A Doll's House : a play

About the book

Nora Helmer appears to inhabit a comfortable household, preparing for Christmas as her husband's improved prospects promise greater security. A private financial arrangement from the past threatens that surface and exposes how differently the couple understand protection, duty, and respect. Ibsen confines the action to the home, making visits, letters, and changes of conversational tone carry mounting pressure. Nora's efforts to manage what others know reveal both resourcefulness and the constraints under which she has acted. The play asks what a marriage assumes about the independence of the people within it. Its tension comes from watching ordinary endearments and accepted roles acquire new meanings when a practical crisis makes their consequences impossible to leave unexamined.

• Marriage
• Autonomy
• Debt and obligation

Why read it

For a tightly constructed domestic drama in which familiar speech becomes evidence of an unequal relationship.

English translation