A Doll's House

Henrik Ibsen, the hater of all social shams, was probably the first to realize this great truth.

Nora leaves her husband not as the stupid critic would have it, because she is tired of her responsibilities or feels the need of woman's rights, but because she has come to know that for eight years she had lived with a stranger and borne him children.

Can there be anything more humiliating, more degrading than a lifelong proximity between two strangers? No need for the woman to know anything of the man save his income.

As to the knowledge of the woman, what is there to know except that she has a pleasing appearance? We have not yet outgrown the theologic myth that woman has no soul, that she is a mere appendix to man made out of his rib just for the convenience of the gentleman who was so strong that he was afraid of his own shadow.

Start your show today at spreaker.com. Spreaker, because if you're going to talk to yourself for an hour, you might as well publish it.

With A Doll's House, Ibsen has paved the way for woman's emancipation.

Nora awakens from her doll's role to the realization of the injustice done her by her father and her husband, Helmer Torvald.

While I was at home with father, he used to tell me all his opinions, and I held the same opinions.

Now it may be that into this new atmosphere my book will come with quite an old-fashioned air.

As I write these lines the terrible play with which Strindberg wreaked the revenge of the male for a doll's house has just been performed for the first time in London under the title of Creditors.

In that, as in Bruce's L'Urhanaton, it is the man who is the victim of domesticity and the woman who is the tyrant and soul destroyer.

Thus a doll's house did not dispose of the question.

It only brought on the stage the endless recriminations of idealistic marriage.

And how has Strindberg, Ibsen's twin giant, been received? With an even idler stupidity than Ibsen himself.

and that a truth-teller who cannot hold his tongue on occasion may do as much mischief as a whole university full of trained liars.

The word freedom means freedom from the tyranny of the rural ideals.

The old, with its tinsel, its hypocrisy, its hollowness, its lying propriety and its pitiful cowardice, shall lie behind us like a museum, open for instruction.

With A Doll's House, Ibsen has paved the way for woman's emancipation.

Nora awakens from her doll's role to the realization of the injustice done her by her father and her husband, Helmer Torvald.

When I was at home with father, he used to tell me all his opinions, and I held the same opinions.

For only cowards permit considerations of pretended general welfare or of party to override truth and ideals.

Party programs wring the necks of all young living truths, and considerations of expediency turn morality and righteousness upside down until life is simply hideous.

These plays of Ibsen, The Pillars of Society, A Doll's House, Ghosts, and An Enemy of the People, constitute a dynamic force which is gradually dissipating the ghosts walking the social burying ground called civilization.

Nay more, Ibsen's destructive effects are at the same time supremely constructive, for he not merely undermines existing pillars.

To help them out, he heaved in larger and larger doses of theory, often diverting enough and sometimes even persuasive, but in the long run a poor substitute for the proper ingredients of character, situation, and human passion.

Next came The Wife of Sir Isaac Harmon, an attempt to rewrite A Doll's House with a fourth act in terms of antebellum 1914.

The result was 500-odd pages of bosh, a flabby and tedious piece of work.

Wells, for the first time, in the role of unmistakable bore.

That's interesting, isn't it? Why not? So I think we all, as a fan base, need to get to know Norway a bit better.

I'm a big fan of the plays of Henrik Ibsen, A Doll's House being perhaps the first example of mainstream feminist literature to break through globally.

Anyway, what is number 86 in the Napoli tombola?

Now I know that.

That is in the future, but let's get this started now with some more theater and director Jamie Lloyd.

Sunset Boulevard, Betrayal, A Doll's House, Cyrano, Waiting for Godot.

The last decade, Jamie Lloyd breathed new life into the works of Andrew Lloyd Webber, Shakespeare, and Ibsen.

At 45, he's been awarded Tony and Olivier Awards.

Now it may be that into this new atmosphere my book will come with quite an old-fashioned air.

As I write these lines, the terrible play with which Strindberg wreaked the revenge of the male for a doll's house has just been performed for the first time in London under the title of Creditors.

In that, as in Bru's L'Urhanaton, it is the man who is the victim of domesticity and the woman who is the tyrant and soul destroyer.

Thus a doll's house did not dispose of the question.

It only brought on the stage the endless recriminations of idealistic marriage.

And how has Strindberg, Ibsen's twin giant, been received? With an even idler stupidity than Ibsen himself, because Ibsen appealed to the rising energy of the revolt of women against idealism, but Strindberg attacks women ruthlessly, trying to rouse men from the sloth and sensuality of their idealized addiction to them.

Ibsen urges the recognition of all facts, but as to mentioning them he wrote a whole play, as we shall see presently, to show that you must do that at your own peril, and that a truth-teller who cannot hold his tongue on occasion may do as much mischief as a whole university full of trained liars.

The word freedom means freedom from the tyranny of the Rurland ideals.

To help them out, he heaved in larger and larger doses of theory, often diverting enough and sometimes even persuasive, but in the long run a poor substitute for the proper ingredients of character, situation, and human passion.

Next came The Wife of Sir Isaac Harmon, an attempt to rewrite A Doll's House with a fourth act in terms of antebellum 1914.

The result was 500-odd pages of bosh, a flabby and tedious piece of work.

Wells for the first time in the role of unmistakable bore.