Shocking in 1879, and Now

When Henrik Ibsen’s play “A Doll’s House” opened in 1879 at the Royal Theater in Copenhagen, it was an instant success — and an outrage to many. The story of Nora, a woman who walks out on her husband and three children, was considered scandalous in a country in which marriage was held as sacred, and one that held women to exacting strictures.

A new production of “A Doll’s House” opened recently in New York on Broadway in which the characters remain largely the same and the setting has not been updated. The date 1879 appears on the rear wall of an almost entirely bare stage before fading soon after the play begins, prompting the audience to wonder: Are we still watching events in 1879, and if so, why do they feel so familiar in 2023?

Because here we are still. Still asking why women’s rights, when not outright ignored, are often an afterthought. Still asking why society is so rigid in its expectations of women. What was shocking about Ibsen’s play in 1879 was that Nora’s act was shocking for its time. What is shocking now is that it is still so shocking.

The current adaptation, by the playwright Amy Herzog, stars the actress Jessica Chastain as Nora. When the play opens, Nora is thrilled that her husband, Torvald, is being promoted at his bank. Behind Torvald’s back, she has taken an illegal loan using her father’s forged signature as security — a married woman was unable to conduct such transactions in Norway at that time without her husband’s or father’s permission. Now she can repay the balance and her secret will remain safe.

But when the lender threatens to expose the truth to her husband unless she does him a favor against her husband’s will, Nora is in a bind. Should she tell her husband or let her deception be exposed — and either way, how will they weather the threat to their future as a family?

When Ibsen wrote “A Doll’s House,” women’s rights in Norway, as in most other parts of Europe, were socially, culturally and legally restricted by both church and state. Nora’s decision — even after her secret is exposed and the loan forgiven — to leave her husband and children in favor of independence was viewed as a radical feminist statement at the time.

In the new “A Doll’s House,” the emphasis shifts away from the broader social canvas, creating a more intimate psychological portrait. On a stage devoid of props and other signifiers of time, place and social status, with the roles of the children disembodied into offstage voices, Nora’s battle becomes largely internal. We are meant to keep our eyes on her, and for good reason.

Chastain’s Nora has not only let herself be defined by society; she has also internalized those limitations. She is pliable, cheerful, playful on command, a birdie who actually opens the play chirping.

“Nora has stepped in the cage to gain what little power she has,” Chastain said in an interview, explaining that Nora has allowed herself to become small and weak. “That’s kind of bred into us. But that’s part of how we are helping it continue, women not being seen as equal. We’re playing a part so we’re palatable enough, so that people hopefully will listen to us.”

In other words, women sometimes adopt gender stereotypes, consciously or unconsciously, to their advantage. This is a more nuanced view of “A Doll’s House.” Rather than being a passive victim who shifts dramatically toward independence in the final scene, Nora has been playing a subtle but active role all along. It is her motivations and goals that change. She leaves when Torvald’s actions, at the end of the play, reveal him to be anything but the loyal and devoted husband she took him to be — when he fails to play along in the role she expected of him.

It is worth contrasting this 2023 Nora with Janet McTeer’s Tony Award-winning version in the 1997 Broadway production. Whereas Chastain’s Nora is driven inward, a contained presence who is essentially confined to a chair throughout the play, the 185-centimeter-tall McTeer exuded manic energy, all limbs and irrepressible sexuality. McTeer’s Nora was literally too big for her space. When her combustible power was finally realized, it felt like destiny, both a liberation and a devastation.

Perhaps we always get a “Doll’s House” for our moment. In the exuberance and optimism of 1997, as third-wave feminism gathered steam in response to a backlash against the women’s movement, women’s rights felt owed and overdue — women were ready to unleash, as McTeer’s performance suggested. In a divisive 2023, with the status of women at an ebb and longstanding rights having recently been trampled on, the mood is bleaker. It feels harder to neatly assign or absolve blame for the collective failure to recognize women in their full humanity. Chastain’s Nora captures these complexities.

We can only hope that the next time a major revival of the play opens in America, its story will be purely historical, a curious relic of a bygone era.