A Doll's House

Description

A Doll's House (1879), is a masterpiece of theatrical craft which, for the first time portrayed the tragic hypocrisy of Victorian middle class marriage on the stage. The play ushered in a new social era and "exploded like a bomb into contemporary life". It premiered at the Royal Theatre in Copenhagen, Denmark, on 21 December 1879, having been published earlier that month. A Doll's House is a three-act play in prose by the playwright Henrik Ibsen. The play was controversial when first published, as it is sharply critical of 19th century marriage norms. Michael Meyer argues that the play's theme is not women's rights, but rather "the need of every individual to find out the kind of person he or she really is and to strive to become that person." Henrik Ibsen (1828-1906) was a major 19th-century Norwegian playwright, theatre director, and poet. He is often referred to as "the father of prose drama" and is one of the founders of Modernism in the theatre. In a speech given to the Norwegian Women's Rights League in 1898, Ibsen insisted that he "must disclaim the honor of having consciously worked for the women's rights movement," since he wrote "without any conscious thought of making propaganda," his task having been "the description of humanity.