A Doll's House by Henrik Ibsen

Published 1879 · 26,370 words · about 2 hours at an average pace · Drama

How hard is A Doll's House to read?

A Doll's House scores 51 out of 100 for difficulty on ReadingRate, making it quite demanding. The score is a weighted composite of nine measures: four of how hard the prose is to parse, five of how hard the meaning is to extract.

Vocabulary: 45 out of 100
Realistic dialogue in contemporary setting; accessible language.
Sentence structure: 40 out of 100
Prose dialogue designed to sound natural; sentences are simple.
Abstraction: 55 out of 100
Social critique emerges through specific situation; themes are shown, not argued.
Information density: 55 out of 100
Well-made play structure plants information efficiently.
Narrative indirection: 50 out of 100
Secrets are revealed progressively; the ending's meaning is debated.
Symbolic density: 55 out of 100
The tarantella, the Christmas tree, the doll imagery—symbolic layer beneath realism.
Ironic distance: 55 out of 100
The audience sees Torvald's failures before Nora does; gentle dramatic irony.
Resolution withholding: 65 out of 100
Nora leaves; what happens next is not shown; the slamming door ends, not resolves.
Structural complexity: 40 out of 100
Three acts, single set, classical unities; well-made play structure.

How A Doll's House is regarded

A Doll's House holds a literary regard score of 89 out of 100, weighing its place in the canon, its critical reception, its influence on other writers, and the standing of its author. Regard is measured separately from difficulty: a demanding book is not necessarily an admired one.

Where A Doll's House sits in Northrop Frye's Anatomy of Criticism

Placed by a full reading of the text (54 passages), not from reputation. Each verdict quotes the passage that earned it. On the axis from myth to irony, A Doll's House scores 68 out of 100. A second mythos, comedy, pulls at it with a weight of 0.3. About the map of stories.

Mode: Low Mimetic
I have been your doll-wife, just as at home I was papa's doll-child; and here the children have been my dolls.
Symbol: Formal
Torvald, there is no hope for us now!
Mythos: Ironic Tragedy (Winter Irony Phase 4) (irony iv)
Tonight, when the wonderful thing did not happen; then I saw you were not the man I had thought you were.
Genre: Drama
[THE SAME SCENE.—The table has been placed in the middle of the stage, with chairs around it. A lamp is burning on the table.

Where the story of A Doll's House takes place

  • A Norwegian town, 1879, the main setting
  • Helmer apartment, a Scandinavian town, Christmas 1870s (1879)

5 things that are true of A Doll's House, with the passage for each

  1. Nora borrowed two hundred and fifty pounds from Krogstad.

    you came to me to borrow two hundred and fifty pounds.

  2. Nora forged her dead father's signature on a bond, dated three days after he died, to borrow money for a trip to save Torvald's life.

    your father signed this bond three days after his death.

  3. Doctor Rank announces his own approaching death by dropping visiting cards with black crosses into the letter-box.

    There is a black cross over the name. Look there—what an uncomfortable idea! It looks as if he were announcing his own death.

  4. Torvald tears up the returned bond and burns it in the stove after Krogstad sends it back.

    Tears up the bond and both letters, throws them all into the stove, and watches them burn.

  5. Nora returns her wedding ring to Torvald and tells him she will not see the children.

    See, here is your ring back. Give me mine.

Scenes in A Doll's House that Frye would name

15 sightings of Frye's terms in the text. The strongest:

Anagnorisis, untitled
it dawned upon me that for eight years I had been living here with a strange man, and had borne him three children Nora's recognition of who Torvald is, and of her own life, pivots the whole play.
Hamartia, untitled
No, it was not. It was I that wrote papa's name. The forgery, an act of love, is the fatal misstep that brings the structure down.
Agon, untitled
Have you forgotten that it is I who have the keeping of your reputation? Krogstad and Nora fight a contest of wills over the letter, the central agon of the plot.
Pharmakos, untitled
Miserable creature—what have you done? Nora is made the household's scapegoat, expelled in Torvald's rage as a criminal who has polluted the home.
Senex iratus, untitled
No debt, no borrowing. There can be no freedom or beauty about a home life that depends on borrowing and debt. Torvald is the blocking authority, a moralizing husband-father figure standing against Nora's desires.
Alazon, untitled
Do you suppose I am going to make myself ridiculous before my whole staff, to let people think that I am a man to be swayed by all sorts of outside influence? Torvald is the self-satisfied braggart of rectitude and reputation who is exposed as hollow.

Books that share these scenes with A Doll's House

About the author

Henrik Ibsen