Authorial Choices and Textual Features (DP IB English A: Language and Literature: HL): Revision Note

Across assessments in your IB English A Language and Literature course, you need to show the ability to analyse and evaluate how a writer achieves a purpose, conveys a message and/or explores a theme. Therefore, knowing the names of authorial choices and textual features and pairing them with specific references and impacts is key to your success in assessments.

Dramatic methods

There are a number of dramatic methods used in A Doll’s House:

• Structural and dramatic techniques 

• Stagecraft

• Language

• Characterisation 

Structural and dramatic techniques

Dramatic irony

Ibsen uses dramatic irony throughout the play to create tension and expose the hypocrisy within the Helmers’ marriage.

• Nora ate the macaroons, so when she lies to Torvald, the audience gains insight into the characters and their marriage:

  • This highlights the imbalance of power and reveals an aspect of secrecy and control within their relationship

• Nora committed forgery while Torvald condemns Krogstad for the same crime, denouncing the hypocrisy of those who do so:

  • This creates tension and may evoke sympathy as Torvald’s harsh words are juxtaposed with what we know were Nora’s honourable and loving motives

• Nora pretends not to know how to dance to distract Torvald from opening the letter box:

  • Ibsen highlights the truth that is often hidden behind performances

Foreshadowing

Ibsen uses foreshadowing to raise tension and reveal aspects about characters, such as arrogance or naivety. 

• Nora’s early statement in Act 1 foreshadows Torvald’s reaction at the end of the play:

  • ‘And besides, how painful and humiliating it would be for Torvald, with his manly independence, to know that he owed me anything!’ 

• In Act 3, he does, in fact, react with anger at the ruin of his reputation and the usurping of his role:

  • The audience is encouraged to agree with Nora’s interpretation of his emotions, i.e., pain and humiliation, rather than concern or even gratitude

Internal and external conflict

• Nora’s internal conflict is revealed through her muttered conversations to herself, broken sentences, sudden exclamations, mood changes and thoughts of suicide:

  • She is torn between the performance of her role and her secrets

• Her external conflict is against the constraints of society in terms of her gender and class:

  • She critiques a law that does not allow for motive and queries the moral righteousness of those who wield power but do not always behave morally themselves

  • She lies to her husband repeatedly because she wants to protect him

  • She questions the role of motherhood and wifehood

  • She reflects on how she was passed like an object or doll from her father’s ownership and control to her husband’s

Stagecraft

Symbolism 

• Christmas tree: The Christmas tree and its decorations symbolise a traditionally happy family time:

  • Torvald mocks Nora’s efforts but also expects the home to be perfect to maintain the appearance of conformity and decency

  • In Act 1, the tree is placed in the middle of the room as Nora decorates it, as if to force a sense of festive cheer and family normalcy

  • Nora moves to the other side of it to hide her shock at Torvald’s harsh criticism, as if she is hiding her true feelings behind the mask of domestic bliss

  • In Act 2, it is ‘in the corner by the piano, stripped of its ornaments and with burnt-down candle-ends on its dishevelled branches’, symbolising how appearances cannot hide decay or the lack of genuine closeness in the marriage

• Macaroons: Nora enters the play, sneaking macaroons from Torvald and she subsequently repeatedly denies eating them: 

  • This sets her up as secretive and duplicitous

  • It also reveals the dynamics of the marriage: a battle between expectations and true desire

• Nora’s costume: the Italian dance costume was once worn when the couple recovered from a difficult time together (her father’s death, the birth of their child and Torvald’s exhaustion) in Italy, but now it is torn: 

  • In Act 2, Nora dramatically claims it is shredded, but Kristine says a simple stitching will fix the hem

  • Nora’s perspective symbolises her sense that her marriage is facing ruin, while Kristine’s perspective is that hard work and a practical attitude can solve problems

  • After the dance in Act 3, Nora appears wearing the Italian costume, covered by a long black shawl, which symbolises her imminent literal or metaphoric death: she has hinted at suicide

Motifs

• The door: this reflects separation, secrecy and Nora’s eventual break from her marriage: 

  • In Act 1, Krogstad enters through a door that was accidentally left open, symbolising the threat that can enter the domestic sanctuary when mistakes are made

  • The sound of Nora closing the door is the final line of the play: she has closed the door on her husband’s and society’s expectations of her

  • Torvald’s office is behind a closed door through which they speak, symbolising both separate marital roles and a lack of open communication

  • The frequent openings and closings of doors throughout the play symbolise the numerous barriers to authentic connection

  • Through the motif of doors, Ibsen critiques a society built upon status and reputation over authenticity and honesty

• Money: the dialogues around family spending and financial concerns are a feature of the play's realism and Ibsen’s desire to portray real people and life: 

  • Under the patriarchal order, which is legalised and formalised under the Napoleonic Code, Nora has no control or independence over financial decisions and no money of her own

  • She wants ‘heaps and heaps’ of money to buy what she needs to meet the expectations and standards of bourgeois life

  • Kristine’s practical approach to marriage as a means to support her ill mother reveals the limited options for women at the time 

  • Ibsen comments on the artifice of romance surrounding many marriages

• Letters and paper: these symbolise the power that the legal and financial institutions hold over citizens in the context of the play: 

  • They also reveal truth rather than the artifice of words that the characters speak

  • The audience can interpret the play itself as an extension of this as Ibsen wanted his written words to reveal truth

  • In Act 3, Kristine sees the potential power of Krogstad’s letter: ‘they must have a complete understanding between them, which is impossible with all this concealment and falsehood going on’

  • Torvald tears up and burns the papers, symbolising his desire to erase reality and return to the pretence of happiness

Language

Allusion

Ibsen alludes vaguely to theories and philosophies at the time and prompts his audience to reflect on these ideas and their impact in real life.

• Torvald refers to the idea of inheriting characteristics from one’s parents, e.g., Krogstad from his mother and Nora from her father: 

  • This suggests one is destined or determined to be a certain way and has no free will or agency over who they will become

  • This may be a comfortable stance for one who feels morally superior, but Ibsen’s irony may be that society has made Torvald who he is and Nora no longer wants that

• Torvald refers to the emotional, moral and psychological harm of poor parental decisions:

  • This reflects the idea that one’s environment impacts one’s well-being

• Determinism is alluded to in Dr Rank’s illness:

  • Krogstad claims he would have been a different man if Kristine had married him; the Nurse’s path as a mother and worker is dictated by others’ actions

• Maternal duties and associated values are alluded to through Nora and Nurse:

  • Torvald leaves the care of the children to Nora, but also claims in Act 2, ‘Almost everyone who has gone to the bad early in life has had a deceitful mother’

  • This double bind means that mothers are deemed wholly responsible for the moral upbringing of the children, but they simultaneously have no agency in decision-making

  • In Act 3, Torvald begs Nora to remember her ‘most sacred duties’ as a wife and mother; maternal duties here are used as a means of controlling and suppressing female autonomy

  • The connotation of ‘sacred’ suggests an appeal to religious belief and ‘duties’ layers this with a moral impetus to sacrifice one’s choice and identity

  • Nora’s questions Nurse’s ability to have the ‘heart to’ and be ‘willing’ to give up her daughter which are contrasted with the Nurse’s ‘obliged to’; Ibsen hints here at the privilege of choice vs the necessity of obligation and how these are tied to economic realities

Animal imagery and repetition of diminutives

Torvald repeatedly refers to Nora using animal imagery, similes and metaphors.These animals have connotations of weakness and fragility; they are often accompanied by diminutives or adjectives connoting smallness and suggest a need for protection or management.

• “Little lark twittering”: a lark is a small, delicate bird; twittering is the sound of a bird, but also the sound of inconsequential, mindless expression:

  • This is the first line Torvald speaks in Act 1 and it immediately sets up the dynamic between husband and wife and reveals his view of Nora as a pretty, delicate object

• ‘Here is shelter for you; here I will protect you like a hunted dove that I have saved from a hawk’s claws’:

  • This simile emphasises how Torvald views the marriage and how infantilised Nora is

• Together, these language choices show a pattern of undermining, diminishing and controlling:

  • Ibsen highlights how modes of communication signal power dynamics and underlying truths

  • Ibsen suggests women are infantilised by the beliefs and values of a patriarchal order

Metaphor

The title of the play is itself a metaphor and the metaphor of dolls is crucial to understanding Nora and the at-the-time shocking close of the play.

• A doll’s house is a small but rigid structure that mimics an idealised version of domesticity and the Helmers’ home is similar:

  • Nora tries to maintain the correct decor, table and clothing to maintain the appearance of the blissful bourgeois life

  • However, the reality is a home with financial stresses and power imbalances

  • Ibsen suggests that middle-class society is playing dolls’ houses as it attempts to conform and strive for status and reputation at the cost of true individual development and happiness

• The metaphor of the doll emphasises the ownership of the female body in patriarchal society and the lack of agency that results from it

• Metaphors portray poor morality as something toxic:

  • This suggests a fear of moral decay in the face of declining religious beliefs

  • It shows the belief that maintaining strict social order is essential

• In Act 3, Nora’s firmly states, ‘This is a settling of accounts’: 

  • This suggests marriage is a business deal that depends on both partners performing their roles successfully

Characterisation

Nora

Nora is characterised as manipulative and performative, but she is also portrayed as naive and embodying these characteristics for good reasons.

• She recounts to Kristine how she pretended to want to travel, weeping and pleading with Torvald, when in fact they needed to for his health

• She does not tell Torvald about the forgery because of his male pride

• Through this characterisation, marriage is shown to be a set of obligatory performances

• In Act 1, Nora is characterised as understanding the shallowness of Torvald’s commitment to her and her need to perform her role well: 

  • ‘when my dancing and dressing-up and reciting have palled on him; then it may be a good thing to have something in reserve’.

• Nora naively believes she is safe from ruin because her motives were just

Torvald

• Torvald is characterised as being certain and self-assured of his moral righteousness: 

• He feels superior to Krogstad and criticises his lies and deception as poisonous and shameful

• He prefers reputation and aesthetic over real substance: 

  • He advises Kristine to take up embroidery rather than knitting because it is more graceful

  • He suggests maintaining the facade of a happy family to save appearances

• He feels a sense of ownership over Nora in terms of what she eats, how she dresses, how she behaves and when he is intimate with her

• However, the audience may feel some sympathy for Torvald:

  • Ibsen does not characterise him as a villain, but rather as a blind, complacent man following the norms of his society

  • The villain for Ibsen is not the individual, but the society that confines them  

Sources

A Doll’s House | Project Gutenberg (no date). https://www.gutenberg.org/files/2542/2542-h/2542-h.htm (opens in a new tab)