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Sophocles, Hegel and Ibsen

A Perspective on A Doll’s House, Ghosts and An Enemy of the People
by Helge Salemonsen

VI. A Doll’s House

In a note for A Doll’s House Ibsen writes:

There are two kinds of spiritual laws, two kinds of conscience, one in a man and a completely different one in a woman. They do not understand each other; but in reality women are judged by the law of men, as if she wasn’t a woman but a man. (HU VIII: 368)

      With these words Ibsen could just as fittingly have been describing Sophocles’ Antigone. Had I not known better, I could have believed that this was Hegel’s note to the first subsection of the sixth chapter in the Phenomenology: a. The ethical world; Human and Divine Law; Man and Woman. But it is not. It is Ibsen’s commentary on A Doll’s House.

      Nora Helmer has committed forgery, signed a debt certificate in her father’s name, as a security guarantee for a loan. The forgery is revealed. Lawyer Krogstad is fairly sure he can recognise her handwriting, and awkwardly enough Nora has dated the document October 2nd which is three days after her father’s death.

      Nora has undoubtedly broken society’s law. And now Krogstad wants to use this information as blackmail to keep his position in the bank, since Torvald Helmer has given out that Krogstad will be dismissed as soon as Helmer enters the office as the new bank manager. Krogstad threatens to reveal the fraud if Nora does not make sure that her husband withdraws the decision about dismissal. But Helmer does not waver, despite Nora’s persistent attempts. The fraud is revealed, and Helmer becomes furious, offended not only on his own, but on society’s behalf: Nora is an offender, a lawbreaker, a criminal:

a hypocrite, a liar, - even worse, a criminal! There’s so much ugliness at the bottom of all this – indescribable ugliness! Uccch!

      Take note of Helmer’s career. Before he married he worked as a government representative in a ministry, says Nora. As he is an educated lawyer, we will assume that since then he has had his own private practice. Now he is to assume the position as a bank manager. In the different stages of his life, Helmer has taken part in the political, administrative, and juridical system, and now in a powerful financial institution. He is an explicit expression of what Hegel defined as The Human Law, society’s law, the male law.

       I will briefly go into the reasons for Nora’s little crime. The family’s economical situation had been difficult during the first years after the wedding. At the same time Helmer got seriously ill and the doctor stated that only an extended vacation in a warmer climate could save him. This was the reason for Nora’s taking the loan, financing a health-saving journey to Italy. Helmer knows nothing about this, since Nora had given the impression that it was for her sake that they were making this journey, and that it was Nora’s father who had financed the stay. Helmer got well and in the following years, Nora secretly used her housekeeping money and incomes from copying work to pay back the loan in instalments with interest.

      Everything pointed to the fact that her father would have gladly given his signature, stating that he owed the debt. But the father was dying, and Nora did not want to bother him with financial problems on his deathbed: “If I were to have asked him for his signature than I would also have to tell him what the money was for. I couldn’t tell him, him being so ill, that my husband’s life was in danger. That was impossible.”

      Nora is obviously proud of what she has accomplished. She has acted out of obligation and love for her husband and her father. It never occurred to her that her little forgery could mean breaking the law. She had done what she did out of care for her loved ones, a care that at all times has been seen as a woman’s responsibility and obligation, as it was also Antigone’s responsibility and obligation to give her brother a worthy funeral, to ease his journey to the underworld. Helmer, who identifies himself with the society’s law, and who identifies morality with law-abidingness, reproaches Nora for lack of morals:

Nora: Well, Torvald, it’s not easy to answer that. I really don’t know. I’m actually quite confused about these things. I only know that my ideas are totally different from yours. I find out that the law is not what I thought it was – but I can’t get it into my head that the law is right. A woman has no right to spare her dying father’s feelings, or save her husband’s life! I just can’t believe these things.

Helmer is outraged over Nora’s naiveté:

Helmer: You’re talking like a child. You don’t understand the society that you live in.
Nora: No, I don’t. But now I’m going to find out for myself. I’ve got to figure out who’s right – the society or me.

      As with Antigone we see her in conflict between two ethical expectations, which are justified by tradition, and that are connected to the sexes’ different foundation in the ethical world, the woman as the family’s servant, the man as an active member of society. Nora identifies her moral sense with care for her family’s well-being. For Helmer, morality is identical with obedience, obedience to the institutions of society, church and state: “Have you not in these questions an unflinching tutor? Have you not religion.” And when something wrong has been done, the criteria for his self-respect are based only on public opinion. When Krogstad withdraws the threat of a public scandal, Helmer is willing to continue the marriage as if nothing had happened. But it is too late. It has been proven that public opinion is more important to him than concern for the woman who was willing to sacrifice everything, her life and her honour:

Helmer: I’d work for you night and day, Nora – gladly – suffer and sacrifice for your sake. But no one gives up his honour even for the one he loves.
Nora: That’s exactly what millions of women have done.

      It is worth noticing that when Nora leaves to find out about herself and the society, it is to her childhood home she goes first, to her deceased father’s house. Why? Because she has gained insight into the ghostly dimension that Mrs Alving talks about; what we inherit from our father and mother, “all kinds of dead, outdated opinions and all kinds of dead beliefs and so on and so forth, all of which transcends and repeats itself from generation to generation. This is what she has to sort out. What is it that constitutes our self-image, our identity as a child, as a woman, as a man, or as a human being in the times we live?  The traditional roles of women and men are identities which are inherited, which we have to work on and develop sovereignty over:

Nora: It’s a fact, Torvald. When I was home with Papa, he told me all his opinions; so of course I had the same opinions. And if I had any others, I kept them hidden, because he wouldn’t have liked that. Then I came to your house. Helmer: What kind of way is that to describe our marriage? Nora (Undisturbed.):I mean, I went from Papa’s hands into yours. You set up everything according to your taste; so of course I had the same taste.

      When Nora leaves her husband and children, she is of course no less aware than the outstanding Mr Willoch(6) that the choice entails loss. She knows that what she does has consequences, especially for her children. This, her conscience will remind her of. On the other hand, it would also entail consequences and loss if she stayed. Her guilt would have reminded her of this as well:

Helmer: It’s grotesque! You’re turning your back on your most sacred duties! Nora: What do you think those are – my most sacred duties? Helmer: I have to tell you? Aren’t they to your husband and children? Nora: I have other duties, equally sacred. Helmer: No, you don’t! Like what? Nora: Duties to myself.

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6 - Kåre Willoch: former Norwegian Prime Minister; has recently written and presented an alternative ending of A Doll’s House.