. You could think of it as investment. And that's the way you can look at the trip that she takes him on. You can see it as something associated with love. And it's an investment in future possibility. I have to take out this loan to take Torvald on a trip so that he will not die, so that he will get better, so that he can be cured. You can call that extravagance if you want. And if you are initially skeptical like me and you don't think it's weird that people take one year vacations to get cured, then that's the attitude you might have, that it's merely extravagance, but if it's necessary, then it's an investment and it can reap rewards. He doesn't have that same attitude towards the future. I just wanted to highlight that because the investment that she's made at an unconscious level is in finding out if he's the kind of person that he pretends to be. Right. He says at various points he would sacrifice everything for her. That if anything bad happened, he would take it all upon himself and she's going to prove him wrong. She sets in motion the events that will prove him wrong and show him not to be that actual person. I think that's in the end what the loan is about. But we better, we better stop part one here and then continue in our next part. 48:34 Erin: Okay, thank you. 48:35 Wes: All right, thank you 48:40 Erin: and thanks to everyone who listened. For an easy way to do that, go to subtextpodcast.com patreon.com subtextpodcast please send your questions, feedback and episode requests to [email protected] if we get enough questions, we'll do some bonus Q and A shows for subscribers. You can also find us on Facebook subtextpodcast and on Twitter enjoysubtext.