Next
Summary
Welcome to the LitCharts study guide on Henrik Ibsen's A Doll's House. Created by the original team behind SparkNotes, LitCharts are the world's best literature guides.
A Doll's House: Introduction
A concise biography of Henrik Ibsen plus historical and literary context for A Doll's House.
A Doll's House: Plot Summary
A quick-reference summary: A Doll's House on a single page.
A Doll's House: Detailed Summary & Analysis
In-depth summary and analysis of every act of A Doll's House. Visual theme-tracking, too.
A Doll's House: Themes
Explanations, analysis, and visualizations of A Doll's House's themes.
A Doll's House: Quotes
A Doll's House's important quotes, sortable by theme, character, or act.
A Doll's House: Characters
Description, analysis, and timelines for A Doll's House's characters.
A Doll's House: Symbols
Explanations of A Doll's House's symbols, and tracking of where they appear.
A Doll's House: Literary Devices
A Doll's House's key literary devices explained and sortable by chapter.
A Doll's House: Theme Wheel
An interactive data visualization of A Doll's House's plot and themes.
Brief Biography of Henrik Ibsen
Henrik Ibsen was born into into a wealthy family in Skien, Norway in 1828. After failing his university entrance exams, he decided he’d rather focus on writing than pursue higher education. When he first began to write, though, he was quite unsuccessful, rendering him and his wife extremely poor. In 1864 he left his wife and his five-year-old son, Sigurd (who grew up to become the Prime Minister of Norway) and moved to Sorrento, Italy. He later moved to Dresden, Germany, where he wrote his most famous play, A Doll’s House. After his initial unsuccessful years, Ibsen became more popular as a writer, even if his plays were thought of as scandalous and inappropriate. He returned to Norway in 1891 and died in Oslo in 1906 after suffering several strokes. He is now one of the world’s most famous playwrights, and his work is performed more often than that of any other playwright except Shakespeare. He is often considered to be “the father of realism” in drama, and is also thought of as a pioneer of Modernism.
Get the entire A Doll's House LitChart as a printable PDF.
Historical Context of A Doll's House
The 1870s were dominated by strict Victorian social codes and laws that severely restricted the rights of all women, and married women in particular. Governments throughout Europe used the Napoleonic Code, which prevented women from engaging in financial transactions. Many women who conducted their own business or earned their own wages chose not to marry because the laws regarding what married women could do when it came to finances were so limiting. By the beginning of the 20th century, things were beginning to change as the female suffrage movement swept over Europe and the world and women were awarded rights such as the right to own property and the right to vote. However, for most people in the late 1870s, such eventualities were not yet even a distant dream.
Other Books Related to A Doll's House
Another significant playwright working in the realist tradition was the Russian writer Anton Chekhov, whose plays also provide a critical examination of family, society, and morality. The Swedish playwright August Strindberg was influenced by Ibsen; Strindberg’s plays are in the naturalist style, a theatrical movement that grew out of and responded to realism.
Key Facts about A Doll's House
- Full Title: A Doll’s House (Norwegian: Ett dukkehjem)
- When Written: 1879
- Where Written: Dresden, Germany
- When Published: Published and first performed in December 1879
- Literary Period: Realism; modernism
- Genre: Realist modern prose drama
- Setting: A town or city in Norway
- Climax: When Torvald discovers the letter from Krogstad revealing Nora’s secret
- Antagonist: At first Krogstad, then Torvald
Extra Credit for A Doll's House
A True Story: A Doll’s House is based on the life of Ibsen’s family friend Laura Kieler, whose actions inspired the story of Nora’s secret debt. In reality, however, Kieler did not forge a signature, and when her husband, Victor, discovered her secret, he divorced her and forced her to be committed to an insane asylum. Ibsen, appalled by Kieler’s committal, wrote A Doll’s House in part as a way of defending her. After two years in the asylum Kieler returned to live with her husband and children and became a famous author in Denmark.
Scandalous: When it was first performed and for many years afterwards, A Doll’s House caused quite the scandal for its criticism of 19th-century marriage customs and portrayal of a woman abandoning her family in order to gain a sense of self. Pressured by several theatres and even the actress who was supposed to play Nora in a German production of the play, Ibsen wrote an alternative ending, in which Nora, upon seeing her children, changes her mind and stays with Torvald. He later regretted doing this, calling the adapted ending “a barbaric outrage.”
