December is the time of solstice, celebration, and rituals. It is a time to look at who we are as the days grow dark and the winter casts its long shadow. It's the time for a teacher with responsibility for the English subject area to offer students a glimpse into Victorian acculturation through Ibsen's A Doll's House.But I'm very interested in interrogating the play through critical theory and pedagogy. I'm asking students to 'play forward' Ibsen's themes to that of contemporary western, and particularly, American society. What does life look like in comparison? To my knowledge, Ibsen was no feminist nor radical. Instead, he sought to use theater as a forum to discuss what is in the hopes of securing discussions of what might be. Questions to drive this unit include:
What is significant about Torvald’s reaction to Krogstad’s crime?
Nora lies several times in the play. Why does she lie?
What information is revealed during the opening scene of Act II between Nora and Anna, her nurse? Frame their discussion against the larger backdrop of Victorian society and culture.
What makes this play fall within the genre of realism?
What is Krogstad’s significance in the play?
Compare and contrast Mrs. Linde and Nora. How does Mrs. Linde contribute to Nora’s personal growth?
How does the relationship between Mrs. Linde and Krogstad illuminate the relationship between Nora and Torvald?
Dr. Rank tells Nora that he will not have Torvald in his sickroom because “Helmer’s delicate nature shrinks from all that is horrible.” How are these words proven to be true? What does this statement suggest about males in the Victorian age? Can this statement be applied in full or part to males in today’s society? How?
What is Dr. Rank’s function in the Helmer household --- really?
To what extent is Nora’s problem due to her and Torvald’s personalities, and to what extent is it due to the values of the society in which they live? To what extent has Nora solved her problems at the end of the play?
How convincing is Krogstad’s rationale not to reveal Nora’s complicity in the forgery? Is his shift from villain to altruist realistic? Consider the backdrop of Victorian society and culture as you decide.
Does Nora have a greater responsibility to herself or to her family?
Who is the more important character: Nora or Torvald? Why? Offer support.
Find three examples of dramatic irony (in which a character makes a comment that the audience knows to be contrary to the full truth) and explain how they contribute to the total effect of the play.
Find three examples of verbal irony (in which there is a contrast between what is said and what is actually meant) and explain how they contribute to the impact of the given scene, or to the audience’ understanding of the events and meaning of the whole play.
Ibsen believed that “a dramatist’s business is not to answer questions but only to ask them.” What questions does Ibsen ask in the play? Does he offer any solutions?
My goals are to infuse popular and media texts alongside the western canon to integrate semiotic knowledge into traditional literacy and alter what student engagement looks like in the English classroom. Literacy is tied inextricably to personal, relational experiences formed through multimodal text experiences, so, when popular and media texts became center stage, interconnections among language, literacy, and culture became stronger (2000; Strauss & Irvin, 2000).
How do privileged youth in today’s U.S. society express their identity in public versus private settings? How do institutional contexts like public education create multiple privileged youth performances of identity? How does the cultural script of privilege create students’ worldviews and assumptions about their identities? These are the questions that interest me as I begin to discuss gender and class with 21st century students.
Adapted from D. Rosenberg in World Literature and M. Meyer in The Compact Bedford Introduction to Literature
