The View of Marriage in Henrik Ibsen's A Doll's House

In his analysis of the plays of Henrik Ibsen, Janrek Lavrin asserts that the plays A Doll's House and Ghosts made Henrik Ibsen famous and notorious all over Europe (Lavrin 77). The primary uproar over the plays centered around what was viewed as Ibsen's attack on marriage. Lavrin argues, however, that the problems Ibsen was attempting to address in A Doll's House were not the problems caused by marriage in general but rather the problems caused by modern marriage (77).

Ibsen's initial idea behind the play that eventually became A Doll's House was for a central female character whose dramatic dilemma would arise from the disparity between her innate sense of right and society's laws (Saari 41). He was primarily concerned with the conflict between what he saw to be two kinds of moral law and conscience: the feminine, with love as its highest value, and the masculine, with its social and legal moorings. Sandra Saari argues that in the end, however, Ibsen retained the female protagonist but created a play based on the premise that, though they traditionally inhabit different realms of the social and legal world, males and females demonstrate no essential difference in their spiritual make-up (Saari 42). The issue surrounding marriage, therefore, is whether it serves to accentuate each partner's humanity.

In A Doll's House, Nora's husband is a lawyer by profession and a model family man as far as appearances go.

. . .
ot with feminism, but with "humanity in general" (Lavrin 79). Saari observes that Ibsen made three major changes in Nora's characterization between the first draft of the play and the completed script (47). First, he eliminated Nora's hysterical "female" behavior. Second, he added a rational purpose to her childish behavior toward Torvald (the disruption of her marriage). And third, which Saari argues to be the most significant, Ibsen changed the orientation and identification of Nora's thoughts and ideals to human rather than feminine (49). Thus, whatever feminist reading one gives the play, Ibsen's stated intention was to address the ethical and spiritual factors without which marriage remains a mere "living together" (Lavrin 79). Nora's sudden awakening to such a truth makes her go away at the end of the play. She finally realizes that marriage should be the arena in which the difficult but rich work of self-realization is conducted (Lebowitz 216). Naomi Lebowitz, for example, argues that the place of true marriage is one in which both members of the partnership come into their own before coming together. This is, undoubtedly, what Ibsen would agree to be the real intention of marriage. The marriage he depicted, howe
. . .

Some common words found in the essay are:
Edvard Beyer, Nora Torvald, Act III, House Nora's, Naomi Lebowitz, Consequently Nora, Doll's House, Hjalmar Boyesen, Unfortunately Nora, III Nora, ibsen act, doll's house, ibsen act iii, lavrin 79, act iii, wife mother, henrik ibsen, lavrin 77, beyer 117, role wife mother, ibsen york, york macmillan,
Approximate Word count = 1707
Approximate Pages = 7 (250 words per page)

More Essays on The View of Marriage in Henrik Ibsen A Doll House