The Façade of Beauty, Essay Example

The Façade of Beauty in the Ibsen’s Doll’s House

In Henrik Ibsen’s brilliant domestic drama, A Doll’s House, it is obvious from the very first scene that Torvald Helming, Nora’s husband, is obsessed with the outward appearance or façade of beauty – and not just Nora’s beauty, but the beauty of their marriage, their life together. As the play progresses and their marriage begins to unravel, Torvald is so oblivious to this that he does not even realize that their marriage is in trouble until the end of the play when Nora leaves him. The reason he is so oblivious is, because he is so taken with the appearance of his life and spouse that he cannot really seeNora or their marriage in reality. Throughout the play this fixation of his reveals him for what he truly is: domineering, possessive, and more concerned with appearance than with substance.  This paper goes through the play act by act to show the ways in which Torvald’s obsession (and oblivion) ultimately lead to the unravelling of the life he had so hoped to have for himself.

Act one: the gap between beauty and reality

The very beginning of A Doll’s House sets the stage for the exploration of Torvald’s fixation with beauty. The audience sees a slice of happy, prosperous Victorian life in the opening scenes of this play: Nora, beautiful and childlike, singing to herself and (seemingly) without a care in the world as she makes the final preparations for Christmas, and Torvald, the beneficent dictator of his home, dispensing money (somewhat grudgingly) to his little wife and chiding her for being so air-headed.  Torvald sententiously states that “There can be no freedom or beauty about a home that depends on borrowing and debt” (Ibsen 1). This is the first commentary on the theme of beauty, and here begins a thread which runs throughout the entire length of the play.

Almost immediately after this, however, the audience sees that there is a gap between Torvald’s vision of beauty and domestic bliss and the reality which actually surrounds him.  When Nora’s old friend, Mrs. Linde, comes to visit, she reveals to her that she has secretly borrowed money, to help Torvald recover from a recent illness, and in doing so, she reveals that she is well aware of Torvald’s preoccupation with beauty: she answers Mrs. Linde’s question about telling her husband about the loan by saying, “Yes, someday, perhaps, after many years, when I am no longer as nice-looking as I am now….I mean, of course, when Torvald is no longer as devoted to me as he is now, when my dancing and dressing-up and reciting have palled on him” (Ibsen 5). In saying this, Nora is revealing that on some level, she is aware that their marriage is a shallow one, partly at least based on her looks, though it is not until the end of the play that she understands the implications of that.   At this point, she is content to “keep the house beautifully and have everything just as Torvald likes” (Ibsen 6), for she also is aware that it is not just her but the house that must be kept to Torvald’s standards.

As Act I progresses, the more sinister side of this dynamic between husband and wife is revealed: it is shown that Nora borrowed the money needed for Torvald’s convalescence from a shady character named Krogstad, who is a subordinate member of Torvald’s bank. He now wants Nora to use her influence on her husband to secure his position there.  Krogstad, who knew Torvald when they were at school together, seems also aware of Torvald’s weakness of beauty, because he tells Nora, “I don’t suppose he is more unassailable than other husbands,” (Ibsen 9), meaning that Torvald is susceptible to Nora and to doing what she wants in part because of Nora’s looks.

Nora firmly denies this, but later in the Act, when she and her husband are disagreeing about Krogstad and his future at the bank, Nora distracts him from this subject by pretending to defer to his tastes for the upcoming dance, “There is on one has such good taste as you…Torvald, couldn’t you take me in hand and decide what I shall go as, and what sort of dress I shall wear?” (Ibsen 11). The ploy works for the moment, but these tensions set the scene for the progressive worsening of their marital situation in Act II.

Act two: beauty unraveling

Act II begins, again, on the theme of beauty and appearances, with Nora’s maid discussing the outfit for the fancy dress ball.  Nora, already revealing her need to break free from the confines of the beauty that Torvald has placed upon her, spits out that, “I should like to tear it into a hundred thousand pieces” (Ibsen 13).  Indeed, the outfit of the Italian fisher-girl is ripped: Nora comments that “Torvald had it made for me, but now it is all so torn” (Ibsen 13) and this costume becomes a metaphor for a marriage that also is coming apart at the seams.  Nora, under tremendous pressure from Krogstad to act so that he will not tell her husband about the borrowed money, is beginning to look at Torvald’s constructions of beauty and feel the restriction of it.

Still, she tries at least in the beginning of this act to still keep up the appearances of beauty that Torvald has set up for their married life.  She comments that, “Torvald does understand how to make a house dainty and attractive” (Ibsen 13) but does understand even so that while Torvald likes beauty, he does not want to see the effort that goes into making this beauty possible, which is why, as Nora tells Mrs. Linde when they are working on her outfit, “Torvald can’t bear to see dress-making going on” (Ibsen 14).

However, in spite of the fact that she is becoming more and more aware of how shallow their married life is because of Torvald’s fixation with beauty and appearance, Nora still tries to use his obsession to manipulate her husband into getting what she wants.  Desperate for Krogstad to be able to secure his post so that he will not reveal to Torvald what Nora has done to borrow the money, she tells Torvald that if Krogstad gets what he wants then, “I would play the fairy and dance for you in the moonlight” (Ibsen 15).  There is a very different feel to Nora’s behavior now: at the beginning of the play, her singing and dancing and playing have more of a childish air to them: now she is merely playing at these conventions, but underneath it all is in deadly earnest as she fights to keep her home and marriage intact.

Torvald is completely oblivious to Nora’s feelings of desperation; he is still only seeing the Nora that he wants to see, and not Nora as she really is.  He refuses to listen to her about letting Krogstad keep his position with the bank.  He goes so far as to send the letter of dismissal to Krogstad right in front of Nora (thus guaranteeing that Krogstad will let Torvald know of Nora’s loan) and then dismissed her lightly: “Now you must go and play though the Tarantella and practice your tambourine” (Ibsen 16). In other words, he wants her to continue to be the light-hearted, doll-like creature that he has imagined for himself, and not a person in her own right, with her own opinions and feelings.  He is completely unaware of Nora’s anxiety and desperation in this scene: he is not being deliberately hurtful here, but merely oblivious of who Nora is and what she is going through.

Nora, increasingly panicked, still tries – almost hysterically at times – to shore up the crumbling constructs of beauty that Torvald has made for them both: when she is in desperate conversation with Mrs. Linde about trying to convince Krogstad to do the right thing, Torvald blunders in and knocks on the door, and wants to know, “Are you trying on your dress?” (Ibsen 19) and Nora, trying to keep up the appearances, tells him through the door, “I look so nice, Torvald” (Ibsen 19).

Again, the audience sees Nora using her beauty (and Torvald’s preoccupation with it) to her advantage when, as Mrs. Linde leaves to plead Nora’s case with Krogstad, she distracts Torvald into helping her with her dance, “I can’t get on a bit without you to help me. I have absolutely forgotten the whole thing” (Ibsen 20).  There is a dark desperation in the way Nora dances while her life hangs upon what conspires between Mrs. Linde and Krogstad.  Torvald, in what is perhaps his only flash of intuition in the entire play, tells Nora as the second act ends, “You are dancing as if your life depended on it” (Ibsen 21).

Act three: the destruction of Torvalds constructs of beauty

The tension at the beginning of the Act III is palpable: Nora and Torvald are at the dance upstairs, while Krogstad meets with Mrs. Linde downstairs.  The meeting goes well for both of them: Mrs. Linde agrees to go away with Krogstad (picking up where they left off in the past) and Krogstad writes a second letter to Torvald to release Nora of her bond.  Torvald brings Nora down after the dance, positively gloating about her and telling Mrs. Linde, “The chief thing is, she had made a success – she had made a tremendous success!  Do you think I was going to let her remain there after that and spoil the affect?” (Ibsen 23).  This, more than perhaps any passage in the play, shows his possessive, domineering but also completely oblivious attitude towards his wife.

Mrs. Linde tells Nora that Torvald will receive the letter about her loan, even though Krogstad no longer intends any sort of blackmail, and Nora is crushed as she sees the end of her marriage upon her.   Torvald, meanwhile, has turned his gloat into a sexual advance after Mrs. Linde leaves, “I imagine you are my young bride and that we have just come from the wedding, and I am bringing you for the first time into our home – to be alone with you for the first time….When I watched the seductive figures of the Tarantella, my blood was on fire” (Ibsen 25).  But Nora is saved from what easily could have been a scene of marital rape by the appearance of Rank and then by Torvald’s reading of Krogstad’s first letter.

Torvald is vicious when he thinks that Nora has put them in danger of being under Krogstad’s thumb: he calls her a “miserable creature” (Ibsen 29) and bewails the “ugliness of it all” (Ibsen, 29). Even so, though, he is determined to hang on to what he can of the constructs of domestic beauty he has made for himself, even if it is a lie, and tells Nora, “…it must appear as if everything between us was just as before…all that concerns us is to save the remains, the fragments, the appearance” (Ibsen 30).  His attitude changes when the second letter arrives from Krogstad, releasing Nora from her bond, but by then it is too late, and Nora is already in the process of leaving him.  Even at the end, he does not really understand why the marriage is falling apart, and asks Nora, “What did I do to forfeit your love?” (Ibsen 31).

Conclusion

Thus, as the play progresses, audiences of A Doll’s House watch as Torvald’s preoccupation with beauty – both Nora’s beauty and the beauty of the life he feels he has made for himself – lead to the destruction of the things he wants to hold onto most.  He is a man whose possessive, dominating version of love is only equaled by his obliviousness to his wife, and that is shown clearly from the first scene of this play to the last.

Works Cited

Ibsen, H.  A Doll’s House.  New York, NY: Dover Publications. 1992. Print.