The game In the dollhouse labeled Norwegian Henrik Ibsen as the author of the scandal in 1879, when the play was performed. In the debate on women’s rights that was stirring around the world, Ibsen faced a storm of protests, especially from the patriarchal church, against a woman who left her husband at the end of the play. With no prior knowledge of Jung’s theories on the anima and animus, Ibsen created a protagonist who starts out as an anima woman who tries to represent her husband Torvald’s ideal woman but who, in the end, rejects this person and leaves him searching. of self-realization. .
Father son
In Act I, Nora Helmer surreptitiously eats macaroni and must lie about it for fear of retaliation from her husband Torvald for eating sweets. Hearing her return from shopping, he yells, “Is that my little lark chirping? … Is that my little squirrel circling? … Has my little spender been wasting money again?” Three short pages into the script, the reader quickly deduces the nature of the relationship between Nora and Torvald. There is a sweet outer layer in Nora’s darker censorship that lies just a little below the surface of her words. It is a father-son arrangement based on Torvald’s need to control his wife and his own image, both of which are illusory, creating the tension of uncertainty about Nora’s choices.
Nora as the loyal Ariadne
An old friend from school, Mrs. Christine Linde, comes to visit Nora. Their conversation allows them to fill in the ten-year gap of news, including Nora’s need for embroidery to make ends meet and Torvald’s exhaustion and illness that required a recovery period in Italy – a tremendous expense that Nora explains. that came from his dad. . Torvald recovered and returned to Norway where he just received a promotion at the bank and the promise of a secure future for his family. This situation is also an illusion, because although Torvald has recovered, his debt is not with his father, who has already died, but with his wife, who secretly borrowed the large sum from a dubious lender to pay the expenses of your recovery.
The tangled web
In the second act, the lives of the characters have become intertwined. Nora offers to help the widow Mrs. Linde by telling her husband of her friend’s accounting skills, which convinces Torvald to grant her a newly available banking position with the termination of Nils Krogstad, Nora Helmer’s secret moneylender. . The deception has indeed led to a tangled web, but it will be the necessary test of the anima for Nora and Torvald. When Krogstad is fired, he will announce the news of the scandalous loan, an announcement that Torvald’s ego will not survive. In fact, Krogstad sends Torvald the note requesting the balance of the loan and the letter is found intact in the box. While Nora and Torvald are upstairs at a Christmas celebration, Christine and Krogstad meet and reveal their old love story. Christine’s good fortune leads her to offer Krogstad the security of marriage, and he accepts her offer, at the same time as canceling Nora’s loan.
Torvald control
In the third act Torvald and Nora are alone. He calls her his “fascinating, charming little darling … all the beauty that is mine, all my own … more captivating than ever … I want to be with you, my dear wife. I have often wished that I could be threatened by some great danger, so that I could risk the blood of my life, and everything, for his sake. ” Once he has read the letter that reveals Nora’s loan dilemma, his words quickly change to “wretched, hypocritical, liar, criminal creature, unspeakable ugliness of her, no religion, no morality, no sense of duty … Now you have destroyed my happiness … you ruined my future … I must sink to such miserable depths because of a thoughtless woman! “Torvald’s soul invokes all the images he knows as a woman: Aphrodite the beautiful, Ariadna the loyal , Persephone the complacent, Pygmalion Galatea, the woman he created. She is every woman in your unconscious that will allow you to shape and control her.
A clear projection of anima
After his tirade of accusation, he calmly tells Nora: “It must seem as if everything between us is as before … You will still be at my house … but I will not allow you to raise the children; do not dare to entrust yourself to you … From this moment on, happiness is not the issue, the only thing that concerns us is to save the remains, the fragments, the appearance … Suddenly the doorbell rings; A letter has arrived for Nora, that Torvald He insists on reading first. It is news from Krogstad that he has returned their bond, saving Nora and Torvald from embarrassment. Before long Torvald forgives his wife for her inability to “understand how to act responsibly on her own” and insists that lean on him, who will advise and guide her in her feminine helplessness. She has wide wings to protect her “frightened songbird” and will protect her “like a hunted dove.” While Nora dresses to leave him, although he does not know it, he tells him that he has given him a new life, G alatea, and that she has become an archetypal wife and daughter to him. “So you will be to me after this, my scared and defenseless little darling.”
Discarding the Anima
Nora, with each passing moment, silently gazes inward, examining the unknown new woman within her and discarding the anima projection that had lingered for eight years in their marriage. With his cold and tense face, he makes Torvald sit up as he tells him for the first time that they have never had a serious conversation as husband and wife. She is tired of being her dad and now her husband’s baby doll, who must have the same opinions and perform tricks for the men in her life. Her marriage and home have been nothing more than a dollhouse, and having been trained to be manipulated according to Torvald’s wishes, she is also not fit to be a mother. She must be alone and try to educate herself, because understanding self is as sacred a duty as wife and mother. Torvald defies Nora’s expectation that he could possibly sacrifice his honor for her, even as he fantasizes about spilling his life blood for her, telling her that no man would do that. Her insightful response is, “It’s something hundreds of thousands of women have done.” The door closes behind her and she leaves. The play has ended with Torvald confused and stunned. Nora has killed Torvald’s symbolic mistress, the projection of the anima that enslaved her, and is now free to discover who she is and can become.
The anima cycle
Perpetual in its movement, the projection of the anima, the images that a man unconsciously collects from the ideal woman, is reinforced by the woman who agrees to reflect those behaviors and mold herself accordingly to adapt to the projection. In each story, the female lead struggles to conform to her husband’s ideal at the time, and gradually begins to think the way he does. His path becomes hers; your preferences become hers. In two other works by women she animates, the short story “Maria Concepcion” by Katherine Anne Porter and the novel by Fitzgerald The Great Gatsby, marriages remain intact only because the wives agree to renounce themselves. In Ibsen’s work The dollhouse, Nora must sacrifice her old life to be reborn as an authentic woman.
See the following jobs:
Jung, CG The Basic Writings of CG Jung. Trans. FR.FC Helmet. Ed. Violet S. de Laszlo. Bollingen series. Princeton: Princeton UP, 1990.
Ibsen, Henrik. In the dollhouse. Girard, Kansas: Haldeman-Julius Company,
