A Doll's House

One theme that stood out to me, throughout the play, was selfishness. Nora showed a selfish side when Mrs. Linde (Kristine) visited. Kristine was telling Nora about how she is a widow, who is sad she never had children, and is currently struggling to make ends meet; and even in Kristine’s state, Nora cannot help but tell Kristine about how happy she is. During this conversation, Nora says a line that reads ironically; “No, you begin. Today I don’t want to be selfish. I want to think only of you today. But there is something I must tell you. Did you hear the wonderful luck we had recently?” (page 689). Then, Nora goes on to tell Kristine about how great her new life will be now that her husband is a bank manager.

Helmer (Torvald) shows selfishness as he learns that Nora had forged her father’s signature to take out a loan. Instead of thinking about Nora’s intentions to do anything she can to save Torvald’s life, he can only respond harshly saying, “now you’ve wrecked all my happiness—ruined my whole future” (page 710). This is an incredulous statement considering his future would not exist if she would not have borrowed the money that enabled her to save his life. We also observe a selfish thought from Torvald, when he finds out that Dr. Rank is dying, he says that perhaps it is for the best; as now Nora and Torvald will need to depend on each other for care and support. I understand he is trying to “look at the bright side”, but I think this time could be better served to simply honor and reflect on the life of his “dear friend”.

There was also a theme of secrets and the revealing of secrets. We find out quickly that Nora has been keeping a secret from her own husband, which is not officially revealed until the story reaches its climax. This is the same secret that Krogstad is eager to reveal in hopes that the information will help him keep his position at the bank. I think this secret adds to the suspense as we anticipate how Torvald will respond to this information. We also find that Dr. Rank is harboring two secrets of his own; he is deathly ill, and he has grown affectionate for Nora. This adds a small twist to the story, and by the responses of the characters, we can continue to understand the characters. For instance, as we see that Nora is appalled by Dr. Rank's profession of love, we see a small amount of depth to her character as she carries, at least some, integrity. 

I could see this play being fairly easy to execute, simply because there are no extravagant scenes. However, the toughest part for the actors, would be the large amounts of dialogue they would need to memorize. I could potentially see it being important for Nora and Torvald to have chemistry, because the characters use so many pet names for each other, which could often be difficult to deliver naturally. Other than that, the play mostly boils down to the acting and exchanges between characters.