I cannot believe that Ibsen changed the end of the end of A Doll’s House for its production in Germany! What happened to [t]hat slammed door [that] reverberated across the roof of the world? Ibsen agreed to make Nora go back to her children? Shocking!
Almost as bad as Shaw making Eliza go to Mr. Higgins at the end of My Fair Lady, thereby changing the end of Pygmalion. But then, Shaw did not believe that he was giving the movie-watching public a happy ending. What kind of happy conclusion had a young girl going back to a cynical, selfish, middle-aged man?
I remember how much of an impact A Doll’s House made on me the first time I read it. For me, it was far more potent than An Enemy of the People, the text we had to study. It made me think about women, family, mother, role-playing….
I later read a beautiful tongue-in-cheek piece about how linking the woman question with A Doll’s House was all fiddle-daddle, how Ibsen did not stoop to issues, but was a poet of the truth of the human soul. How, like angels, Nora had no sex.
None of that matters. My mind still reels at the idea of Nora – feminist or individualist, angel or woman – going back to being a plaything.
Ibsen regretted it. That amends things, just a bit.
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