A Doll's House: An Introduction
On the 19th October, 1878, when Ibsen was in Rome. He started work on novel. He expericed that there are two kinds of conscience,one for men and one quite different for women. They don't understand each other; but in practical life, women is judged by masculine law, as though she were not a woman but a man. The wife in the play ends by having no idea what is right and what is wrong, natural feelings on the one hand and belief in authority on the other lead her to utter distraction.
Ibsen completed it by the end of July in the year 1879.
A Doll's House: The Story of a Wife Who Left Her Husband
This play tells the story of the married life of Nora and Helmer, the circumstances leading to Nora's leaving her husband and her children in order to go out into the world at large to gain a first hand experience of life and to find out for herself what is right and what is wrong. Nora and Helmer have been married for nine years, but she has been keeping a secret from him all these years. When Helmer fell critically ill and had to be taken to a warm climate for treatment and recovery, she borrowed some money from Krogstad, a clerk at a local bank and forged her father her father's signature on the promissory note in order to comply with Krogstad's demand that somebody must stand surety for the repayment of the loan. Now, Krogstad who is threatened with dismissal from his post, tells Nora that he would revel her secret to Helmer if she does not prevail upon Helmer to let Krogstad keep his job. Nora thinks that, on learning her secret, her husband would come forward to take the blame for her criminal act of forgery on his own shoulders. But when her husband learns the secret, he begins to scold her in very harsh terms for having acted dishonesty and having put him into Krogstad's power. Krogstad withdraws his threat, but Nora has now discovered the true character of her hasband. She has found that he is incapable of living up to his moral principles and that he is incapable of making any sacrifices for her sake. She tells him that she loves him no more and cannot live with him any longer. She walks out of the house, slamming the door behind her.