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A Doll's House: A Level York Notes A Level Revision Guide

A Level Study Notes and Revision Guides

A Doll's House: A Level York Notes

Henrik Ibsen

Revise the key points

Read through the key points, then print the cards as a handy revision aid.

1 The individual and society

  • Nora is shaped by men’s expectations.
  • She has few chances to make decisions, and hence shape a self.
  • At first bored by ‘society’, she learns to understand other people.
  • Her experience makes her determined to ‘find out the truth about myself and about life’ (Act 3, p. 99).

Themes

A Doll's House: A Level

2 Heredity

  • Helmer says Nora has inherited her father’s irresponsibility (Act 1, p. 26).
  • Rank knows he has inherited his father’s disease (Act 2, p. 65).
  • Heredity had become a burning question since Darwin’s The Origin of Species appeared in 1859, twenty years earlier.
  • The play suggests that character is shaped by choices, rather than inherited.

Themes

A Doll's House: A Level

3 Theatricality

  • Helmer tells Nora, ‘don’t be melodramatic’ (Act 3, p. 94).
  • However, both model their behaviour on the conventional drama of their time.
  • Such drama might well end with the heroine’s suicide, or with her rescue by the male lead.
  • The ending shows Nora abandoning her stereotype and implies that the old plays are no guide to modern conduct.

Themes

A Doll's House: A Level

4 Death

  • Nora considers drowning herself like the heroine of a melodrama.
  • Krogstad confronts her with realistic images of herself as an ugly corpse (Act 2, p. 73).
  • She ultimately chooses to change her life, not idealise suicide as noble sacrifice.
  • The play’s setting close to the winter solstice links it to the theme of death and rebirth.

Themes

A Doll's House: A Level

5 Money

  • The plot turns on the two hundred and fifty pounds Nora has borrowed by forging her father’s signature.
  • Helmer’s terror of debt shapes his behaviour at home.
  • However, he is responsible for large sums of money in his work.
  • Despite her ignorance of the law, Nora may have a better grasp of the proper management of money than Helmer.

Themes

A Doll's House: A Level

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