Doll's House (Ibsen)

Book Reviews
A Doll's House still has the force of social truth and the force of art.
Margo Jefferson - New York Times (Nov. 24, 2003)


Happiness [for Nora] lies elsewhere. So out the door she goes. Slam, bang, curtain down. It's one of drama's most stunning endings; even today it still shocks—even when you know it's coming. Read more...
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[E]very time I read the play I find myself judging Nora with less and less sympathy. The play is, as is frequently pointed out, flawlessly constructed—there is not a wasted word, and every scene tightens the noose around Nora's neck. There is a tragic inevitability to the way in which her "crime" is brought into the open. But with the same momentum she displays a silliness and insensitivity that are also part of her downfall. At the beginning she is lying to Torvald about the macaroons he has forbidden and she has concealed. This could be comic but is part of a tissue of lies and evasions that make up her life. Whether these lies are a function of social pressures or Nora's own nature is left to us to determine.
A.S. Byatt - Guardian (UK - May 1, 2009)


Nora's departure is no claptrap "Farewell for ever," but a journey in search of self-respect and apprenticeship to life. Yet there is an underlying solemnity caused by a fact that that popular instinct has divined: to wit, that Nora's revolt is the end of a chapter of human history. The slam of the door behind her is more momentous than the cannon of Waterloo or Sedan, because when she comes back, it will not be to the old home; for when the patriarch no longer rules, and the "breadwinner" acknowledges his dependence, there is an end of the old order.
George Bernard Shaw - Saturday Review (May 5, 1897)


[A Doll's House is about] the need of every individual to find out the kind of person he or she really is and to strive to become that person.
Michael Meyer - translator, biographer, dramatist (1921-2000)


That slammed door reverberated across the roof of the world.
James Huneker - American literary critic (1857-1921)