When Ibsen created a Doll’s House he aimed to create it in a certain way. This structure was known as the well made play. Here are some examples of the format of the well made play and by looking at this list it is clear that A Doll’s House is of that nature.

The Well Made Play

1) The plot during a well made play is usually based upon a withheld secret, often about the hero or main character and when it is revealed, the story line changes.

2) The initial exposition of the revelation provides information about the action before the play but also about the future, the secret. It withholds the secret but also gestures towards it’s meaning also.
3) There are ups and downs in the conversation/ dialogue and the swapping of humour lead towards the secret being revealed.
4) The “obligatory" scene in which we and the characters find out the secret, often for the first time.
5) A plausible dénouement or conclusion is present to make every event believable.
6) The best part of the whole well made play is the fact that all of this is repeated in every scene of the play.

For Ibsen’s serious play, he replaces discussion which appears in comedy plays (the bulk genre of the well made play) with the conclusion or plausible denouement so as to give the play’s end the sense that is it open ended. This is seen in A Doll’s House.

However, It is not always this simple, often something along the same lines, but with a bit more detail. Along the way of the plot, there are varying up’s and down’s which are always related indirectly or directly towards the plot. This shows up on this graph below, showing a truer version of the well made play’s progression.

A Doll’s House

Plot- Outline

The main plot of a Doll’s House challenges the feminist issues of the time. Nora and Helmer are a model husband and wife, living in harmony with their three children until Mrs Linde, an old school friend of Nora’s knocks on the door, a widow, in search of a job.
Nora manages to get Mrs Linde a job, but unfortunately by doing this pushes Mr Krogstad, an accused forger, out of his job in Helmer’s bank. Mrs Linde and Mr Krogstad unfortunately have a past together so the situation is awkward. Also Mr Krogstad has been lending money to Nora to spend on Helmer’s upkeep as he was an ill man previous to the time of the play.
Krogstad tell Nora to let him keep his job or he will tell Helmer the truth about the loan. This would disgrace Nora and her and Helmer’s relationship. The situation becomes madness with threats being thrown and tempers frayed.
Finally Mrs Linde and Krogstad get together for the first time in the play and secret about the money comes out between the main characters, Hlemer and Nora. This forces Helmer to abandon Nora but then begs her to stay. Nora then leaves and becomes a free women, who would rather be poor than live under the pretence and irony of a Doll’s House image.

Sub Plot

There is a lot of sub plot within the play itself and in fact in amongst many of the mini scenes. The main subplot is of the differences between Mrs Linde and Nora. There is a distinct role reversal during the play, with Nora ending up as the penniless lady without a husband and Mrs Linde with a happy and glowing future. Mrs Linde is an ambiguous character and it is hard to tell how to interpret her. Her actions could be interpreted as selfish or in fact selfless! For instance we found out that she left Krogstad initially for money; Because of her family’s situation, or to better herself?
Another main theme of sub plot is that of secrecy. Nora keeps the money saga away from Helmer and we all want to know when it will be revealed and want to know what will happen. Also Mrs Linde doesn’t tell Nora of the relationship she has had with Mr Krogstad previously. Another secret is that of Krogstad’s not telling Helmer about the money. He uses this as a weapon against Nora and this is what ultimately produces the revelation, the letter to Helmer.

I really enjoyed this as a story and also acted in it myself. I played the part of Mr Krogstad, the bad guy!!!

Here is some information about Ibsen and hte background to the play.

Parents

Ibsen’s parents not long after he was born, were struck by hardship. Financial problems ensued and his Mother turned to Religion for sanctuary and his father declined severe mental depression. This obviously had a huge impact upon Ibsen and his work and often his plays feature characters like his parents and the theme of hardship and money problems are evident (ie “A Doll’s House”).

Bourgeois and Anti Feminist Society

"A woman cannot be herself in the society of the present day, which is an exclusively masculine society, with laws framed by men and with judicial system that judges feminine conduct from a masculine point of view."

This summarises what the social ambiance was at the time of Ibsen. He mainly looked towards the characters themselves and their self-realization which they had to achieve by getting over the obstacles put there by the bourgeois society and it’s policies. In Norway, it was not until 1890 that married women were allowed to control their own wealth and this is a significant factor in A Doll’s Housewhere Nora does this secretly. It was also only in 1892 that women were allowed into higher education and it was as late as 1903 that the first Women doctorate was obtained in the University of Oslo.
Society at the time of Ibsen was obsessed with the domination of man and women were not allowed to be free. Women were seen as second class citizens and were only there for show. The actual name “A Doll’s House” can take on many meanings attacking the domination of Men. The idea of a Doll’s House provokes the thought of being controlled and trapped within an although comfortable situation, a one which is unchanging.
Ibsen discussed this within his plays, but highlighted the self realization of the main characters, sometimes female for example, Nora in A Doll’s House. It was a strong point, especially for a man, to be discussing feminism within his works.

Banned in Germany.

The his play “A Doll’s House” was so strongly thought against in Germany that when Ibsen wanted to make a German production, the government made him change the ending so that Nora stayed with Helmer! Ibsen reluctantly agreed and withdrew a few performances later, with the attitude of keeping his original message and not changing it for anyone.

Written While Travelling

Ibsen wrote the play while he was travelling outside of Norway.

"If I were to tell at this moment what has been the chief result of my stay abroad, I should say that it consisted in my having driven out of myself the aestheticism which had a great power over me.”

He didn’t agree at all with the situation in Norway and must have been influenced by what he saw and did in the other places he lived in Europe such as Rome, Munich and Dresden, all capitals of culture and the places of up and coming movements in art at the time. He felt that the situation and society in Norway was numbing for an artist and he had to break out of it so as to write more clearly as everything in Norway had a big influence on him.

Applicable Today?

Today the play is most certainly not as shocking as it was considered when it was released in it’s time purely because of the fact that today women are considered as equals. It does bring up issues of the time however and shows us that it took people to speak out against traditionalist views to get to the situation we are in today. Ibsen’s A Doll’s House is a highly regarded play nowadays and has been studied and analysed all over the world. It is an important play in the fact that it is an early Stanislavskian piece of drama concentrating on many aspects such as the well made play.

Ibsen was influenced by many things and I believe they all contributed to the making of A Doll’s House. I think Ibson had a strong personality and was certainly not afraid to voice his opinion. The fact that he travelled because he didn’t believe in his Country at the time was a bold choice and did a lot for his work I think.