23 October 2008

DRAMA II

SYLLABUS FOR DRAMA II

Lecturer: Inayatul Chusna

Objective:
All students will:
a. trace the development of modern drama;
b. discuss the characteristics of plays produced in modern time;
c. analyze the texts of plays; focus to the dominant elements of each text
d. engage in focused discussion of drama;
e. discuss several essays on play scripts
F. write detailed and informed analyzes of dramatic work that demonstrate increasing mastery of the above objectives.

Methods:
a. readings (of plays in the text and essays on plays)
b. lectures
c. discussions
d. films
e. writing assignments and test.

Course outline:
1. Introduction
2. The Beginning of Modern Theatre
3. Writing Literary Essays
4. Discussing Antigone
5. Essay I discussion
6. Essay II discussion
7. Midterm test
8. Discussing A Doll’s House
9. Essay I discussion
10.Essay II discussion
11.Discussing Trifles
12.Essay I discussion
13.Essay II discussion
14.Final term paper

Assignments and test:
a. midterm test is a short-paper of 2 pages expressing students opinion and
attitude towards essays that have been discussed in class;
b. final term paper will be atleast 3 pages of a critic of specific issue in a particular play that have been discussed in class;
c. All paper submitted must be typed, one and half format and carefully proofread for clarity and accuracy of expression, and for mechanical correctness. Papers will be evaluated by considering to factors: the coherence and the persuasivenes of the analyses offered, and the quality of the writing. Facts, ideas and opinion borrowed from specific sources, either verbatim or in summary/paraphrase form must be acknowledged in notes and bibliographical entries. Failure to acknowledge sources properly constitutes plagiarism, which is ground for failing the paper and perhaps the course;
d. LATE PAPERS: I will not accept late papers, unless student and I have agreed in advance that special circumstances warrant an adjusted due date in student’s particular case.

Attendance:
You will be allowed to skip 4 sessions. A skip of class for any reason will be considered absent. Any students who miss 5 sessions of class are automatically dropped from the course.

Grades:
Your final grade will be determined from:
a. attendance 10%
b. discussions 20%
c. midterm test 30%
d. final term paper 40


The Beginnings of the Modern Theatre

By the 1870s the public was becoming aware that significant changes were underway in theatre and drama. Manifested first in realism and naturalism, the new directions were sufficiently lasting that even today the modern theatre is usually dated from that decade. These movements also brought increased demands for unified production, and to meet them the director gradually assumed primary artistic control. By the 1920s, the new conceptions of the theatre’s role and means had triumphed almost everywhere.

The background of realism

By the mid-nineteenth century the belief in man’s idealistic nature had received many setbacks. After the defeat of Napoleon, around 1815 most European countries reinstated political conditions as oppressive as those of the eighteenth century. In addition, widespread misery accelerated after the industrial revolution caused workers to pour into urban centers where living conditions became increasingly inadequate. Under such political and economic conditions the romanticist’s emphasis on the ideal seemed both too vague and too impractical, and many reformers came to demand solutions based on systematic inquiry into facts.
Among the major influences on the changed outlook was Auguste Comte (1798-1857), who believed that sociology is the highest form of science and that all knowledge should be used to improve society. He argued that the key to knowledge is precise observation, since all events must be understood in terms of natural cause and effect. It was out of such beliefs that the movement called realism developed. Like most movements it sought truth, but defined it as that knowledge gained through the five sense (sight, hearing, taste, smell, and touch).

Realism in the Theatre

As a movement, realism developed first in France, where by 1860 its advocates had stated the following precepts: the playwright should strive to depict truthfully the real world; since he can know the real world only through direct observation, he should write about the society around him and should be as objective as possible.
Given such an outlook, it was only natural that realistic playwrights emphasized the details of contemporary life and introduced subjects not previously seen on the stage. Conservative critics charged that the theatre had become little better than a sewer. To such charges, the realists replied that the plays, as truthful depictions of life, were moral, since truth is the highest form of morality. Furthermore, realists argued, if audiences do not like the life shown onstage, they should change the society that has furnished the models rather than denounce the playwright who has truthfully depicted it.
It was with Ibsen that the new methods truly triumphed, so much so that modern drama is usually dated from the 1870s, when Ibsen adopted the realistic mode. Henrik Ibsen (1828-1906) began his career about 1850 with dramas based on Norwegian legends. This early work is clearly related to romantic drama, but in 1877 he turned to the problem plays. With these plays, Ibsen established his reputation as a radical thinker and controversial dramatist.
Much of Ibsen’s work is realistic. He discards asides and soliloquies and is careful to motivate exposition. All scenes are casually related and lead logically to the outcome. Dialogue, settings, costumes, and business are selected to reveal character and milieu and are clearly described in stage directions. Each role is conceived as a personality whose behaviour can be attributed to heredity or environment.
Almost all later serious playwrights were to be affected by Ibsen’s conviction that drama should be a source of insight and a conveyor of ideas rather than mere entertainment. He gave dramatists a new vision of their role.
The spirit of realism soon spread throughout the world. In England the works of such playwrights as Arthur Wing Pinero (1855-1934), Henry Arthur Jones (1851-1929), and George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950) show in varying degrees the influence of the new trend. George Bernard Shaw was probably the most vociferous and important of Ibsen’s admirers. But Shaw’s approach differs markedly from Ibsen’s, for while his plays are serious in their intent to influence human behaviour, they use comic devices to make serious points. In his treatment of problems, Shaw begins with what he thinks is the accepted attitude and then demolishes it before proposing his own solution. Shaw also delighted in using paradoxes to make both characters and audiences reassess their values.
Another writer of the late nineteenth century, Anton Chekhov (1860-1904), was to be almost as influential as Ibsen. He began by writing short stories and humorous sketches and moved on to vaudeville skits and one-act farces. Mahy qualities relate Chekhov’s drama to the realistic-naturalistic school. The subject matter and themes, drawn from contemporary Russian life, show how daily routine gradually shrinks the spirit and drains the will.

Naturalism

Even as realism was developing, another movement – naturalism – was also emerging. Realism and naturalism are closely related because both demand a truthful depiction of life and are based on the belief that ultimate reality is discoverable only through the five senses. The naturalists, however, insisted that art must become scientific in its methods and depict behavior as determined by heredity and environment.
The major spokesman for the naturalists was Emile Zola (1840-1902), who argued that art should emulate science both in seeking objects and in treating them. According to Zola, subjects may be of two kinds: those based on scientific findings and those that faithfully recorded record events observed in real life. He also argued that the writer should remain detached and never allow his own prejudices to intrude. In practice, naturalism tended to emphasize the more degraded aspects of lower-class, and consequently much naturalistic drama was preoccupied with human maladies.
Zola and his followers were especially opposed to traditional dramatic structure because to them complication, suspense, crisis, and resolution subordinated truth to theatrical effect. One member of the movements suggested that a play should be a slice of life – that a dramatist should merely transfer to the stage as faithfully as possible a segment of reality.
Because of its belief in environment as a determinant of character and action, naturalism placed greater emphasis on stage setting than had any previous movement. It wished to see every detail reproduced accurately onstage so as to establish the milieu that determined the characters and their actions. This care extended to costumes, furniture, properties, stage business, and acting.
As a conscious movement, naturalism, like realism, began in France and spread to other countries. Unlike realism, however, naturalism attracted few outstanding dramatists and in most cases even they eventually adopted less extreme approaches. Naturalism had for the most part run its course by 1900. Nevertheless, it had focused attention on the need for close observation of life, pointed out relationships between environment and behavior, and encouraged greater attention to the details of stage and production. In its insistence that reality be reproduced onstage, however, naturalism was unsuccessful and it was gradually absorbed into the realistic movement.

The Independent Theatre movement

By the late 1880s both a realistic-naturalistic drama and realistic staging under the supervision of a demanding director had emerged. The new drama was rarely being performed, however, and the new staging methods were being applied primarily to traditional plays. This was difficult to do because in most countries strict censorship forbade the production of such plays as Ghosts on the grounds of moral offensiveness. Eventually the challenge was met by ‘independent theatres’, which began to be established in the late 1880s. Since these organizations were open only to subscribing members, they were not subject to censorship and could perform plays forbidden to other theatres. Therefore, independent theatres were able to accomplish that more established theatres had not, for these new groups embraced the new staging techniques and gave the new drama its chance to be heard.
Not only did independent theatres meet an important need at the time, they also provided a permanent lesson, for since the late nineteenth century whenever the established theatre has become insufficiently responsive to new demands, a solution has been sought in ‘art’ theatres, ‘little’ theatres, Off Broadway, and so on.

Symbolism

Although realism came to dominate the theatre, it was not universally accepted. The first important revolt against it is usually called symbolism (or – alternatively – neo-romanticism, idealism, or aestheticism). As a movement, it appeared in France in the 1880s and had largely expired by 1900. symbolism is anti-realistic in denying that ultimate truth is to be found in evidence supplied by the five senses or by rational thought. Instead, it holds that truth is grasped intuitively.
Since it cannot be logically understood, ultimate truth cannot be expressed directly. It can only be suggested through symbols that evoke feelings and states of mind, corresponding imprecisely to the dramatist’s intuitions.
Unlike the realists, the symbolists chose their subject matter from the past or the realm of fancy and avoided any attempt to deal with social problems or environment. They aimed to suggest a universal truth independent of time and place that cannot be logically defined or rationally expressed. Symbolist drama, consequently, tends to be vague, mysterious, and puzzling.

Expressionism

After symbolism declined, no strong anti-realist movement challenged realism’s dominance until expressionism emerged around 1910 in Germany. The expressionists believed that fundamental truth is to be found within man – his spirit, soul, desires, and visions – and that external reality should be reshaped until it is brought into harmony with these inner attributes so that man’s spirit may realize its aspirations. Many writers sought merely to express their perceptions of this inner spirit, but others wished to transform society. Consequently some historians have divided the expressionists into two groups, the mystics and the activists. The latter were especially opposed to materialism and industrialism, which they saw as the chief blocks to the expressionist goals and as the major warpers of the soul. Almost all expressionists wrote about the ‘regeneration of man’ and the ‘creation of the new man.’ Ultimately, most hoped to build a world free from war, hypocrisy, and hate, where men could express themselves freely and in which humanitarianism would replace materialism.
Expressionist drama tended toward one of two types. Many plays concentrated on the negative aspects of the present in an attempt to show how false ideals have distorted man’s spirit until he is little better than a machine. Other plays look forward to the transformation of society and to achieving harmony between man’s environment and his spirit. Because the plays are message-centered, they are episodic; many take the form of a search or pilgrimage. Since truth is said to lie in internal vision, the external appearance of things is often distorted. Shape may be altered, color may be abnormal, movement may be mechanical, speech may be reduced to short phrases or single words.
Expressionism in the theatre seems to have reached its peak in 1923. its desire to transform the world had raised high hopes, but these were dissipated by the wranglings over peace settlements and the aftermath. By 1925 the movement had ceased to be productive.
Expressionism was for the most part a German phenomenon. During the 1920s, however, expressionism for a time exerted considerable influence elsewhere. In America, dramas indebted to it include Elmer Rice’s The Adding Machine, Eugene O’Neill’s The Hairy Ape, and Marc Connelly’s and George Kaufman’s Beggar on Horseback, all written in the 1920s. after 1925 the influence of expressionist is seen largely in the freer treatment of visual elements, in dream sequences, and in other devices that permit free manipulation of time, place, and appearance.


From the 1920s to the Mid-1950s

Between the 1920s and the mid-1950s the theatre extended and consolidated the gains of the preceding decades. Probably the most innovative ideas were voiced by Artaud and Brecht, although neither was widely influential until after 1950, when the doubts raised by World Wad II ushered in a new era of experimentation.

The United Stated

The innovations in play writing and production that had been introduced in the late nineteenth century were at first little known in America, partially because until 1915 the Theatrical Syndicate dominated theatrical production. After 1910, however, the new stagecraft, as the European practices were called in America, began to be imported, in large part through the efforts of those who had traveled and studied in Europe. The new stagecraft was also promoted by “little theatres,” which blossomed between 1910 and 1920. the most important of these groups (which resembled European independent theatres) were the Provincetown Players and the Washington Square Players. It was the Provincetown Players, seeking to encourage new American playwrights, that discovered Eugene O’Neill, generally considered to be America’s foremost dramatist. In 1919 the fully professional Theatre Guild which was the remnants of the Washington Square Players came in. through its choice of plays and production techniques, the Guild did more than any other American company to demonstrate the effectiveness of the new stagecraft.

Brecht and Epic Theatre

During the 1920s one of the most influential of modern movements – epic theatre – took shape in Germany. It is associated above all with Bertolt Brecht (1898-1956),who, to describe his ideal theatre, used three key terms: historification, alienation, and epic.
Unlike the realists, Brecht thought the theatre should not treat contemporary subject matter in a lifelike manner. Rather, the theatre should make actions “strange.” One avenue to strangeness is historification, or the use of material drawn from other times and places. But contrary to old theatrical practices, which depict historical material in today’s pattern, Brecht wanted the dramatist to emphasize the “pastness” of events. The play should make the spectator feel that if he had been living under those conditions he would have taken some positive action to correct them.
Historification is part of the larger concept alienation. In addition to historification, the playwright may deliberately call attention to the make-believe nature of the work through songs, narrative passages, filmed sequences,and other devices so the audience never confuses what it sees on the stage with reality. Some critics have interpreted alienation to mean that the audience should be in a constant state of detachment.
Brecht called his plays epic because he thought they resembled epic poems more than traditional drama. They are usually composed of alternating sections of dialogue and narration which freely change place and bridge passages of time.

Postwar Realism in America

When the Second World War ended in 1945, realism was still the most common theatrical style, but by that time non-realistic movements had altered tastes sufficiently for simplification and suggestion to become accepted techniques, even in realistic art. Postwar realism therefore fused elements drawn from many sources. This fusion can be seen most clearly in the work of Tennessee Williams, who came to prominence in 2945 with The Glass Menagerie and contributed regularly to the theatre thereafter with such plays as A Streetcar Named Desire, Summer and Smoke, The Rose Tattoo and Suddenly Last Summer.
Williams uses many non-realistic and realistic devices. Symbolism is important in almost all of his plays. He also draws heavily on realism, especially in character portrayal. He is particularly concerned with suppressed desires, and Freudian concepts undergrid many of his works. Williams’ characters are often torn between spiritual and material urges, and how a dramatic action is resolved depends upon whether they can reconcile these conflicting sides of human nature.

The Musical Play

During and after WW II, the musical play became (and remains) the most popular of all theatrical entertainments. The origin of musical comedy is usually traced to the work of George Edwardes at the Gaiety Theatre in London in the 1890s. his production, in which sketchy plots provided excuses for songs and chorus-ensemble numbers, proved so popular that a number of imitations soon appeared. In most of these early musical comedies the stories had little to do with everyday life and emphasized the romantic appeals of faraway places and unusual happenings.
Around WW I the vouge for ballroom dancing and ragtime music turned attention to more familiar characters and surroundings. Plot remained unimportant, however, and served principally as an excuse for spectacular settings, songs, dances, and beautiful chorus girls. In the late 1920s another important change occurred when more concern began to be paid to plot and psychological motivations. This evolution was completed in the 1940s in the works of Oscar Hammerstein II and Richard Rodgers. Innumerable fine musicals were written after WW II.

Motion Pictures and Television

In the late 19th century, the theatre was still the major purveyor of mass entertainment, but since that time its appeal has steadily eroded as competitors have multiplied. One of the most serious challengers has come from spectators sports – baseball, football, boxing, racing, and so on. More direct competition, however, has come from other dramatic media – films and television.
Motion pictures have grown steadily in popularity since penny arcades began to show miniature films soon after Thomas A. Edison demonstrated his kinetoscope in 1894. motion-picture theatres, seating about a hundred persons and showing short films, were introduced in 1905. In 1914 the Strand Theatre in New York, with its 3300 seats, began the trend toward larger houses, and in 1915 D.W. Griffith’s The Birth of a Nation inaugurated the full-length film. Two other events – the addition of sound to motion pictures in 1927 and the economic depression of 1929 – gave the film such increased appeal that after 1930 the legitimate theatre rapidly declined in popularity.
The weakened theatre was dealt another serious blow after WW II with the introduction of television, for audiences were loath to pay for entertainment when they might have it free in their own living rooms. Thus, television did much to make both films and theatrical producers reconsider the potential of their media. As a result, film-makers became increasingly conscious of the motion pictures as an art form, and theatrical producers sought to revitalize the theatre by offering plays that television, controlled by its advertisers, was reluctant or unable to broadcast. Consequently, much of the experimentation so prevalent since the 1950s has been motivated by the desire to make the theatre a penetrating, relevant, and exciting encounter with significant ideas, issues, and perceptions.

22 October 2008

PUBLIC SPEAKING

What is the difference between a presentation and a written report? The key different is the amount of control the reader or listener has. Someone who is reading a report can stop, go back, re-read, go forward, stop for cup of coffee and come back again. The reader has control over how fast and in what detail he or she receives the information. However, at the presentation listener has almost no control; he or she cannot go back to the beginning, go forward to the end, or stop for ten minutes to think about an interesting point. This lack of control means that the presenter must help the listener as much as possible. It can be done in two ways – first by limiting the amount of information presented. A presentation is not a good place to give a lot of information – a report is much more effective. Second, the presenter should recycle the information given throughout the presentation: give the main point in the introduction, give more details in the body, and repeat the main point again in the conclusion. As the saying goes, “Tell them what you’re going to say, say it, and then tell them what you’ve said.”

Preparing Presentation

There are seven tages to preparing a presentation:

1. Objectives
You’re topic will provide you an effective idea and help you develop a talk which is most appropriate and equally-relating to your listeners and spectators. Your topic can be as complicated as you want it to be as long as your audience is aware of the main topic at hand. There are several points to consider in choosing an appropriate topic:
a. Why are you giving this talk?
b. Who will you be talking to?
c. How much do they know about the subject already?
d. What effect do you want your presentation to have?

2. Limitation
a. How long have you got?
b. Do you have to follow a certain format?
c. where will you be giving your presentation?
d. Can you choose the room around to suit your presentation?

3. Main Points
Decide on your main points: no more than three points in a 10 minutes talk. Is there a logocal connection between these points? What evidence can you produce to support your points and make your case clear?
Once you have decided the main points you can start preparing the speech. There are three parts to prepare:
a. introduction
at the beginning of any presentation (once you have greeted your audience and introduced yourself, of course!) it is important to make clear the subject of your presentation, how long you are going to speak and the way in which you have arranged your presentation. You also need to tell the audience the best time for asking questions.
So, the opening of a presentation could sound something like this:

Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. Thank you for coming this morning. My name is Jane Brown, and for the last 20 minutes I shall be talking to you about our new product – Product X. if you have any questions while I’m speaking, please save them for the end of the presentation.

Of course, if you don’t mind being interrupted, then you say, instead of the last sentence:

If you have any questions while I’m speaking, please don’t hesitate to interrupt me.

Next, you need to explain to your audience how you have organized your presentation. Perhaps you could say:

I have divided my presentation into three parts: the history and development of Product X; the use and applications of Product X; and the marketing implications of the product. At the end, I hope to have some time to be able to answer your questions.

Once you have completed the introduction – once you have told the audience what you are going to say – you begin the main part of the presentation. You will find it helpful to prepare some phrases which link your ideas.

b. the main body
in this part of the presentation you are probably going to need bridging language to make it clear to your audience that you have finished one point and are about to move on to another. Ideally, the move from one subject to another will be smooth and easy. Some of these phrases might be useful:

• And that brings me nicely on to my next point …
• One point that follows from A is B
• Talk of A naturally leads us to consider B

If the links between subject matter are not so easy, then one of these phrases may be necessary:

• So that’s it for A. Now let’s turn to B
• Now, quite distinct from A, we have B
• That covers A – so what about B?


Also during the main presentation it is likely that you will want to show your audience some overheads. Useful language to introduce these include:

• I have prepared an overhead to illustrate this
• This point can be seen more clearly in visual form
• Let’s have a look at this transparency


Throughout the presentation, it is important to keep things as simple as possible. Short, clear statements are worth a lot more than complicated explanations. The easier it is for you to say it, the easier it will be for your audience to understand.

c. conclusion
When you have finished the presentation don’t forget the conclusion. Your conclusion should be briefly touch on all the points you have made.
These phrases will be helpful for this stage of the presentation:

• Before I finish, let me just summarize the main points
• By way of conclusion, here again are the most important points
• To sum up, then, the main aspects of this are


Then, having repeated the main points you should end by thanking your audience and indicating what is going to happen next, like this:

• Thank you for your attention, ladies and gentlemen. If there are any questions, I’d be delighted to answer them
• That concludes all I have to say on the subject I hope that I have given you a clear picture of the problems and opportunities. Perhaps we should now adjourn for a coffee.
• Thank you again for giving me this chance to speak to you, ladies and gentlemen. I hope that you have found the time well spent.



4. Review
Now that you more or less have your actual speech prepared, you need to review your presentation. Scrutinize the outline and make sure that you have all the important points covered. For example, if you are giving a speech on “Hybrid Technology,” you might have discussed the definition of the term but missed out on stating examples of the products of hybrid technology. Give ample attention to detail because there might be someone in your audience who knows about your topic and point out the things that you failed to discuss.

5. Visual Aids and Handouts
In public, you may display your thoughts and ideas by using visual aids. A prop is used as an object in a particular presentation. These items support you in your public speaking. The whole lecture itself is considered a prop. Chairs, pens, overhead projectors, markers, and other audio visual aids are all forms of props. This simply means that a prop is the same as a visual aid.

There are many kinds of props which you may use for a successful presentation. This can be a good substitute for an introductory statement. This can also generate a more interesting approach to the audience. These props can be a good warm up for your listeners such as displaying some colorful drawings and graphs as your visual aids.

Using visual aids can help you concentrate and guide you on the presentation points you are delivering as well as guiding your listeners. They may follow the outlines and the topic points that are in the visual aid.

It is a very good tool in getting the attention of your listeners, instead of using handouts and notes. You may make a presentable approach by using a computer-generated power point. This prop can create a more interactive connection.

Many of your audience can be visually oriented and relate more to what you are saying. It allows your audience to understand well the points you are referring to because you have added variety and interest by using well-displayed illustrations.

You can use other props for presentation. You may pass them around for an anticipated and exciting presentation. You may encounter this in large venues where a box or a ball is being passed around in the audience.

You may also distribute some snacks while they are looking at the crossword puzzle you have on the visual aid. Drawings and puzzles are very good choices for icebreakers. If you have grouped them, the members can help each other and work as a team to find a solution.

Props are a very good substitute for notes and handouts. You may display illustrations in seminars and workshops as outlines in your presentation. You may also project a photo of a specific thing during a public speaking presentation.

Be sure that everybody sees it and has a good a view of it. Even when you are using visual aids, you have to make sure that you focus on your audience and make the audience also attend to the things you are saying. Visual aids are important in making you an effective public speaker

Handouts
Handouts are important tools for effective public speaking. They serve as guides for your audience. Handouts will allow the listeners to follow what you are discussing. Handouts are important and should be well prepared.

When giving out the handouts to your listeners, remember to choose the right time. It is not recommended to give them out right away at the beginning of your speech. This will only make the listeners tend to lose focus. It is important to catch the attention of your audience at the start of the speech.

Also inform them that you will be giving out handouts so that the listeners will need not to take down notes while you are talking. Making handouts available will make your audience focus and absorb everything that you say. That is because writing while listening to your speech will only divide their attention.

You may want to use colorful papers if your audience is also kids. Adding drawings can also make it interesting but do not use too much or else they will only concentrate on the drawings that they see.

On the handouts, you can include the objectives of your public speaking speech and the things that you expect from your listeners. Do not put the entire speech on the handout. If you put everything that you have to say on the handouts, the listeners will no longer listen to you.

You may also place in it the outline of your speech, a brief introduction and the things that you will discuss. You may also want to include the start time and the end time of your speech and allocate the time when they would like to ask questions. This will allow you to follow your outline and they may reserve their questions for the time you listed on the handouts.

You can also incorporate some activities at the end of the handout. Put a space where they can write and jot down the answers on the activity that you will put at the end of the handout. Adding a space where they can write is also effective so that they may be able to jot down some important points that you have mentioned and are not listed on the handouts.

At the end of the handout, you may also include some information about yourself. You may put your name, nickname or even hobbies to add some spice. This is one way that your listeners will be able remember you by.

Handouts are very beneficial to making you an effective public speaker. Make them ready all the time and make sure that they will last. Handouts are ways that your listeners can remember you in public speaking; that is why it is important that you make them unique and valuable.

5. Practice
Here are some helpful tips on how you can use rehearsing to eliminate the fear of speaking in public:
a. Prepare an outline of your speech and look for bits of information which could be a major points of interest. Read about every aspect of the topic so that it will not be difficult for you to answer unexpected questions should they come up through the course of your discussion.
b. if you are making a formal presentation in a particular place, go to the venue a day ahead or several hours before the presentation to familiarize yourself with the surroundings.
c. check out the equipment that you need to proceed with your presentation
d. time is important so you can have a run-through of the entire speech and record your voice while doing so. This would give you an idea of how long it will run. The recording will also reveal the focal points where you can vary your tone of voice for a more lively speech.


Giving Presentation

There are five things to remember during your presentation:

1. presence
As you get up to give your presentation, make a conscious effort to stand tall, take a deep breath and look as if you enjoy being there.

2. eye contact
Make eye contact with people in your audience in a friendly way. People respond much better when they think you are talking to them, not just reading your script to yourself. In a small room, try to make eye contact with each person in the audience; in a larger hall, make eye contact with different groups in the audience.

3. voice
- speak slowly and clearly
- remember to breathe slowly and deeply
- speak clearly
- speak loudly enough so everyone can hear. If you are not sure if they can hear you clearly, ask if they can

4. move
You are allowed to move as you give your presentation. It can help add variety and interest to come to the front of the podium to deliver a telling point. Try to avoid hiding behind the lectern.

5. audience
a. Speak according to the listener’s interest. Talk about what’s important to them, something they can easily relate to without a stretch of imagination.
b. Praise the audience. Audiences are human too, and each and every one of them has a need to be acknowledged as much as you want to be acknowledged for speaking well in front of them. There is only one requirement for this maxim, that your praise be one hundred percent sincere. Anything less and you’ll have resentment in your hands.
c. have the audience participate. Get somebody to come onstage and participate in a demonstration. Ask questions of the audience. Get feet back. Encourage them to walk up to the microphone and give you a piece of their mind. The point is to involve the audience, once more, making it more real to them. Taking them along with you in your experience.
d. less you, more them. Play yourself down. Never feel that you are above them when doing public speaking.

Question and Answer Session
During presentations, it is the question and answer part that serves as a good occasion to know how much the audience understood or how much they did not understand from all of that speaking you did. It is also the best opportunity to be able to show your sense of humor, if you have one. Also, the question and answer portion is a good means to get your audience to participate.

The most used way, if not the most boring one, to open up the question and answer portion is: are there any questions? Or, “Now let’s take in questions.”
To make the presentation more fun for them as well as for you, as the presenter, to appear you are enjoying your time and are also having fun, why don’t you try saying this as a way to open up the session on question and answer: “The last presentation I had, the first question I received was, `Aren’t you tired yet?’ and `Do you have the time?’”

In order for you to continually captivate your audience, you should as much as possible try to do something different from the regular presentations people do. It is also a good idea if you prepare for the question and answer part. Try to spend time thinking of the possible questions some people in your audience may ask after your presentation. Now that you have a fairly good idea, create some good natured humor to go along with your answers. Use these before you provide the answer that is serious and real.

The audience will think best of you if you provide them with a witty remark that in their opinion seems spontaneous and does not appear rehearsed, even if it is.

But what if no one dares ask the first question? This problem will be automatically solved by planting – this time – rehearsed questions on some members of the audience.
What you could do is to select some people from the audience and ask them ever so politely to assist you with your post-presentation session. You may ask them as you are researching for the profile of the audience you will be presenting to or while you are warming up to them prior to the program. If in case they agree to being your accomplice, request that they raise their hand when you open up the session on question and answer. This is the time that they will be asking you that pseudo-question.

The question you will ask them to ask serves two purposes: to break the ice through humor and encourage others to ask their own serious questions, or that they should be amused enough to stay still and listen until the end of your presentation.

Good luck with your presentations. Remember that the audience are on your side; they want you to do well!

17 October 2008

Syllabus for Speaking 4

Lecturer: Inayatul Chusna

Description:
This course is meant to imrpove students ability to speak in English.It will work on improving students ability to speak clearly and correctly, as well as listening comprehension in a variety of settings.

Objective:
All students will:
a. demostrate conceptual understanding of presentation factors;
b. improve listening skilss;
c. increase awareness of nonverbal communication factors;
d. develop the presentation and organization skills associated with
communicating information in a formal environment

Methods:
a. lectures
b. discussions
c. presentation assignments.

Course outline:
1. Introduction
2. Public Speaking technique
3. Public Speaking technique
4. Descriptive presentation
5. Farida, Deni, Hainuddin
6. Ubaidillah, Jumiati
7. A.Dodi, Qaid, Hidayat
8. Febri, Firdaus, Hendra
9. Minkhatul, Irfan, Laila
10.Lidya, Andina, Munazaruddin
11.Eerlina, Suzanty,Yeti
12.Fitri, Famela, Milawati
13.Dedi, Rabiatul
14. Persuasive presentation
15. Farida, Fitri
16. Irfan, Munazaruddin,Rabiatul
17. Qaid, Laila, Hidayat
18. Firdaus, Erlina, Famela
19. Dedi, Dodi, Suzanty
20. Milawati, hendra, Deni
21. Jumiati, Minkhatul
22. Hainuddin, Andina, Yeti
23. Ubaidillah, Febry
24. Jumiati, Suzanti
25. Firdaus, Famela, Erlina
26. Ubaidillah, Febry, Yetti
27. Deni, Minkhatul, Dedi
28. Laila, Rabiatul
29. Qaid, Fitri, Irfan
30. Hainuddin, Hendra, Milawati
31. Andina, Farida, Munazaruddin
32. Didi, Hidayat



Assignments and test:
a. There are 2 presentations. The first one is descriptive while the other one
is persuasive. Each students can choose a topic he likes for each
presentation. The time for each presentation is 30';
b. final term paper will be individual presentation of descriptive or
persuasive presentation. Material aids are recommended.

Attendance:
You will be allowed to skip 8 sessions. A skip of class for any reason will be considered absent. Any students who miss 5 sessions of class are automatically dropped from the course.


Grades:
Your final grade will be determined from:
a. attendance 15%
b. 1st and 2nd presentation 30%
c. class activity 15%
d. final presentation 40%

essays on Trifles

Plot Structure in Susan Glaspell's Trifles

The play "Trifles" by Susan Glaspell is a whodunit type of murder mystery. But in this case, the "professionals," whose job it is to find out what happened, failed in their task. The County Attorney (Mr. Henderson) and the Sheriff (Mr. Peters) attempt to piece together what had transpired on the day when John Wright was murdered. They interviewed Mrs. Hale, Mrs. Peters, and Mr. Hale who told them that Mrs. Wright, John's wife, had been acting strange when he had found her in the kitchen. After taking in all of this information, they left Mrs. Peters and Mrs. Hale in the kitchen.

Instead of focusing on the men and their quest to solve the case, Glaspell concentrates on the women in the kitchen. It is at this point, when the men leave the kitchen and go upstairs, that the women begin to, perhaps inadvertently, find out for themselves who had killed John Wright. I believe the rising action of this play begins when the men leave the women alone in the kitchen. Without even knowing it, the women are using the tactics that a trained detective would use: asking many questions and making inferences. They engage in small talk and comment on how the kitchen was left after the murder. For example, when Mrs. Peters was looking through the cupboard, she discovered that Mrs. Wright had a bread set. Mrs. Hale then concludes that "she was going to put this in here," referring to a loaf of bread beside the breadbox. Another example is when Mrs. Peters noticed that Mrs. Wright had been "piecing a quilt." As the two women are wondering whether she was going to "quilt it or knot it," the men come down the stairs and overhear them. The Sheriff repeats out loud what he had heard them say and the men all laugh, obviously making fun of the women. This situation is interesting because the men have no idea that the women were actually making valuable conclusions. I think the next line that Mrs. Hale says is very important:

"I don't know as there's anything so strange, our takin' up our time with little things while we're waiting for them to get the evidence. I don't see as it's anything to laugh about."

This line shows that even the women themselves believe that they are not finding anything of importance. The "little things" or "Trifles" in the kitchen are considered unimportant to the solving of the case to both the men and the women.

The rising action continues through a series of small discoveries such as the "nervous" sewing patterns that Mrs. Wright had stitched and the broken door on the birdcage. Right after finding the broken door on the canary cage, Mrs. Hale said, "I wish if they're going to find any evidence they'd be about it." They both had no idea that they had just found a key piece of evidence. The next discovery that they made signifies the climax of the play: A box in the sewing basket contained the dead bird, which had its neck wrung. This single find immediately gave an answer to the previous discoveries they had made. Glaspell's description sums it all up: "Their eyes meet. A look of growing comprehension, of horror". The "growing comprehension" means that in a matter of seconds after finding the dead bird, they completely understand what had happened and all questions that they had posed earlier were answered. The women were terrified and in a state of disbelief about the truth they had just discovered.

Without even trying to do so they had found the murderer of John Wright, his wife. The scene of the murder replayed in their minds: Mrs. Wright had been sewing in the kitchen, when Mr. Wright, who hated birds, came into the kitchen. This explains the nervous sewing by Mrs. Wright who didn't want the bird to be discovered. But he found the cage with the bird hidden in one of the cupboards, broke the door open and wrung its neck. This was enough motive for Mrs. Wright to kill her husband. Right after their horrific discovery, they heard the men coming in the house and Mrs. Hale hid the bird in the sewing basket. This I believe is the resolution. The women had made up their minds that they were not going to reveal to the men what they had found. Even when the County Attorney asked them where the bird was after he saw the cage, they lied and told him, "We think the cat got it."

They knew what type of man Mr. Wright was and that he wouldn't have liked a bird to be in the house. Mrs. Hale said he was a "hard man" and "just to pass the time of day with him was like a raw wind that gets to the bone." With this type of personality, he would not have liked a bird in the house, and Mrs. Peters and Mrs. Hale both believed that he would have killed the bird as a way of getting rid of it. The ladies did not want to reveal their findings to the men because they were sympathetic towards Mrs. Wright who had bought the bird to have something that actually was happy around the house and would be there for her all the time. As the reader, I also felt the same sympathy for Mrs. Wright who had to endure her husband's abnormal personality. All she wanted was a companion and when her husband took it away from her, she decided that she was going to kill him. I don't agree with her decision to kill him, but she was probably pushed to the point where she couldn't control her actions.

Nevertheless, the motive that the Attorney and Sheriff had been desperately seeking was only going to be found if the women revealed their discovery or if the men found the bird. The remainder of the play is very tense and represents the falling action. The men return from another search of the second floor and enter the kitchen. The Attorney approaches the table where the women are seated and says, "It's all perfectly clear except a reason for doing it . . . If there was something to show - something to make a story about..." The women still do not tell and are extremely nervous about the dead bird in the sewing basket underneath the quilt pieces being discovered. The most tense part of this scene is when the Sheriff asks, "Do you want to see what Mrs. Peters is going to take in?" The Attorney moves a few things around in the basket and for a moment I believed he was going to find the bird, but then he said, "I guess they're not very dangerous things the ladies picked out . . . A sheriff's wife is married to the law." This last line insinuates to the women that they are indeed breaking the law by not telling the Attorney about the bird. Even though the men have no idea that the bird even exists, I believe the women feel guilty about not revealing their find but I also think that their sympathy for Mrs. Wright outweighs that guilt.


The Unheimlich in Susan Glaspell's Play Trifles: A Feminist Interpretation of Freud's Uncanny
by Juliette Tang

Although published three years before Sigmund Freud's "The Uncanny," Susan Glaspell's play "Trifles" is a literary embodiment of Freudian techniques. The dramatic tension in "Trifles" is marked by an acute sense of the unheimlich, or uncanny, which Freud defines as: "uneasy, eerie, blood-curdling... everything that is unheimlich ought to have remained secret and hidden but has come to light." In this play, the three principle female characters -- Mrs. Peters, Mrs. Wright, and Mrs. Hale -- can be understood as personifications of Freud's ego, id, and superego. The symbolic unconscious appears in the text as the absent Minnie Wright, whose enigmatic presence is ingeniously presented as a lack of presence, as something not yet manifest. The unheimlich makes itself felt through Mrs. Hale and Mrs. Peter's eventual realization that they are deeply resentful of men and, from their anger, capable of justifying murder. Their realization coincides with the ego's realization of the repressed id, which creates an atmosphere of the uncanny in the text. "Trifles" is the story of women; it paints a picture of the female condition seen through female consciousness. The mind of Glaspell's play, its ego, superego, and id, belong to women, and men are intentionally excluded from understanding its metaphoric language. The text of the play and the events that unfold can be seen as emblematic of the linguistic system of the female mind.
The character of Mrs. Peters functions as the play's symbolic ego. She is highly self-conscious, cautious to a fault because she distrusts herself, nervous, hesitant, and, until the end of the play, consistently uncertain. She wavers between defending Minnie Wright and defending the patriarchal law, appearing to have no concept of what she desires and no stable conscience or conviction when it comes to Minnie Wright. When Mrs. Hale asks if she believes Minnie Wright killed her husband, Mrs. Peters answers in a frightened voice, "Oh, I don't know" (40). Mrs. Hale, however, is quick to judge: "Well, I don't think she did. Asking for her apron and her little shawl. Worrying about her fruit" (40). Mrs. Hale can be interpreted as the play's superego. She is ruled by her principles and convictions and, throughout the play, often speaks of her conscience. Reflecting on Minnie Wright, Mrs. Hale says mournfully, "I wish I had come over sometimes when she was here... I stayed away because it weren't cheerful -- and that's why I ought to have come" (42). Later on in the play, Mrs. Hale cries, "Oh I wish I'd come over here once in a while! That was a crime! That was a crime! Who's going to punish that" (44)? As the play's symbolic superego, Mrs. Hale is also speaks directly to Mrs. Peters and urges her to think with a conscience: "I might have known she needed help! I know how things can be -- for women. I tell you, it's queer, Mrs. Peters. We live close together and we live far apart. We all go through the same things -- it's all just a different kind of the same thing" (44).

When the ego uncovers the unheimlich in the id, the uncanny is realized. It is the moment when the unconscious elements surface and materialize into a form recognizable to the individual consciousness. In "Trifles," the unheimlich is uncovered when Mrs. Peters, the play's ego, decides that Mr. Wright's murder is acceptable. Her dawning realization comes after she finds the dead canary, Minnie's cathexis, and recognizes the shape of Minnie's anger: "When I was a girl -- my kitten -- there was a boy took a hatchet, and before my eyes -- and before I could get there... If they hadn't held me back I would have... hurt him" (43). Transference is at work here; through self-reference, the character Minnie becomes comprehendible. Freud postulates that this sense of doubleness or duality is inherent in the uncanny and describes it as "transferring mental processes from the one person to the other... so that the one possesses knowledge, feeling and experience in common with the other... so his self becomes confounded, or the foreign self is substituted for his own -- in other words, by doubling, dividing and interchanging the self." The uncanny appears when the ego recognizes aspects of the id that it never knew existed. The concept of recognition is significant, because it implies pre-established acquaintance and a certain level of inherence. Glaspell implies that all women share anger at their male oppressors, and if carried to an extreme, all women are capable of sharing Minnie's murderous rage.
"Trifles" comes from Mr. Hale's line, "Well, women are used to worrying over trifles" (38). It is a feminist play about men's unwillingness to understand the female condition; it is about how women are disenfranchised, dismissed, and displaced by men in the social order. This calls to mind the Freudian notion of "penis envy." According to Freud, women enter the Oedipal phase when they discover their lack of a penis and blame the mother, turning to the father as a love object. However, far from supporting this notion of penis envy, Glaspell's play denies it completely. According to Glaspell, men fear the power of women, to an extent that they constantly belittle their female counterparts to assure themselves of their own domination. Instead of blaming other women for their lack of a penis, the women in "Trifles" bond over shared femininity. When Mr. Henderson demeans Minnie Wright by proclaiming that she is a poor housekeeper, Mrs. Hale defends her by saying, "Those towels get dirty awful quick. Men's hands aren't always as clean as they might be" (38). The blame is transferred from the woman to the man; it is not her dirty towels that are to be blamed, but rather his dirty hands.

The play's linguistic metonymy is based on the world of women. The central metaphors of the play -- the preserves, the birdcage, the quilt, and the knot -- all inhabit a world that men derogate, but in "Trifles" these are the only objects that speak the truth. By examining these objects, Mrs. Hale and Mrs. Peters solve the mystery of Mr. Wright's death and protect Minnie Wright by keeping their knowledge secret, which simultaneously empowers their femininity and diminishes patriarchic control. The women become the ones with the power to exclude. Withholding their knowledge of the crime from the men is, in a sense, castration, because it renders them impotent to connect Minnie Wright to the murder of her husband. "Trifles" as a whole is uncanny, because it speaks for the minds of women, and assumes in Mrs. Hale's line, "We all go through the same things" that all women have repress the same things, that all women -- even if they do not realize it -- harbor the same dangerous resentment at their male oppressors (44). The play closes when Mr. Henderson asks the women jokingly if they think Mrs. Wright intended to sew or knot her unfinished quilt. Mrs. Hale's sarcastic reply sums up in a sentence the doubleness, the uncanny, of this feminine language: "We call it -- knot it, Mr. Henderson" (45). The castrating power of female withholding, the knot, the reference to the void, is the foundation of the play's unheimlich.

Works Cited
Bigsby, C. W. E., Ed. Plays by Susan Glaspell. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987.

essays on A Doll's House

On Ibsen's A Doll's House
Author: Ian Johnston

Those of you who have just read A Doll's House for the first time will, I suspect, have little trouble forming an initial sense of what it is about, and, if past experience is any guide, many of you will quickly reach a consensus that the major thrust of this play has something to do with gender relations in modern society and offers us, in the actions of the heroine, a vision of the need for a new-found freedom for women (or a woman) amid a suffocating society governed wholly by unsympathetic and insensitive men.

I say this because there is no doubt that A Doll's House has long been seen as a landmark in our century's most important social struggle, the fight against the dehumanizing oppression of women, particularly in the middle-class family. Nora's final exit away from all her traditional social obligations is the most famous dramatic statement in fictional depictions of this struggle, and it helped to turn Ibsen (with or without his consent) into an applauded or vilified champion of women's rights and this play into a vital statement which feminists have repeatedly invoked to further their cause. So in reading responses to and interpretations of this play, one frequently comes across statements like the following:

Patriarchy's socialization of women into servicing creatures is the major accusation in Nora's painful account to Torvald of how first her father, and then he, used her for their amusement. . . how she had no right to think for herself, only the duty to accept their opinions. Excluded from meaning anything, Nora has never been subject, only object. (Templeton 142).

Furthermore, if we go to see a production of this play (at least among English-speaking theatre companies), the chances are we will see something based more or less on this interpretative line: heroic Nora fighting for her freedom against oppressive males and winning out in the end by her courageous final departure. The sympathies will almost certainly be distributed so that our hearts are with Nora, however much we might carry some reservations about her leaving her children.

Now, this construction certainly arises from what is in the play, and I don't wish to dismiss it out of hand. However, today I would like to raise some serious question about or qualifications to it. I want to do so because this vision of A Doll's House has always struck me as oversimple, as, in some sense, seriously reductive, an approach that removes from the play much of its complexity and almost all its mystery and power. For A Doll's House, as I read it, is not primarily a blow for women's emancipation, a social comedy revealing the need for change in the patriarchal middle class. It is, by contrast, a tragedy, and Nora has (for me) far more in common with, say, Oedipus or Antigone than she has with Major Barbara or the Goodbye Girl. Her exit, thus, is much more a self-destructive assertion of her uncompromising and powerful ego, a necessary expression of her Romantic quest for freedom, than it is an intelligently earned insight into how best she can learn to function as an individual amid a conforming and oppressive society.

I don't propose to set forth a fully detailed argument in support of this thesis, but I would like to raise some questions which might invite readers to consider (or re-consider) the adequacy of what I have sketched out above (in much too cursory a fashion) as the most common response to this play. My aim here is, as I say, to challenge any response to the play which might too quickly and complacently file it in an rubric labeled orthodox feminism fiction and move on to something else. In making my case, I shall move from things about which we can agree quite easily towards more complex and contentious issues.

The Social Context

Let me begin my interpretative remarks with something we can all readily agree upon, the nature of the social world depicted in A Doll's House, the society in which these characters have grown up and live. For there seems to be widespread agreement that Ibsen's portrayal of that society emphasizes how middle-class life here is limiting, brutal, and unforgiving.

The society appears affluent and agreeable enough for those who can operate in it successfully. The Helmers have a very nice home and are looking forward to even more commodious living once Torvald gets his appointment. There is room here to celebrate Christmas with presents, to employ servants, to play music, to enjoy all sorts of creature comforts, and to celebrate with one's friends. Many of the most cherished ideals of middle-class life, then and now, are clearly on display.

But we learn that such benefits come at a price: one must conform to a view of proper conduct which is, in many respects, extremely narrow, savagely enforced, and unforgiving. This society values money, contracts, and conventional respectability over anything else and has no room for people who do not fit comfortably into its expectations. Such people, the outsiders, live desperate lives. This aspect comes out most obviously in Mrs. Linde and Krogstad, not merely in their stories but, more importantly, in their appearance. In sharp contrast to Nora and Torvald's apparent health, these two people, still quite young, have prematurely aged (so much so that Nora has trouble recognizing Kristine when she first appears)--a factor that is at once noticeable in stage productions which choose to make the point. The savagery they have to endure on the outskirts of society manifests itself also in their desperate desire to get back into the ranks of accepted middle-class citizens. They have tried an alternative life, and the experience is killing them (and their children)--a point which, as we shall see, casts an all-important ironic shadow over Nora's emancipatory departure at the end.

The cruelty of that society is not simply economic, although that is the most obvious manifestation of what happens to outsiders, as we learn through Krogstad's situation. There is an important emotional component to their distress as well, for the isolation they must endure can leave them unable to create for themselves a meaningful relationship, to derive human significance from their interactions with others (the basis of Kristine's troubles). Those of whom society disapproves or who don't have a secure middle-class status are thus frozen out, literally frozen in that they have to fight for a subsistence, but also figuratively frozen by the impossibility of realizing a rich social existence. Kristine's experience here is important because when we first meet her she has what Nora chooses at the end of the play--independence from any immediate social responsibility--and she finds in it no satisfying living purpose. She wants to get back into the society. Her experience on the fringes has taught her that she must, if possible, live her life in society (more about this point later).

In this respect, an important element in this play may well be the weather. Outside the warmth of the house, the world is bitterly cold, full of snow (something film versions of this play can and have brought out more emphatically than stage productions). There is here no consoling sense that nature offers any alternative to society: nature here is brutal, a symbolic extension of the wintry life outside the respectable social group. One film production of the play (I believe the one starring Jane Fonda) makes this explicit by showing us Krogstad's desperately cold and cramped living quarters, where he has to try to raise his children.

The other eloquent testimony to what this society adds up to is the figure of Dr. Rank. He is, by any external measure of things, very successful, rich and well respected. He is a doctor, a man who heals. And yet Dr. Rank is dying from the inside, from syphilis, a disease which does not affect his well-groomed, prosperous, and respectable exterior but which eats away at his vital organs. He acquired this progressively debilitating and ultimately fatal disease, not from any wrong doing on his part, but from his father as his inheritance, just as other citizens have acquired their way of living and judging others from their past (from their fathers). In Dr. Rank (whose name in English means, interestingly enough, both a high status and a foul smell) we have encapsulated the destructive ironies at the heart of this middle-class ethic, presented to us as an inherited, incurable, fatal infection.

The nature of this disease as a symbol for the sickness in that society is important, for it is not the case that the infection is a single isolated disaster, on the order of, say, the plague in Oedipus' Thebes or the sickness in Macbeth's Scotland, something purged by the end of the play through the actions of and reactions to the hero. The sickness in this play is incurable, endemic, and traditional. It is a fatal condition imposed upon the community. This point is, as we shall see, important in any final assessment of Nora's final decision (which has no significantly transforming effect upon those she leaves behind).

Torvald

When we turn our attention to Torvald the most important point we can make (to begin with) is the most obvious: he is a very successful participant in this middle-class society, a professional on the way up the social scale, in charge of the engine of middle-class respectability, the bank. He seems to like his job and, so far as we can tell, he has earned his success.

We need to bear this in mind, because it is all too easy to dismiss Torvald as a fool, some unworthy adolescent foisted on Nora by circumstance. He is not: he is a hard-working and successful professional man in a challenging job. All this endorses the notion that he is by no means unintelligent.

Torvald's problem (if that is the right word) is that his intelligence is entirely determined by and limited to his awareness of the social rules around him. We get no sense (until the very end) that he has any vital inner life of which he is aware: he thinks of himself through the eyes of others, and his opinions of others are wholly determined by how they affect his social position. His reasons for wanting Krogstad gone are clear enough evidence of this. Past connections with the man or even the man's character and abilities are irrelevant (to say nothing of any sympathy with his situation): what matters is that Krogstad's conversations with him are embarrassing; they challenge his social identity because they are inappropriate to the positions the two men occupy. We should not underestimate the strength of Torvald's feelings here--his identity, how he thinks of himself, is so bound up with what people will think of him in relation to what is expected that nothing else matters.

Hence, Torvald thinks (to the extent he thinks at all) in simplistic formulas. His moral code is entirely derived from society's expectations, and we get no sense that he is in any way a reflective man, wondering about any problems which might arise from such a simplistic approach to life. The rules matter to him more than the the people whom they hurt, and for Torvald the business of life is a matter of following those rules scrupulously, regarding those who break them (for whatever reason) as immoral and dangerous.

For these reasons, Torvald has no sympathetic understanding of or interest in people other than in their social context. For example, he treats Mrs. Linde very casually. She is an unimportant person, irrelevant to Torvald's sense of himself. Hence, she is hardly worth noticing. And Torvald's relationship with Dr. Rank does not include any complex and understanding sympathy for what that man is going through (although we learn that they were best friends as children). Why should it? Dr. Rank's friendship is an important social asset (hence, valuable to Torvald), but Dr. Rank's suffering and death bring an end to that, so there's no point in thinking about him further.

Given this aspect of Torvald's character it seems clear that Torvald has an acute sensitivity to what society requires and little sensitivity to anything else (to suggest that he is a totally insensitive man is, I think, to miss an important point). Presumably he has always been like this, and society has rewarded him handsomely for that approach to life: a nice home, beautiful wife, young children, important job, good income, good economic prospects. He's honest enough about that, for he makes no attempt to pretend that he believes in anything other than what society's rules indicate (the notion that he is capable of pretending, of having some secret desire not to be the way he is, seems extremely unlikely). More than that, he appears incapable of even imagining another dimension to life. In fact, we might well see him as the fullest living embodiment of the perfectly and entirely social man in this milieu (in this respect he's not unlike Creon in Sophocles' Oedipus although Torvald is a much more extreme case). That's why Torvald's comments about how he will act the hero should the need arise are so empty: heroes are, by definition, unconventionally great. Torvald is a thoroughly conventional man.

Torvald has thus little-to-no sense of personal independence. What he is and how he thinks are totally determined from the outside, and he is perfectly content with that (no doubt that's what makes him such a useful manager of the bank). This characteristic also makes him (as I shall argue in more detail later) a man relatively easy to manipulate, so long as his sense of society's rules is not violated. It might also mean that he is (as many have argued) as much a victim of this society as anyone else (a doll perhaps). He may be reaping the rewards this society has to offer, but the price is extremely high. At the same time, it also makes him correct in a good deal of what he says. Torvald is a man who understands how to function in society, and he is well aware of what happens to anyone who breaks the rules. We may find the fact that he believes in the rules and has no trouble appealing to them indicates a serious defect in his character (and it does), but that does not cancel out the fact that when he talks of how society will respond to Nora's forgery, he is right. We should not simply write off Torvald's feelings as an overreaction to what will happen if his wife's crime becomes well known.

The truly complex question in relation to Torvald concerns the nature of his feelings for Nora. We can see clearly enough that an important component in these feelings is the social satisfaction he derives from having a beautiful young wife all to himself, someone he can parade around in front of other men as his trophy, arousing their jealously when he takes her away from the party to gratify the sexual stimulation he has gained by her public dance. All this is clear enough. The important question, however, is whether there is any more to his feelings than that. Is she merely a trophy wife, a toy doll in his doll's house?

Much of our response to this issue will depend upon how Torvald is depicted, especially the extent to which he is presented to us as a sexually passionate, attractive man, perhaps even dashingly handsome (as was certainly the case in the Janet McTeer/Owen Teale production on Broadway a few years ago). We may like to imagine that excessively conventional social men cannot possibly be anything other than wimps in bed, but (if experience is any guide) that is surely an unjustified generalization. And there is no doubt that Torvald feels a strong sexual attraction for Nora (something which has induced a few directors to include the marriage bed in the scenery).

Why should this matter? Well, it does to this extent: if Torvald's sexual advances are coming from someone repulsive or even sexually offensive, then the production will underscore emphatically a certain dimension of Nora's later dissatisfaction. If, however, there is a sense that the Helmers are sexually passionate with each other and derive great mutual satisfaction from their sexual natures within their marriage, the dynamics of Nora's transformation acquire a significantly different texture. Whatever is forcing her to leave, sexual oppression is not a part of it. In fact, she may well be turning her back on her sexuality in her quest for independence.

My sense is that Ibsen goes out of his way to bring out Torvald's sexual nature in his feelings for Nora and gives every indication that those feelings are reciprocated. For all her apparent childishness, Nora is a sexual creature who radiates (and uses) sexual power over Torvald (in the dancing) and over Dr. Rank in that strange business with the silk stockings. It may well be that the apparent childishness is itself a sexual ploy, part of the erotic richness in the relationship. There is even a sense that Torvald recognizes what she is doing in this way and welcomes it as part of the sexual roles they play (as does Nora). I realize this line of thinking gets us into an infinite regression, but I make the point to stress that how one reads Torvald's sexuality in relation to Nora's (something clearly in the play) will be crucial in assessing her later accusations against him.

Obviously, there is more to be said about this relationship. Suffice it to say here that Torvald's sexuality does suggest that within that entirely conventional man a somewhat more complex figure lurks and that his love for Nora, however much we may disapprove of various moments in their lives together, has a strongly passionate core. This quality, I think, is essential to a full appreciation of the play (especially of Torvald's conduct at the end) and should not be neutralized by any attempt to see in Torvald a sexless, unintelligent bore, like, for example, Tesman (in Hedda Gabler), so that we can add sexual oppression more easily to the list of charges against that patriarchal society victimizing poor Nora.

Nora

The central mystery and challenge of A Doll's House are obviously the character of Nora, our century's most famous stage heroine. And no matter what one says about her, there will be counter-arguments, rival interpretations, as there are with all great dramatic characters who are always, in a sense, underdetermined.

What I mean by that phrase is that at the heart of great characters is a mystery, an ambiguity, something that finally eludes rational interpretation. We do what we can to make reasonable sense of their motives, but we can never be entirely successful and remain true to the character as presented to us, because, as one critic puts it (in relation to Shakespeare), the greatest dramatic characters have the "freedom of incongruity" (Bayley 47), and hence the power to evade the neat compartments we want to place them in. Part of my objection to what I have called above the common interpretation is that it denies this mystery. It overdetermines Nora, seeing in her a character whose actions are fully and entirely comprehensible in the light of a modern ideology, making her, in effect, typical rather than extraordinary, unique.

For that reason, I don't have any complete rational explanation for Nora. After all, in a sense I am contending that Nora is a great dramatic character because she eludes final definition, any neat compartmentalization. We should treat her as we do, say, Shakespeare's Cleopatra or Falstaff, someone eternally fascinating about whom we can make some useful observations, but not with any ambition finally to define her fully and completely.

So I propose to make some observations and suggestions about Nora, elements which arise from the text and which we have to take into account. What these (and other things I shall not be mentioning) all add up to is the challenge facing us in our seminar discussions.

An obvious place to start is the title of the play, A Doll's House. This invites us to apply a metaphor to the play, to see what is going on in the Helmer household as somehow analogous to a child's game featuring an artificial life of dolls manipulated by the doll master or mistress. The title invites us at once to wonder about the issue of power: Just who is in control here?

The quick and easy answer to this, of course, is that Torvald is in charge, society's darling and the male head of the household. But the opening scenes surely call this interpretation into question. For we see, in action, Nora controlling Torvald expertly. He may adopt a conventionally controlling tone, what with the rules about money and macaroons, but Nora is the one who is getting her own way, eating macaroons and spending money (and getting more) as her wishes prompt (the first thing we see her do is give the porter an over-generous tip). There may even be a sense that Torvald knows this: part of their relationship requires him to set the rules and Nora to flout them (in one production this is delightfully brought out by Torvald's brushing off the sugar from Nora's lips as she denies eating any candy).

And the staging of the play strongly suggest that the living room in which the action takes place is Nora's realm. Much here will depend upon the stage setting, of course, but throughout the play Torvald seems much keener to move off into his study than to linger in that room. And, even if Torvald is determined to stay in his study, when Nora wants him to appear, she knows exactly how to bring him out (as that word "bought" on p. 2 indicates).

Some viewers and readers object to what they feel are the demeaning animal pet names Torvald uses (sky-lark, squirrel, singing bird), although why these should be any worse than many modern equivalents (honey, baby, cutie pie, and so on) I'm not sure. There is certainly no sense that Nora finds these labels unacceptable--at times (although not here) she uses them herself to get her way with Torvald.

But, one might be tempted to remark, all this is surely very demeaning. Yes, Nora may appear happy enough and getting her way, but she's playing a silly role, acting the child-wife when she is, in fact, a mature married woman and mother in her late twenties. Isn't the game going on here oppressive to her? Isn't there something a little perverse about the way she acts with her husband?

Yes, of course, she is playing a role, as is Torvald. There is a game going on, however we choose to judge it. The question one needs to consider is this: Who is in charge of the script? Who is the doll master here? There is, I would urge, no simple answer to this question. The opening scene, before the interruption with the arrival of Mrs. Linde, puts pressure on us to recognize this complexity, especially given that Nora appears so happy, confident, and effective in her role (the direction that she is singing or humming to herself is significant in this respect).

Role Playing and Control

Having raised the issue of roles or game playing, let me offer the suggestion that this concept is one key to approaching the play, and particularly Nora's role. Let me further make the observation that one crucial factor in the roles Nora plays is that she needs to be in control, to take the lead role, as it were, using other people either as supporting actors or audience and that she writes her own script.

This notion (which I will seek to explore in more detail soon) helps me to deal with a question which frequently arises here: How can one woman make so many unexpected transitions? How is it possible for the child-wife to play the adult female tease (with Dr. Rank), the capable determined businesswoman (in her secret dealings with the debt), the frantically desperate woman thinking of suicide, and, above all, the coldly independent mature woman at the conclusion of the play? Well, one common feature these manifestations of Nora's character all have is that they enable her to control others, to assert herself without really attending to, listening carefully to, learning from, or acting on what other people say.

Consider for a moment why Nora would not have told Torvald long ago about the debt. The reason she gives is interesting: she doesn't need to at this point in her life--she's young enough and pretty enough to exert her control over him in other ways (and telling about the debt would shatter her image as the clueless but sexy child-wife). However, she is looking forward to using that event in the future, when she can no longer rely upon her looks. How exactly this would help restore his affections may not be clear, but there is certainly a sense that Nora hopes it will make her more important to him. The fact that Nora thinks of her relationship with Torvald in such terms is interesting: she will make him respond to her (as she does now); her actions will determine and preserve their marriage (and she will decide on the appropriate means).

Parenthetically, it's worth asking where the notion for all this dressing up, dancing, recitation, and so on, this performing in front of Torvald, comes from. We could, of course, write it off as a manifestation of Torvald's patriarchal oppressiveness (something Nora learned to do at her father's knee), but that, it strikes me, is too facile. He obviously enjoys it, and so does Nora, who shows no sign of dissatisfaction with it. If it is the case that Torvald loves Nora and Nora knows it (and that seems clear enough at the start), then one can (I think) assume that they are equally responsible for creating and maintaining this way of enriching their lives together: Nora will act out her various roles, and Torvald will respond. She will keep herself in the centre of the marital spotlight.

This characteristic tendency of Nora helps us understand, too, why she shows no particular interest in Torvald's work or in social issues outside her own sphere, why she is so insistent that if society's rules indicate that something she has done is wrong, then society itself must be at fault, why she, now in her late twenties, has learned nothing at all (and has no interest in learning anything) about other people or society in general. These things are irrelevant to Nora, not because she is denied an opportunity to think about them (her secret repayment of the debt puts her in continuing touch with a world outside her home), but because they don't interest her, they provide no opportunity for her to perform, no space in which she can appeal to a sympathetic audience, no world over which she can exert any control. On the contrary, to learn about such things she would have to stop performing and start listening to others, absorbing what they say, adjusting her understanding of herself in the light of new insights into larger questions, that is, surrender control. This Nora is unable to do. Hence, she dismisses such concerns.

The issue of Nora's need to be in the spotlight helps us to deal with another question: Why does Nora tell Kristine her deepest secret, after such a short conversation? She hardly knows the woman. The conversation leading up to Nora's revelation offers us a significant clue: there is a sense of competition between the two women. Nora's appearance and surroundings would seem to define her as something of a winner in the game of life, in comparison with Kristine, and Nora begins their talk by, in effect, showing off to Kristine, inviting her guest's admiration for her and the life she has. But Kristine speaks slightingly of her, reminding Nora of her childishness and spendthrift ways, in effect, challenging Nora ("What a child you are, Nora"); Kristine refuses to applaud, treating the notion that Nora might be able to help her as ridiculous: What, after all, has Nora ever accomplished? That remark, a direct challenge to Nora's ego, is enough to set Nora talking about her forgery, a dramatic narrative in which she is the star, in which she can demonstrate to Kristine and to herself that, however childish people might think she is, that's not entirely the case. That information also enables Nora to seize control of the conversation, to make herself the heroine of this small encounter, rather than listening sympathetically to what Kristine has to say. Having done that, she can pointedly refuse Kristine a bed for the night, a polite but brutal indication of Nora's indifference to Kristine's situation.

[The sense of a competition here in which Nora demonstrates her superiority over Kristine may help to explain a particularly puzzling question: Why does Kristine insist that Krogstad's letter be delivered? He, after all, offers to take it back, thus averting any disclosure of the forgery. Kristine dissuades him, and Torvald gets the incriminating document. Why does Kristine do this? She is much more intelligently aware than Nora is of the consequences of Torvald's receiving the news of his wife's forgery. She does not fully explain her reasons, but I cannot help feeling that she is here returning to that earlier conversation. Nora thinks she is so wonderful. All right, let's see what she does now when her entire world blows up in her face, just as mine did.]

The fascinating point in that first conversation with Kristine is that Nora's revelation springs from a need within her, or, if that is too strong a word, from the very nature of her character. Telling Kristine is hardly prudent. Nor is it necessary to bolster Nora's confidence about her achievements (Nora is very self-assured within herself). But bringing out the story is essential if Kristine is to see Nora as an important person, if she is going to control their moment together by becoming the centre of attention. The story serves Nora's need for self-dramatization as a means for controlling her surroundings.

The same issue arises in her relationship with Dr. Rank, a long-term friendship based upon roles: Nora performs for him (in conversation) and he listens. His confession of love (on p. 49), understandable and eloquent enough, upsets Nora. Why should it do that? His confession calls attention to his feelings, to his desire to act on her behalf, to take charge. In effect, he is changing the rules of the game they have been playing together. Nora has no interest in or understanding of such a transformed relationship; besides, she is in charge of the game. She's happy enough with their roles together as she defines them. She accuses Rank of having ruined everything, another small but puzzling insight into this complex heroine's character.

This notion of Nora's desire (or need) for control may help to explain the curious relationship she has with her children. They, of course, cannot be dealt with in the same way as adults; they are impervious to what Nora can do best, perform. Children require that their needs be attended to, that people listen and invite them to perform. They impose their own demands. Hence, Nora seems to show little interest in them. They cannot give her what she wants (they are, in some respects, too like her for her to deal with). She explicitly says how much she would like to be a child again.

And the strength of her relationship with Torvald becomes easier to understand if we see this element of Nora's character. For Torvald brings no personal demands, no complex personal identity to his experience, no desire to perform. In that sense, he is a perfect complement to Nora's character, and we can understand why they are so happy together. Yes, he is full of sententious moralizing about social issues, but we know those are irrelevant to Nora. She lets him act the authority on such questions and provide the space where they can live their lives. Her interest is in controlling that space (and part of that control, of course, is giving Torvald the sense that he is in control). She only begins to criticize him when he will not give her what she wants (she may be right here, when she accuses Torvald of being petty for rejecting Krogstad, but it's interesting that she hasn't had this insight into Torvald until this moment: one gets a sense that she is more upset at Torvald for refusing her than for his treatment of Krogstad).

Now, I don't mean to criticize or belittle Nora over this matter of control. For it's quite clear that her wish to be in charge at the centre of things has saved this marriage and is largely responsible for the pleasure she and Torvald derive from it. If Nora were not that sort of person, if she were less of an egotist and more acutely sensitive to the society and other people around her, she would never have gone ahead with the loan, and Torvald would have died. She was able to undertake that (and to save Torvald's life) only because she has such a strong emotional commitment to herself, to her ways of doing things, over any and all objections. Something needed to be done, and she did it (society be damned). Moreover, the hard disciplined work over many years necessary to repay the loan is a tribute to Nora's determination and skill in carrying out her own project, all the while sustaining her own marriage in quite another role.

This quality lies at the heart of Nora's heroic character. Her confidence in herself, in her abilities to control the situation, to solve the problem, has led to her success and has confirmed, in her eyes, that she is right. She flouted society's laws, worked hard, and is now about to reap the success of that action by handing over the final payment. It has not been easy, and there are times when a certain strain shows through (as in that mention of the word "Damn"), but there's no sense that Nora feels that she has been compelled to act in this way, that she has not freely chosen to be the person she is.

The Loss of Control

Krogstad's arrival, of course, changes things, because he insists that she answer to him. Most of the rest of the play is taken up with Nora's attempt to cope with this unexpected intrusion into her agenda. Her immediate responses invite us to ponder an obvious question: Why doesn't Nora simply tell Torvald? Why does she go to such frantic lengths to conceal the truth from him?

My sense is that Nora's panic has less to do with the secret coming out than with her growing sense that she is losing control of the situation. She is now having to answer to circumstances dictated by others rather than staying firmly in the centre of the stage answering to her own demands. She has no understanding of how to do this. So her mind resorts to what has worked for her in the past, taking on herself sole responsibility for somehow dealing with an unraveling situation. The various methods she uses (seeking to cajole Torvald, thoughts of suicide, the tarantella, attempting to rob the letter box) indicate her increasing desperation at having to deal with events which she cannot control. She is bringing to bear what has worked for her in the past, but what she has to deal with here resists her attempts. Other people and the rules of the society in which they live are too fatally complex and inexorable for her efforts.

When nothing seems to work she takes refuge in a self-generated fiction, that somehow Torvald will transform himself into the romantic hero of her dreams and the issue will be resolved. This, of course, is the most transparent illusion, given what we have learned about that society and Torvald's relationship to and understanding of it. It's a manifestation of Nora's inability to think intelligently about what is happening--like so many passionately tragic figures, the more complicated and out of control the situation gets the blinder she gets to what is really going on (Oedipus' notion that he may be the son of a slave comes to mind as something comparable)

The Final Conversation

The final scene of A Doll's House is one of the most famous and hotly debated moments in modern drama, endlessly argued about. I make no attempt here to account for all the complexities of this fascinating scene, but once again I'd like to offer some observations to fuel further discussion.

Torvald's behaviour once he reads Krogstad's letter totally demolishes the illusion Nora has taken refuge in, and the lectures he delivers to Nora at the start of the scene remind us unmistakably of what a total social prig he is, determined to salvage what he can by deception and very angry at Nora for what she has done. We are right to find what he says very offensive, especially since he makes no sympathetic attempt to talk to her, to explore her motivation, to share the crisis together as two individuals at a critical point in their lives together.

[Naturally, the staging of the first part of this scene is absolutely crucial for shaping our response to what happens later. If, for example, Torvald's angry abuse leads him to hit Nora, the impact of his tirade will be very different indeed from what it would be if we sense a genuine pain and panic under his insults, if it deflates him rather than energizing him to violence against her]

At the same time, we need to recognize that much of what Torvald says is right. If this gets out, he will be ruined. We know enough about his society to understand that the slightest accusation of criminal conduct will destroy them both (and that, we know, is so much more than just losing a job). And we have seen that for Torvald his social role is who he is, his entire identity. He has no conception of himself outside that role. So, in effect, Nora has, in his eyes, destroyed him. We may deplore the shallowness of his character, but we should not dismiss the intensity of his feelings or the accuracy of his perception of how society will react. Everything he believes in is in danger of being taken away. And that's why, once the danger has passed, he can instantly become himself again: his identity has been restored.

So when he utters (and keeps repeating) that line which so often earns a laugh in the modern theatre ("I forgive you everything") he is making (in his eyes) a sincere concession. Since society won't know, things can remain the same, and he is prepared to interpret her actions as love for him combined with inexperience in the ways of the world, a situation he is prepared to assist her to overcome.

All this is clear enough (although we have to be careful here, I think, to listen carefully to what Torvald is saying and recognize his feelings--something not easy to do in these transformed times). The real challenge in this scene is Nora's conduct. Why does she reject Torvald so utterly? And how are we supposed to respond to her indictment of their former life together?

Prima facie, there are two ways we might initially approach Nora's conduct. We might see it as the awakening into a more mature understanding of herself, a sudden insight into the inherently unsatisfactory nature of her previous life, fuelled by an intense desire to get rid of the oppressive need to, as Nora puts it, do "tricks for you, Torvald." She accuses Torvald and her father of having done her a great wrong by not permitting her to achieve anything, and she is now determined to strike a blow to gain her own independence. Such a view commits us to a sudden transformation into a "new" woman, something many critics have found implausible (see Marker and Marker, Chapter 3).

Such an interpretation can easily become a celebration of Nora's newly found independence, an endorsement of her actions as demonstrating a valuable and necessary integrity in the face of an unacceptably conforming and compromising life. She wants her life to acquire significant value, and she has come to the realization that that can only occur outside the family, on her own.

Alternatively, we might see that Nora is being entirely intransigent here: she is doing what she has always done, performing to her own script with no attention to anyone else. She is, as it were, choosing another role. The indictment of her previous life, after all, may be more a justification for what she has decided to do now than a just assessment of what she and Torvald experienced together. That line Nora says about never being happy, only thinking she was happy, when she wasn't really, invites us to think that there is some hair-splitting chop logic going on. Nora has decided now that she wasn't happy, and so she wasn't. We need to bring to bear here our response to the opening of the play. The same point applies to her charge that her father and Torvald never loved her; they only thought it was nice to be in love with her, a fine and justified distinction or some special pleading?

In fact, we need to treat Nora's accusations with intelligent honesty. When she says, for example, that she and Torvald have never had a serious conversation together, we might want to ask why that should be the case. She brings the point up in the context of how much she has been wronged by the men in her life. But how much responsibility does she bear for what she is now desiderating? Why are Torvald and her father the only ones who bear responsibility for this? Surely if she had wanted a conversation she could have initiated one easily enough at some point in the eight years of their married life together?

But is Nora capable of a true conversation? Is she really able to bring to bear a sufficient interest in other people to listen to what they have to say, to share the conversational stage with them as equals, to make the concessions necessary if they are to enjoy some of the social space? There is very little evidence of that in the play, since Nora's idea of dealing with other people is, as I have mentioned, something different from conversation. And this final talk confirms the point. Nora and Torvald are not having a conversation, because she isn't willing to listen to him. She's made up her mind, and it doesn't really matter any more. The old game is over, and she's not willing to negotiate a new set of rules, for she's already determined what role she will now play.

And it's important also to recognize (just in case we don't) that to some extent Torvald and Nora are arguing at cross purposes. The complementary nature of their characters, something which worked so well in their marriage, here leaves them incapable of understanding one another: she cannot fathom why he must always defer to social rules, and he cannot grasp why she wants to challenge them so drastically. So there is no common ground in their understanding of the issue. This point emerges in an exchange that is probably the most quoted passage from the final scene:

TORVALD: Nobody sacrifices his honour for the one he loves.
NORA: Hundreds and thousands of women have.

This quotation has been appropriated for all sorts of ideological concerns to the point where its dramatic complexity may be overlooked. For what's evident here is that these two have radically different notions of what honour means. Torvald is saying, in effect, no man will abandon his earned social position, the public recognition he has attained, his identity in the eyes of his fellow citizens for a personal relationship. Nora's response says, in effect, hundreds and thousands of women have surrendered their integrity (their personal sense of identity, their self-generated sense of themselves) in the service of society, specifically in marriage. The impasse here points to something above and beyond the gendered vocabulary in which it is presented: the clash between different aspects of the human identity, an issue that Ibsen is not concerned to solve but which this scene serves to illuminate and explore.

In sorting our way through this final scene, we need to pay careful attention to the changes Torvald goes through. For he makes some very important offers, concessions at odds with his very conventional views of male and female roles and social rules. He travels a long way from the insufferably scared and angry prig at the beginning of the scene. He suggests they live together as brother and sister, he says he may have the capacity to change, he wants to maintain contact--he gives every indication that he loves Nora and will do anything to maintain their relationship in some form or another (and she can set the terms). Torvald is never more sympathetically presented than here. For the first time in the play he confronts his deepest feelings and tries to act on them without falling back on a shallow convention, revealing in the process an unexpected flexibility which suggests that, if Nora took him up on his offer, he might very well learn and change. And his motives here register as deeply felt feelings from within, not a concern for keeping up appearances.

Every offer is coldly denied. Nora has made up her mind: the role she is now set on playing has no room for Torvald, and that's all there is to it. She provides all sorts of reasons, but they are unconvincing as reasons (e.g., "I must try to discover who is right, society or me"). There is no rational plan at work here, no carefully thought out life direction. Nora is acting out of powerful emotional feelings about herself, shaping reasons to justify deeply irrational desires. In fact, the above remark reveals that, for all she has been through, Nora still thinks of herself apart from and, if necessary, in opposition to society, not as someone who might have to make some sort of compromise with society (of the sort Torvald is offering). Such a compromise would require her to surrender part of herself to society, and that Nora is not prepared to do, any more than she was prepared to do it when the question of committing the original forgery came up, not even if preserving total control of her life requires her to turn her back on the man who loves her and whom she loved (and on the passionate sex life they have had together) and on her children (who have never been a significant part of her sense of herself). On this view of the matter, Nora's exit serves no reasonable principle: it is a radical assertion of her own egocentricity, an ultimately selfish act.

The Tragic Conclusion

I would like to suggest that both of the above interpretations of the final scene (and there are others) are, to a certain extent, applicable and that it is a great mistake to insist exclusively upon one or the other--to celebrate Nora as a champion of feminist principles or condemn her as an egotist. The complexity of the emotionally charged ending contains both of these possibilities working in such a strongly ironic combination that the ending resists simple moral formulation.

For Nora's exit is a heroically brave manifestation of her uncompromising integrity, her passionate sense of herself, her absolute refusal to live a life where she is not in control of her actions. There is about her actions something grand, defiant, and totally free, values all the more precious given the infected society she is rejecting. The sight of such a person acting in such a way can scare us, for such action calls into question all the compromises we make in our lives to remain within our own doll houses. Such a vision of freedom challenges our sense of what we have done and are doing with our lives. Those contemporaries who were outraged at the ending of the play were being honest enough about their own feelings. If we are less upset, that may be because we have consoling ways to reassure ourselves, to neutralize the full effect of what she is doing.

[This heroic quality in Nora's character indicates why the alternative "happy" ending Ibsen wrote for the play is so totally false. Technically it resolves the work into a comedy, by having Nora finally learn the importance of compromise for the sake of social bonds. But that shift violates everything that is most interesting and vital about her. There is nothing about this fascinating character which indicates that she would collapse so abjectly and unexpectedly. It's as if Sophocles provided an alternative ending in which Oedipus comes running back full of apologies, eager to make an appointment to see an eye doctor and a family counselor]

At the same time, however, her actions make no rational sense. They violate the strong bonds (and the social responsibilities those bonds bring with them) she has with Torvald and her children (whose major purpose in this play is to underscore this point about Nora). The frozen dark world she is going into is as unforgiving and brutal as the desert Oedipus wanders off into at the end of his tragedy. It is a world which has broken people like Krogstad and Kristine, who were better equipped in some respects than Nora is to cope with its demands. And she is carrying out into that world the most fragile of illusions: the demand for Romantic self-realization.

Hence, the question so many people want resolved ("Is Nora right or wrong to walk out the door at the end?") does not admit of a clear answer. The play insists that such a demand for simple moral clarity in the face of human actions is naive--rather like asking if Oedipus is right or wrong to destroy his own eyesight and become an exile. Nora is both triumphantly right and horribly wrong. She is free, brave, strong, and uncompromisingly herself and, at the same time, socially irresponsible, naive, self-destructive, and destructive of others. We may well want to sort out these contradictions into something more coherent and reassuring, something we can fit into our comfortable conventional moral frameworks (Nora the militant feminist, Nora the selfish home-wrecker), and there are productions which make that easy for us to do. My sense of the text, however, suggests that Ibsen is not going to sort out these contradictions for us, for they lie at the heart of the tragic experience he is inviting us to explore.

Postscript

Those who see Nora's predicament as something primarily imposed on her from the society around her, by oppressive men especially, may well feel that this play has become somewhat dated. After all, we have made so many progressive strides since then, and leaving house and home to forge a self-created life is so much easier in all sorts of ways, for women and for men (some of my students have assumed that Nora can enroll in a self-help group, start studying at a local college, and quickly set herself up in business). Templeton pertinently observes that such an assessment is a great mistake (143), but her observation serves to remind readers that there is still much to do if women are to be truly free of the "chivalric ideal and the notion of a female mind" (145). The struggle must go on.

I, too, think any view that the play has become dated is premature but for a very different reason. For Ibsen's conclusion here, as I have mentioned, is something much more profoundly tragic, pointing, as it does, to the inevitably self-destructive course carved out by the personality (man or woman) who seeks full freedom to answer only to herself. It's true we have enormously eased the corrupting social pressures which enclose us all (at least in most liberal societies in the West) and which quickly condemn those who reject conventional expectations in order to carry out their own entirely self-determined projects. Or at least we like to think we have (perhaps we have only widened the playing field without changing the rules). It's a moot point, however, if anyone can achieve what Nora sets out to attain as she leaves, without finally paying the full price. That, for me, is presented here as a permanent fact of life, not as a temporary historical condition which we must strive to correct. Those who reject the most intimate social bonds in order to be themselves without compromising their integrity, as Nora does, are, like Antigone, Macbeth, Oedipus, and other tragic figures, heading for destruction.

Such a view pays tribute to Nora as a heroic personality, a tragic heroine, and makes this play less a comment on social problems than an insight into our permanent condition, our fate. We, of course, do not like to talk or think about fate, committed as we are to altering as aggressively as we can anything in our life we find limiting or threatening, and thus it is much easier for us to see Nora as a rallying point for social change, a major comic heroine leading us to the barricades. As I mentioned at the start, this is a popular view and there is much in the play to sustain it. But it fails to do justice to my response to Nora, which is not admiration, condemnation, or concern, but awe that she can be so committed to her own vision of things and have the ultimate courage and passionate egocentricity to walk out into that frozen desert alone, abandoning, among other things, love, rather than surrender one jot of what she perceives as her integrity. What she does makes little rational sense to someone, like myself, who defines himself from within the security of the community, but as an assertion of some ultimate individual freedom and heroic greatness, her actions stir one's soul.

Let me, in closing, anticipate one serious objection to the interpretative line I have suggested in this lecture, an objection which is not uncommon among those who sometimes find a tragic view of life suspiciously like an ideological defense of an oppressive status quo. It might be argued that seeing Nora as a tragic heroine (as I have tried to do), setting herself against the fatal conditions imposed by society, is an attempt to neutralize the revolutionary social impact of this play, an attempt to see patriarchal oppression, however unwelcome, as a law of nature, rather than as a corrigible social condition which can and must be altered.

I am alert to this objection, and I take it seriously, for there is ample evidence in history and in fiction (and in interpretation) of a reactionary desire to ascribe injustice to God or fate, rather than to human arrangements, factors which, in fact, can be (and have been) ameliorated. That is, I suppose, one principal reason why ardent reformers and revolutionaries of every persuasion so often have little use for tragedy.

The issue can be summed up in that well-known prayer: "God, give me the patience to accept what I cannot change, the courage to change what I can, and the wisdom to know the difference." Those defending Nora as an archetypal heroine of social reform presumably laud her for seeking to make appropriate (and practical) changes in what she cannot accept; those, like myself, who derive from her a more tragic sense see her as lacking the wisdom to recognize the difference (her "wisdom," if that is the right, word, is anchored firmly in her powerful emotional sense of herself and does not include any intelligent appreciation of other people or the operations of society). This makes her a very different character (much more challenging and mysterious).

The text of the play, as it stands, can, I would suggest, support both possibilities, and others, and the particular emphasis given to this most famous of modern heroines will emerge from the details of the production. As I said at the start, I'm not trying to close off the more popular interpretation, but rather to encourage readers to think about alternative possibilities. What matters, after all, is not that we finally decide what this is all about, but that we promote a rich interpretative conversation which will teach us something about ourselves.

List of Works Cited

Bayley, John. "Pushkin's Shakespearean Lover." New York Review of Books, XLVII.8 (May 11, 2000), 44-47.

Ibsen, Henrik. A Doll's House. In Four Major Plays. Trans. James McFarlane and Jens Arup. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1981.

Marker, Frederick J. and Lise-Lone Marker, Ibsen's Lively Art: A Performance Study of the Major Plays. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989.

Templeton, Joan. Ibsen's Women. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997

[This is the text of a lecture delivered, in part, in Liberal Studies 310 at Malaspina University-College, Nanaimo, BC, Canada. References to Ibsen's text are to the translation by James McFarlane and Jens Arup (Oxford: OUP, 1981). This text is in the public domain, released July 2000]


The Struggle for Identity in A Doll's House

A Doll's House by Henrik Ibsen, is a play that was written ahead of its time. In this play Ibsen tackles women's rights as a matter of importance. Throughout this time period it was neglected. A Doll's House was written during the movement of Naturalism, which commonly reflected society. Ibsen acknowledges the fact that in 19th century life the role of the woman was to stay at home, raise the children and attend to her husband. Nora Helmer is the character in A Doll House who plays the 19th woman and is portrayed as a victim. Michael Meyers said of Henrik Ibsen's plays: "The common denominator in many of Ibsen's dramas is his interest in individuals struggling for and authentic identity in the face of tyrannical social conventions. This conflict often results in his characters' being divided between a sense of duty to themselves and their responsibility to others."(1563) All of the aspects of this quote can be applied to the play A Doll House, in Nora Helmer's character, who throughout much of the play is oppressed, presents an inauthentic identity to the audience and throughout the play attempts to discovery her authentic identity.

The inferior role of Nora is extremely important to her character. Nora is oppressed by a variety of "tyrannical social conventions." Ibsen in his "A Doll's House" depicts the role of women as subordinate in order to emphasize their role in society. Nora is oppressed by the manipulation from Torvald. Torvald has a very typical relationship with society. He is a smug bank manager. With his job arrive many responsibilities. He often treats his wife as if she is one of these responsibilities. Torvald is very authoritative and puts his appearance, both social and physical, ahead of his wife that he supposedly loves. Torvald is a man that is worried about his reputation, and cares little about his wife's feelings.

Nora and Torvald's relationship, on the outside appears to be a happy. Nora is treated like a child in this relationship, but as the play progresses she begins to realize how phony her marriage is. Torvald sees Nora's only role as being the subservient and loving wife. He refers to Nora as "my little squirrel" (p.1565), "my little lark" (p.1565), or "spendthrift"(1565). To him, she is only a possession. Torvald calls Nora by pet-names and speaks down to her because he thinks that she is not intelligent and that she can not think on her own. Whenever she begins to voice an opinion Torvald quickly drops the pet-names and insults her as a women through comments like; "worries that you couldn't possibly help me with," and "Nora, Nora, just like a woman."(1565) Torvald is a typical husband in his society. He denied Nora the right to think and act the way she wished. He required her to act like an imbecile and insisted upon the rightness of his view in all matters.

Nora is a dynamic character in this play. Meyers quote is stating that Ibsen has characters who struggle with their "authentic identity." Nora is clearly an example of one of these characters. She goes through many changes and develops more than any other character. Nora, at the beginning and throughout most of the play, is "inauthentic character." An inauthentic identity is when a person believes their personality is identical to their behavior. However subconsciously they know that it is not true. Nora was inauthentic because her situation was all that she was ever exposed to. She is a grown woman that was pampered all her life by men. Nora was spoon-fed all of her life by her father and husband. She believes in Torvald unquestionably, and has always believed that he was her god or idol. She is the perfect image of a doll wife who revels in the thought of luxuries that she can afford because she is married. She is very flirtatious, and constantly engages in childlike acts of disobedience such as little lies about things such as whether or not she bought macaroons. Nora goes through life with the illusion that everything is perfect.

When a woman of that time loves as Nora thinks she does nothing else matters. She will sacrifice herself for the family. Her purpose in life is to be happy for her husband and children. Nora did believe that she loved Torvald and was happy. She had a passionate and devoted heart that was willing to do almost anything for her husband. At first she did not understand that these feelings were not reciprocated. Torvald does not want a wife who will challenge him with her own thoughts and actions. The final confrontation between the couple involves more oppression by Torvald, but by this time Nora has realized the situation he wishes to maintain. Torvald calls her a "featherbrained woman" (1606) and "blind, incompetent child " (1609) even though she saved his life. Nora expected Torvald to be grateful to her. This does not happen. When Torvald says, "Now you have wrecked all my happiness- ruined my future..."(1606) and "I'm saved!"(1606), Torvald exhibits his self-absorbed nature. The fury Nora saw after Torvald's opening of the letter showed Nora a strange man. Someone she had not been wife to, someone she did not love. Their marriage is fake and mutually beneficial because of their social status. They are not really in love. Nora says, "Yes. I am beginning to understand everything now."(1606) It is now that she can begin to apprehend her forgery was wrong, not because it was illegal, but because it was for an unworthy cause. This is when the readers see Nora embark into her transformation of her authentic character. Nora decides that the only way to fix the situation is to leave Torvald and her children and find herself independently.

Slowly Nora's character is forced to discontinue her inauthentic role of a doll and seek out her individuality, her new authentic identity. She comes to realize that her whole life has been a lie. She lived her life pretending to be the old Nora, and hid the changed woman she had become. The illusion of the old Nora continues well after she becomes a new person. When she realizes that responsibilities for herself are more important, Nora slams the door on not just Torvald but on everything that happened in her past. It took time to evolve into a new person, but after she did she became a person who could not stand to be oppressed by Torvald any longer. Nora says, "I've been your wife-doll here, just as at home I was Papa's doll-child."(1608) Ibsen uses the idea of a "doll" because a doll always maintains the same look, no matter what the situation. A doll must do whatever the controller has them do. Dolls are silent and never express opinions or actually accomplish anything without the aid of others. This doll is Nora's inauthentic identity.

Her authentic identity is in the process of being built while Torvald calls Nora his "little lark", his "little squirrel", and a child. Nora grows even stronger. It is complete and presented to the readers when Nora when she stands up to Torvald and does the opposite of what he wants. Nora tells Helmer at the end of the play that, "I have to try to educate myself. You can't help me with that. I've got to do it alone. And that's why I'm leaving you now" (1609). Nora tells Helmer, " . . . I'm a human being, no less than you-or anyway, I ought to try to become one." (1609) She does not tolerate Torvald's condescending tone or allow him to manipulate her any longer. Nora must follow her own convictions now and decide for herself what her life will be in the future. Her rebirth has led to her own independence. Another man will never again control her and she is now free of her controlling husband.

In conclusion Michael Meyers quote "The common denominator in many of Ibsen's dramas is his interest in individuals struggling for and authentic identity in the face of tyrannical social conventions. This conflict often results in his characters' being divided between a sense of duty to themselves and their responsibility to others." is applicable to Nora in A Doll House. Nora Helmer is a character struggling to realize her authentic identity. Her husband Torvald has always established her identity. Throughout the play Torvald was condescending towards Nora and forced her to act and look in a way that pleased him. Nora allowed Torvald to play dress up with her and no matter what the situation Nora has to consistently remain Torvald's quiet, happy, little doll. Nora ends her doll life by leaving her doll house to learn and explore on her own. She is no longer a doll under the control of her master