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Support the Monkey! Tell All your Friends and Teachers |
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Support the Monkey! Tell All your Friends and Teachers |
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Torvald is not so much in love with me as he is now,” she may tell him the great secret of how she saved his life. It is notable throughout that neither Helmer’s aestheticism nor the sensual element in his relation to Nora is nearly so much emphasised as in the completed play; while Nora’s tendency to small fibbing-that vice of the unfree-is almost an afterthought. In the first appearance of Krogstad, and the indication of his old acquaintance with Mrs. Linden, many small adjustments have been made, all strikingly for the better. The first scene with Dr. Rank,- originally called Dr. Hank-has been almost entirely rewritten. There is in the draft no indication of the doctor’s ill- health or of his pessimism; it seems as though he had at first been designed as a mere confidant or raisonneur. This is how he talks: HANK Hallo! what’s this? A new carpet? I congratulate you! Now take, for example, a handsome carpet like this; is it a luxury? I say it isn’t. Such a carpet is a paying investment; with it underfoot, one has higher, subtler thoughts, and finer feelings, than when one moves over cold, creaking planks in a comfortless room. Especially where there are children in the house. The race ennobles itself in a beautiful environment. NORA Oh, how often I have felt the same, but could never express it. HANK No, I dare say not. It is an observation in spiritual statistics-a science as yet very little cultivated. As to Krogstad, the doctor remarks: If Krogstad’s home had been, so to speak, on the sunny side of life, with all the spiritual windows opening towards the light,... I dare say he might have been a decent enough fellow, like the rest of us. MRS. LINDEN You mean that he is not....? HANK He cannot be. His marriage was not of the kind to make it possible. An unhappy marriage, Mrs. Linden, is like small-pox: it scars the soul. NORA And what does a happy marriage do? HANK It is like a “cure” at the baths; it expels all peccant humours, and makes all that is good and fine in a man grow and flourish. It is notable that we find in this scene nothing of Nora’s glee on learning that Krogstad is now dependent on her husband; that fine touch of dramatic irony was an afterthought. After Helmer’s entrance, the talk is very different in the original version. He remarks upon the painful interview he has just had with Krogstad, whom he is forced to dismiss from the bank; Nora, in a mild way, pleads for him; and the doctor, in the name of the survival of the fittest, 4 denounces humanitarian sentimentality, and then goes off to do his best to save a patient who, he con4 It is noteworthy that Darwin’s two great books were translated into Danish very shortly before Ibsen began to work at A Doll’s House. fesses, would be much better dead. This discussion of the Krogstad question before Nora has learnt how vital it is to her, manifestly discounts the effect of the scenes which are to follow: and Ibsen, on revision, did away with it entirely. Nora’s romp with the children, interrupted by the entrance of Krogstad, stands very much as in the final version; and in the scene with Krogstad there is no essential change. One detail is worth noting, as an instance of the art of working up an effect. In the first version, when Krogstad says, “Mrs. Stenborg, you must see to it that I keep my place in the bank,” Nora replies: “I? How can you think that I have any such influence with my husband?”- a natural but not specially effective remark. But in the final version she has |
