Anima woman in A Doll’s House by Henrik Ibsen
The game a doll house labeled Norwegian Henrik Ibsen as the author of the scandal in 1879, when the play was performed. In the women’s rights debate that raged around the world, Ibsen faced a storm of protest, especially from the patriarchal church, against a woman leaving her husband at the end of the play. Unaware of Jung’s theories of the anima and animus, Ibsen created a protagonist who begins as an anima woman who tries to represent her husband Torvald’s ideal woman but ultimately rejects this personality and leaves him in search of a new life. self-realization. .
Father son
In Act I, Nora Helmer eats macaroons on the sly and must lie about it for fear of retaliation from her husband Torvald for eating sweets. Hearing her return from shopping, he calls out, “Is that my little lark chirping out there?…Is that my little squirrel hurrying?…Has my little spendthrift been wasting money again?” In three short pages of the script, the reader quickly deduces the nature of the relationship between Nora and Torvald. There is a sweet outer layer to Nora’s darker censorship that lies just slightly below the surface of her words. It is a father-son arrangement based on Torvald’s need for control over his wife and his own image of her, both of which are illusory, creating the tension of uncertainty about Nora’s choices.
Nora as the loyal Ariadne
An old friend from school, Mrs. Christine Linde, comes to visit Nora. Their conversation allows them to fill in the ten-year news gap, including Nora’s need to take up sewing to make ends meet and Torvald’s exhaustion and illness which necessitated a recovery period in Italy, a tremendous expense that Nora explains that it came from her father. . Torvald recovered and returned to Norway where he has just received a promotion at the bank and the promise of a secure future for his family. This situation is also an illusion, because although Torvald has recovered, his debt is not to his father, who has since died, but to his wife, who secretly borrowed the large sum from a disreputable moneylender to pay for their family expenses. Recovery.
the tangled web
In Act II, the lives of the characters have become intertwined. Nora offers to help the widowed Mrs. Linde by telling her husband about her friend’s accounting skills, which convinces Torvald to give her a position at the bank recently made available by the firing of Nils Krogstad, the Nora Helmer’s secret loan shark. The deception has indeed led to a tangled web, but it will be the necessary test of the anima for Nora and Torvald. When Krogstad is fired, he will break the news of the scandalous loan, an announcement that Torvald’s ego will not survive. In fact, Krogstad sends Torvald the note requesting the balance of the loan, and the letter remains intact in the box. While Nora and Torvald are upstairs at a Christmas celebration, Christine and Krogstad run into each other and reveal their old love story. Christine’s good fortune leads her to offer Krogstad the security of marriage, and he accepts her offer, while also rescinding Nora’s loan.
Torvaldo’s Control
In Act III, Torvald and Nora are alone. He calls her his “fascinating and charming little darling… all the beauty that is mine, all mine… more captivating than ever… I want to be with you, my dear wife. I have often wished that you could be threatened by some great danger, so that I could risk my blood and everything for you.” Once she has read the letter that reveals Nora’s loan dilemma, her words quickly change to “miserable, hypocritical, lying, criminal creature, the unspeakable ugliness of it, no religion, no morality, no sense of duty… Now you have destroyed my happiness… ruined my future… I must sink to such miserable depths because of a thoughtless woman!” Torvaldo’s soul draws on all the images he knows as a woman: Aphrodite the beautiful, Ariadne the loyal, Persephone the complacent, Pygmalion’s Galatea, the woman he created. She is all woman in her unconscious that will allow him to mold and control her.
A clear projection of Anima
After his accusatory tirade, he calmly tells Nora, “It must seem like everything between us was the same as before… You’ll still stay in my house… but I won’t let you raise the children; I don’t dare trust them. .. From this moment happiness is not the issue, the only thing that concerns us is to save the remains, the fragments, the appearance-” Suddenly the doorbell rings; a letter has arrived for Nora, which Torvald insists on reading first. It is news from Krogstad that he has returned their bond, saving Nora and Torvald from embarrassment. Before long, Torvald forgives her wife for her inability to “understand how to act on her behalf with her responsibility” and insists that she lean on him, who will advise and guide her through helplessness. feminine of her He has wide wings to shelter her “frightened little songbird” from her and will protect her “like a hunted dove”. As Nora dresses to leave him, although he doesn’t know it, he tells her that she has given him a new life, Galatea, and that she has become his archetypal wife and daughter. “So you will be to me after this, my scared and helpless little darling.”
discard the anima
Nora, with each passing moment, silently looks inward, examining the new undiscovered woman within her and discarding the anima projection she had endured for eight years in their marriage. Her face cold and steady, she sits Torvald down as he tells her for the first time that they have never had a serious conversation as husband and wife. She is tired of being the girl-doll to her daddy and now to her husband, who must have the same opinions and perform tricks for the men in her life. Her marriage and home have been nothing more than a doll’s house, and having been trained to be manipulated according to Torvald’s wishes, she is also unfit to be a mother. She must fend for herself and try to educate herself, because the understanding of self is as sacred a duty as that of her wife and mother. Torvald defies Nora’s expectation that he could possibly sacrifice her honor for her, even as he fantasizes about spilling her blood for her, telling her that no man would do that. Her insightful response is, “It’s something hundreds of thousands of women have done.” The door closes behind her and she leaves. The play has ended with Torvaldo confused and dazed. Nora has killed Torvald’s symbolic lover, the anima projection that enslaved her, and now she is free to discover the person she is and can become.
The anima cycle
Perpetual in its movement, the projection of the anima, the images a man unconsciously collects of the ideal woman, is reinforced by the woman agreeing to mirror those behaviors and mold herself accordingly to fit the projection. In each story, the female lead strives to conform to the ideal of her husband at the time, and little by little she begins to think like him. Her way becomes her way; her preferences become hers. In two other anima women works, Katherine Anne Porter’s short story “Maria Concepcion” and Fitzgerald’s novel The Great Gatsby, marriages remain intact only because wives consent to renounce themselves. In Ibsen’s work the doll houseNora must sacrifice her old life to be reborn as a true woman.
Please see the following works:
Jung, C.G. The basic writings of CG Jung. Trans. Helmet FR.FC. Ed. Violeta S. de Laszlo. Bollingen series. Princeton: Princeton UP, 1990.
Ibsen, Henrik. a doll house. Girard, Kansas: Haldeman-Julius Company,