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Ibsen Studies
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Spatial Poetics of the Self and the

Moral‐Dramatic Structure in A Doll's
House
Kwok‐kan Tam
Published online: 22 Aug 2006.

To cite this article: Kwokkan Tam (2005) Spatial Poetics of the Self and the Moral‐Dramatic
Structure in A Doll's House , Ibsen Studies, 5:2, 180-197, DOI: 10.1080/15021860500443320

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 SPATIAL POETICS OF THE SELF
AND THE MORAL-DRAMATIC STRUCTURE
IN A DOLL’S HOUSE
Kwok-kan Tam

More than a hundred years ago, Edmund Gosse proposed to read

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Ibsen’s realism in terms of the social dimension of his problem

plays. In his essay, ‘‘Ibsen’s Social Dramas,’’ published in the
Fortnightly Review on 1 January 1889, Gosse defines realism in
terms of the social truth that can be found in Ibsen’s middle
plays, especially The Pillars of Society (1877), A Doll’s House (1879),
Ghosts (1881), and An Enemy of the People (1882). In Gosse’s reading,
Ibsen has made ‘‘a new departure’’ with The Pillars of Society
(Gosse, p. 81), which begins a new conception of realism that
depends on the dramatist’s truthful perception of society. In his
observation, Gosse puts forth the idea that realism is the
playwright’s depiction of social truth. He further points out that
Ibsen’s dramatic expression is based on his understanding of social
truth.
The Pillars of Society ends with the ideological affirmation: ‘‘The
spirit of truth and the spirit of freedom – they are the pillars of
society’’ (1980/1877, p. 119). Truth has since become a theme of
central importance in reading Ibsen’s middle and later plays. For
Ibsen, while the Romantic moral ideal of ‘‘all or nothing’’ that can
be found in Brand is an uncompromising attitude built on the moral
ideal of an individual, the insistence on living in truth despite
hardships has become a yardstick to measure the moral courage of
an individual at both personal and social levels. To live in truth is
the only way to keep one away from falsities in life. It provides the
basis for all meaning that can be derived from life. However,
underlying Ibsen’s seeming moral absolutism is a skepticism, which
can be seen later in The Wild Duck. The play presents the dilemma
of an individual caught between the meaningfulness of living in

# 2005 TAYLOR & FRANCIS [ 180 ] DOI 10.1080/15021860500443320

 Moral-Dramatic structure in A Doll’s House
truth and the self-deceptive pleasure of living in illusion, which
results in the death of the human ‘‘wild duck.’’

The Self in Moral Space

The early Ibsen is a moralist who believes that morality is a
personal choice which is closely related to a person’s integrity. In
Brand (1866), the protagonist is a saint-like hero. As Brand’s
opposite, the protagonist in Peer Gynt (1867) is a self-seeking
opportunist and a liar, but he is more human in his moral
weaknesses. Both plays illustrate the self as a personal choice
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between the Romantic ideal of the moral good and its opposite. In
these early plays, Ibsen already shows signs of his belief that the self
is defined in a moral space, and that this moral space is an inner one
in the modern age when its external frameworks, such as religion
and law, have become unreliable. The mature Ibsen believes that to
live in truth is not simply a personal attitude against hypocrisy. He
thinks that what constitutes a meaningful life is to live in
accordance with the truth about life and society. That is to say,
an individual has to live according to the truth he/she finds out
about life and society. In this sense, the truth that Ibsen refers to is
not only the objective facts about society and life, but also the
subjective values which the protagonist believes in. For this reason,
Ibsen portrays his protagonist being caught in social conflicts and
dilemmas of choice, which put moral integrity to the test. This
explains what Nora means when she says: ‘‘I must stand on my
own feet if I am to find out the truth about myself and about life’’
(A Doll’s House, 1980/1879, p. 99). Here is a declaration of Nora’s
new identity, which seeks autonomy from social bondage, when
she finds out the truth that society works against her values. But
what Nora says here has another important implication for a new
structural dimension of the self, which Charles Taylor describes as
an identity reorientation in moral space.
Such a positioning shows Ibsen’s new way of conceiving the
dramatic character as a modern individual struggling for his/her
self-definition in a moral space. This moral space constitutes a web
of social relations, in which the modern individual has to make
choices by relying solely on his/her self-identity, rather than on

[ 181 ]
 kwok-kan tam
external frameworks. In his book Sources of the Self: The Making of
the Modern Identity (1989), Charles Taylor points out that classical
Western identity draws on three notions, namely, ‘‘human
respect,’’ ‘‘obligation’’ and ‘‘dignity’’ (pp. 18–19), all of which can
be regarded as frameworks that depend on some degree of
externalization of the self. Such externalization places the self in a
moral space, which may be an extension of God, or Reason.
However, in the modern period with Nietzsche’s questioning of
God as a spiritual source, the externalized definition of the self that
depends on God has been rendered problematic. If the religious
reference is absent, in what sense can the self be defined as a moral
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space? This is exactly the question Helmer puts forth to Nora in A

Doll’s House (1980/1879, p. 100). Furthermore, when Reason fails to
explain everything in modern life, the only affirmation of
‘‘meaning’’ that the modern human subject can find lies in
‘‘ordinary life’’ (Taylor, 1989, p. 24), which is full of conflicts,
confusions and uncertainties. As Charles Taylor says, ‘‘The world
loses altogether its spiritual contour, nothing is worth doing, the
fear is of a terrifying emptiness, a kind of vertigo, or even a
fracturing of our world and body-space’’ (1989, p. 18). Charles
Taylor’s discussion of the metaphysical disintegration of the self
echoes the idea of existential absurdity that has been the cause of
the identity crisis described in many modern literary works, such as
A Doll’s House.
Charles Taylor sees ‘‘inwardness’’ as a framework that defines
the modern self. This inwardness has its sources in the Romantic
notion of nature and, as Charles Taylor says, ‘‘to have a proper
moral stance towards the natural order is to have access to one’s
inner voice’’ (1989, p. 370). Hence, inwardness of the self has to be
formulated as a voice. The interesting point here lies in that Charles
Taylor is making a connection between voice and language. In his
book Human Agency and Language (1985), Charles Taylor further
argues that human agency is different from animal agency in that
humans are capable of self-evaluation, which is a process of
subjecting one’s desires to critical reflection. In this process,
language plays a role and serves as a means to structuring the mind.
The critical faculty of a person has to be articulated, otherwise the
inner voice of the self will not be ‘‘expressed’’ (Taylor, 1985, p. 374).

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 Moral-Dramatic structure in A Doll’s House
In this way, the individual is defined as a subject with an inner voice
of expression. This inner voice is linked with the ‘‘sense of life,’’
which provides meaning and a locus for the individual.
Charles Taylor’s idea of the role language plays in the formation
of the self as a subject can be used as a framework to understand
Ibsen’s contribution to the making of modern identity. To
reconsider the issues of individualism by situating Ibsen’s plays in
the philosophical contexts of the emergence of modern identity is,
then, of crucial importance. If the three notions, ‘‘human respect,’’
‘‘obligation’’ and ‘‘dignity,’’ by which the Western self is defined,
have become problematic ‘‘frameworks’’ in the modern world, the
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need to seek new sources has become inevitable for the making of
modern identity. In this light, Ibsen’s ‘‘social problem plays’’ must
be reread as plays that explore the redefinition of the modern self in
a society, in which the traditional religious, philosophical and moral
‘‘frameworks’’ have lost their bearings.
In Charles Taylor’s view, the modern self has to find new
frameworks in defining its identity, as he says, ‘‘I want to defend the
strong thesis that doing without frameworks is utterly impossible for
us’’ (1989, p. 27). Charles Taylor further argues that identity of the self
is a question of where one stands in a moral space:

What this brings to light is the essential link between identity and a
kind of orientation. To know who you are is to be oriented in moral
space, a space in which questions arise about what is good or bad,
what is worth doing and what not, what has meaning and importance
for you and what is trivial and secondary. I feel myself drawn here to
use a spatial metaphor; but I believe this to be more than personal
predilection. There are signs that the link with spatial orientation lies
very deep in the human psyche….

Why this link between identity and orientation? Or perhaps we could

put the question this way: What induces us to talk about moral
orientation in terms of the question, Who are we? This second
formulation points us towards the fact that we haven’t always done
so. Talk about ‘‘identity’’ in the modern sense would have been
incomprehensible to our forebears of a couple of centuries ago. (1989,
p. 28)

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 kwok-kan tam
In formulating the modern identity as a moral space, Charles
Taylor has actually introduced the concept of communal structure
in studying the formation of the self. Identity does not constitute a
structure if it is treated merely as a matter of personal choice.
However, it does when it is placed in a social context relating the
self to a language community. As Charles Taylor says,

This is the sense in which one cannot be a self on one’s own. I am a

self only in relation to certain interlocutors: in one way in relation to
those conversation partners who were essential to my achieving self-
definition; in another in relation to those who are now crucial to my
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continuing grasp of languages of self-understanding – and, of course,

these classes may overlap. A self exists only within what I call ‘‘webs
of interlocutors.’’ (1989, p. 36)

In this way, the self is examined in its relation to social webs

of interlocutory relations involving different, or sometimes
opposite, positions. By situating the self in such a structure of
dialogical relations, Charles Taylor offers a new view of
individualism, as he points out: ‘‘Modern culture has developed
conceptions of individualism which picture the human person as,
at least potentially, finding his or her own bearings within,
declaring independence from the webs of interlocution which have
originally formed him/her, or at least neutralizing them’’ (1989,
p. 36).
In discussing the character trait of modern personhood, Charles
Taylor remarks that individuality is achieved through ‘‘confronting
our thought with any partner in this new, indirect way, through a
reading of the disagreement’’ (1989, p. 38). Confrontation opens up
conflicts, and hence new spaces for the quest of orientations, which
are characteristic of modern culture (Taylor, 1989, pp. 495–521). In
this sense, one can say that Charles Taylor’s theoretical contribu-
tion to the study of identity lies in his introduction of the concept of
space that links up the self with language in a structural relation of
interlocution, as well as in his proposal to view the self as spatial
orientation towards the moral goods. Underlying Charles Taylor’s
anthropological philosophy of the self is the structural analysis of
spatial relations.

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 Moral-Dramatic structure in A Doll’s House
Nora’s Identity as Spatial Reorientation
In the light of Charles Taylor’s anthropological philosophy of human
identity, Ibsen’s concept of self can be viewed as based on an
Existentialist belief that there is no pre-given essence in human
beings. This non-essentialist view can be found in A Doll’s House, in
which the young Nora has been ‘‘inducted into language by being
brought to see things as [her] tutors do’’ (Taylor, 1989, p. 38). As
Nora complains, ‘‘When I lived with papa, he used to tell me what he
thought about everything, so that I never had any opinions but his.
And if I did have any of my own, I kept them quiet, because he
wouldn’t have liked them. He called me a little doll, and he played
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with me just the way I played with my dolls. Then I came here to live
in your house –’’ (A Doll’s House, 1980/1879, p. 98). Nora’s ‘‘tutors’’
are her father, Pastor Hansen, and Helmer. It is through them that
Nora is ‘‘inducted into personhood… by being initiated into a
language’’ (Taylor, 1989, p. 34) which emphasizes duty and
submissiveness. The disagreement with Krogstad provokes Nora,
but also initiates her into a new space of facing confrontation with
courage, which is a first-step to the individuation of her personhood:

Nora: I don’t believe that. Hasn’t a daughter the right to shield her
father from worry and anxiety when he’s old and dying? Hasn’t a wife
the right to save her husband’s life? I don’t know much about the law,
but there must be something somewhere that says that such things are
allowed. (A Doll’s House, 1980/1879, p. 50)

Nora’s final awakening, or ‘‘deviation’’ in Charles Taylor’s

terminology, comes in her confrontation with Helmer and her
refusal to live according to established beliefs that impose a certain
‘‘essence’’ upon the female. The following shows how Nora finds
new orientations in rebelling against established beliefs on a
woman’s duties:

Helmer. But this is monstrous! Can you neglect your most sacred
duties?
Nora. What do you call my most sacred duties?
Helmer. Do I have to tell you? Your duties towards your husband,
and your children.

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 kwok-kan tam
Nora. I have another duty which is equally sacred.
Helmer. You have not. What on earth could that be?
Nora. My duty towards myself.
Helmer. First and foremost you are a wife and mother.
Nora. I don’t believe that any longer. I believe that I am fist and
foremost a human being, like you – or anyway, that I must
try to become one. I know most people think as you do,
Torvald, and I know there’s something of the sort to be
found in books. But I’m no longer prepared to accept what
people say and what’s written in books. I must think things
out for myself, and try to find my own answer.
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(A Doll’s House, 1980/1879, p. 100)

Two opposite views are presented in this dialogical interaction

between Helmer and Nora. While Helmer believes that a woman is
defined externally by her duties, Nora thinks that she is defined
internally by the voice within her. When Nora says ‘‘I’m no longer
prepared to accept what people say and what’s written in books,’’
she has already found new orientations in her moral space.
Similarly, Mrs. Alving in Ghosts also feels suffocated by looking at
herself as being defined externally by duties. So she complains:
‘‘They had taught me about duty and things like that, and I sat here
for too long believing in them. In the end everything became a
matter of duty – my duty, and his duty…’’ (Ghosts, 1980/1881, p. 89).
This is what Charles Taylor calls modern individualist identity of
transcending, or deviating from, the webs of interlocution (1989,
p. 38–39). This new identity is a spatial reorientation of the self in
language (Taylor, 1989, p. 35). The acquisition of a new language, as
Julia Kristeva has also pointed out in Revolution in Poetic Language,
indicates the emergence of a new ideology. In Charles Taylor’s
view, spatial reorientation of the self is signified in the acquisition of
a new language. And the true ‘‘awakening’’ in Nora lies exactly in
her acquisition of a new language of the self.
In Ibsen’s view of modern morality, realism, truth, and
meaningfulness are related in such a way that all meanings of life
depend on moral truthfulness. For him, ‘‘hypocritical respect-
ability’’ is the main disease that ‘‘kills’’ people by reducing them to
an amoral self (Gosse, 82). This is evident in An Enemy of the People.

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 Moral-Dramatic structure in A Doll’s House
In Ibsen’s view, individuality is not just the only means to achieving
truthfulness in life; it is the new morality of modern society. In both
A Doll’s House and Ghosts, the individual is presented in opposition
to an institution which is family in the former case, and religion in
the latter. The quest for individuality, which is a reorientation in
moral space as well as in the acquisition of language, is an
awakening for the heroines in both plays. This awakening in the
heroines has been discussed by many critics from Edmund Gosse
and William Archer to James McFarlane and John Northam, mainly
as a dramatic device. In some sense, any critique of social
institutions must be ideological in orientation. By emphasizing the
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moral dimensions of individuality, Ibsen is not just critiquing social

institutions with their falsehood, but presenting a new subjectivity
defined in terms of the individuation of self and language. In this
paper, I propose to reread Ibsen’s so-called ‘‘social problem play’’ in
the light of a moral-dramatic structure that allows the individual to
be defined as ‘‘deviation in reorientation,’’ which Charles Taylor
puts forth as a concept in probing the individuality of modern
identity. If dramatic realism depends on the depiction of social
truth, then it implies that a play must have a dramatic structure that
can express the social truth as depicted through the eyes of the
protagonist. This structure, as Joseph Wood Krutch calls it, marks
‘‘the chasm between past and future’’ (1953, pp. 6–8), which serves
as a framework for subjecting themes of personal choice to the
examination of larger issues in social morality.
In Ibsen scholarship, there has been the view that Ibsen’s plays
concern mainly the quest for a modern individual identity, or
‘‘individualism.’’ In The Quintessence of Ibsenism (1913), Bernard Shaw
extends this quest to dramatic renderings of the moral self, in which
idealism forms the core. Shaw’s understanding of Ibsen is thus
based on an externalization of the self in relation to society, family,
law and the church. Take the family as an example, Shaw says,

The family as a beautiful and holy natural institution is only a fancy

picture of what every family would have to be if everybody was to be
suited, invented by the minority as a mask for the reality, which in its
nakedness is intolerable to them. We call this sort of fancy picture an
Ideal; and the policy of forcing individuals to act on the assumption

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that all ideals are real, and to recognize and accept such as standard moral
conduct, absolutely valid under all circumstances, contrary conduct or
any advocacy of it being discountenanced and punished as immoral, may
therefore be described as the policy of Idealism. (1913, pp. 39–40)

Shaw’s reading of Ibsen emphasizes the external ‘‘truth of life,’’

which in Charles Taylor’s words would be the ‘‘sense of life.’’
However, if what Shaw sees in Ibsen is an approach based on
externalization, how then should the modern identity that Ibsen
deals with be discussed in terms of internalization which a moral
stance requires? By focusing on external truth, Shaw misses Ibsen’s
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emphasis on the role of the self in modern identity.

Drama as a Spatial Structure in A Doll’s House

Ibsen’s social plays are about society, but they are also about the
newly awakened self of the individual. Both Nora in A Doll’s House
and Mrs. Alving in Ghosts react against religion at the end, not
because they don’t believe in Christianity, but because they do not
accept it as an external framework in the definition of their selves.
As Helmer challenges Nora:

Helmer. Do you need to ask where your duty lies in your own
home? Haven’t you an infallible guide in such matters –
your religion?
Nora. Oh, Torvald, I don’t really know what religion means.
(A Doll’s House, 1980/1879, p. 100)

When Helmer fails to force Nora to submit to her duties as

prescribed by religion, he tries to appeal to her moral sense:

Helmer. …. If religion cannot guide you, let me at least appeal to

your conscience. I presume you have some moral feelings
left? Or – perhaps you haven’t? Well, answer me.
Nora. Oh, Torvald, that isn’t an easy question to answer.
I simply don’t know. I don’t know where I am in these
matters. I only know that these things mean something
quite different to me from what they do to you….
(A Doll’s House, 1980/1879, p. 100)

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 Moral-Dramatic structure in A Doll’s House
Juxtaposed here are two different ways of self-definition and two
opposite approaches to morality. While Helmer uses an old
discourse that sees morality as the fulfillment of one’s social duties,
Nora uses a new one that regards it as the assertion of one’s rights.
In juxtaposing these two different approaches, Ibsen discusses
morality through the polarization of two discourses between
individual rights and social duties. This approach signifies a
continuation of Ibsen’s early view that morality can be a matter
of personal choice, but it sometimes is also a judgement based on
social or religious concerns.
A close look at A Doll’s House shows that the play has a bipartite
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structure both in the characterization of Nora and in the moral

theme of individual rights versus social duties. In the first part of
the play, Nora is willing to fulfill her role as a submissive wife. She
is partly responsible for creating the myth of ‘‘a doll’s house,’’ in
which she is the plaything, and Helmer the master. Nora is
responsible because she is the plaything that takes an active part in
her playfulness. In playing out her role as a plaything, Nora publicly
follows, but secretly breaks, the rules imposed on her as a wife.
When the secret is made public, Helmer blames her for being
immoral. To Nora, Helmer fails to fulfill his role as a master who
would sacrifice himself to protect her in time of crisis. However,
Nora does not blame Helmer. Instead, she thinks that she herself is
morally responsible for creating the deception, and her request to
leave home is both an act of breaking the deception and a means of
redefining herself. It literally and connotatively is a spatial
reorientation of the self. Embedded in the bipartite dramatic
structure of A Doll’s House is a bipartite moral structure.
In the first part of the play, Nora follows social expectations in
defining herself as a supportive and submissive wife. This role is a
fixed one set within social and religious parameters that are external
to a person. After her awakening in the second part of the play,
Nora revolts against the role she has been playing. In the end the
newly awakened Nora leaves the house, embarking on a journey of
self-quest and self-creation. The play has now come to an end, but
the action does not stop there because Nora continues in her quest.
The change in Nora lies not just in her maturation as a person, not
just in an awakening, but in the acquisition of a new language of

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 kwok-kan tam
self, which is performative and self-reliant. This performative self is
a non-essentialist self, whose formation is based on future
reorientations in a new space. The new Nora is a Nora in the
making. In this sense, Ibsen’s A Doll’s House can be read as a play
that hints at the postmodernist idea of performativity in identity
formation.1 Nora’s awakening is an awakening to the fact that she
has been treated by Helmer as a non-self, that is, a person who exits
only as roles dictated by society. The new Nora is a Nora with a
self, which does not have a priori essence:

Helmer. You’re talking like a child. You don’t understand how

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society works.
Nora. No, I don’t. But now I intend to learn. I must try to satisfy
myself which is right, society or I.
(A Doll’s House, 1980/1879, p. 100–101)

In her awakening, or ‘‘deviation,’’ from her social roles, Nora

seeks to redefine herself as a gendered individual. In his notes
on A Doll’s House, Ibsen states his intention in portraying
Nora as a newly awakened individual rebelling against social
norms:

There are two kinds of spiritual law, two kinds of conscience, one in
man and another, altogether different, in woman. They do not
understand each other; but in practical life the woman is judged by
man’s law, as though she were not a woman but a man…. woman
cannot be herself in the society of the present day, which is an
exclusively masculine society, with laws framed by men and with a
judicial system that judges feminine conduct from a masculine point
of view.
(Ibsen, 1978/1878, p. 91)

In her answer to Helmer’s question on morals and conscience,

Nora echoes what Ibsen has stated above:

I’ve learned now that certain laws are different from what I’d
imagined them to be; but I can’t accept that such laws can be right.
Has a woman really not the right to spare her dying father pain, or

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 Moral-Dramatic structure in A Doll’s House
save her husband’s life? I can’t believe that.
(A Doll’s House, 1980/1879, p. 101)

By extending the argument from focusing on a personal choice to

problematizing the judicial system, Ibsen reexamines morality in a
sociopolitical space, in which Nora the individual is trapped and lost
in her orientations. Leaving the house is Nora’s only choice in her
search for a new spatial orientation. In this way, Charles Taylor’s
conception of the self as orientation in moral space sheds light on
how the dramatic structure in A Doll’s House hinges on its moral
structure of Nora’s self-reorientation. Nora’s confrontation with
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Helmer can thus be seen as a dialogical remapping of her self-space.

Spatial Poetics in Ibsen’s Drama

In the Western tradition of drama, the protagonist is often depicted
as an individual situated in a larger framework that defines the
relation between the self and his/her world. In Greek drama,
tragedy is constituted in the human struggle for individuality.
Oedipus is an individual who dares to struggle against the divine
prediction of fate. Despite the mistakes he has made, he is an
admirable individual because of his noble motives and desire to be
master of his own fate. Shakespearean tragedy, on the other hand,
is a lamentation on human weaknesses. Macbeth is to be
condemned because of his inability to resist the prediction of fate
and the temptation of power, which results in his loss of morality
and individuality. In Ibsen’s ‘‘modern tragedy,’’ as he calls A Doll’s
House in his notes on the play (Ibsen, 1878, p. 91)2, the individual has
to realize his/her individuality in the form of autonomy from social
institutions. While the Greeks are interested in the mythological
causes that lead to the hero’s downfall (as in the case of Oedipus),
Shakespeare is interested in the psychological consequences
following the hero’s downfall (as in the case of Macbeth). In the
former case, Oedipus is externalized in his struggle for human
autonomy when he is caught in dilemmas entailed in a human-
mythological framework. In the latter, Macbeth is internalized in
the suffering from his sense of guilt and fear as he encounters his
psychological self. It is in this evolution of the tragic hero that one

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 kwok-kan tam
sees Ibsen’s innovation as well as his departure from the Greek and
Shakespearean modes. Ibsen presents Nora in a social space in
which she is expected to perform according to certain fixed roles
prescribed by society. Nora’s awakening from the ‘‘unreliable’’
social frameworks turns her into a new being, an individual with a
new language and in pursuit of an inner self. In this new type of
tragedy, Ibsen does not present a heroine suffering from an external
downfall, but one that is caught in the inner crisis of transition from
an outer self to an inner one. The Nora after her awakening is as
important as the Nora before, for the transition in her does not
signify just a change from her social self to her individual self, but
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also a change in the dramatic structure, in which an ‘‘after-action’’

is suggested for a Nora who, on her way to self-development, is
liberated from established ‘‘webs of interlocution.’’ This ‘‘after-
action’’ is more than a structural device, for it is an extension in
moral space as well as in the physical space of a woman’s place.
Nora’s leave signifies a transgression of the socially accepted moral
boundary, which implies, more importantly, the extension of a
woman’s selfhood beyond the physical confines of a domestic place
and hence a departure into the future.
In The Quintessence of Ibsenism, Shaw points out that the technical
novelty in Ibsen’s plays lies in the use of ‘‘discussion’’: ‘‘Formerly
you had in what was called a well made play an exposition in the
first act, a situation in the second, and unravelling in the third. Now
you have exposition, situation, and discussion; and the discussion is
the test of the playwright’’ (1913, p. 171). Shaw further sees a didactic
purpose in using the technique of discussion, which carries a serious
moral message to be discovered by the audience when watching
the performance of Ibsen’s plays.3
The ‘‘discussion’’ scene in Ibsen’s plays involves the articulation
of truth, meaning and an inner moral order. In Charles Taylor’s
framework of human agency, the articulation of truth can be
regarded as a process of self-definition. Seen in this light,
individualism in Ibsen’s plays concerns a process through which
the individual arrives at a definition of his/her self. It is then true
that all the discussion scenes found in Ibsen’s plays, such as A Doll’s
House, Ghosts, An Enemy of the People, Pillars of Society, The Wild Duck
and When We Dead Awaken, affirm Ibsen’s belief that a meaningful

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life lies only in the discovery and articulation of the truth of life. A
meaningful life is seen as a life against pretence, against falsehood.
Hence, the meaning of life is defined by Ibsen as a person’s courage
to face truth. Nora’s awakening lies in her courage to leave the
house of pretence. Mrs. Alving’s tragedy is a result of her lack of
courage to face truth. However, facing truth does not necessarily
result in happiness, and to live in truth may bring great disaster to
the individual. Dr. Stockmann, who has become an enemy of the
people simply because of his courage to uphold the truth, is a prime
example. It is apparent that Ibsen is more concerned with the truth
and meaning of life than with the illusion of happiness. As Charles
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Taylor says,

The notion of inner depths is therefore intrinsically linked to our

understanding of ourselves as expressive, as articulating an inner
source.
The subject with depth is therefore a subject with its expressive
power…. The modern subject is no longer defined just by the power
of disengaged rational control but by this new power of expressive
self-articulation as well – the power which has been ascribed since the
Romantic period to the creative imagination. (1985, p. 390)

In this notion of self-articulation, the subject is defined by its voice

and realized in the process of its articulation. The ‘‘discussion’’
scene in Ibsen’s plays is not only a forum for the deliberation of
opposite ideas, but also a significant means toward the realization
of the self. The identity of the self is ultimately an issue of moral
choice according to what one believes to be meaningful, valuable
and just in life.
In Ibsen’s drama, the ‘‘discussion’’ scene is meant to be a
technical novelty, which replaces the resolution scene in the
classical structure. By using the technique of discussion, Ibsen
proposes a new type of drama that does not end with a resolution.
Ibsen does not believe in resolution because his new drama is
concerned with conflicts of ideas. The lack of a resolution at the
end of a play leaves the audiences with two opposing ideas, thus
allowing them to make judgement for themselves. Ibsen’s use of
the ‘‘discussion’’ scene as an ending to A Doll’s House also exhibits

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his anti-positivism. That is why Bernard Shaw says, ‘‘… those who
may think that I have forgotten to reduce Ibsenism to a formula…,
its quintessence is that there is no formula’’ (The Quintessence of
Ibsenism, p. 201). The lack of a resolution scene is where Ibsen’s
innovation lies, for it is this structural novelty that opens up infinite
possibilities for later dramatic experimentations.
As early as 1923, the Chinese writer Lu Xun already warned the
newly liberated Chinese women that a crucial issue facing the
departed Nora is an unknown future which lacks certainty and
security. Lu Xun’s remark of course is not concerned with the
dramatic structure of an ‘‘after-action,’’ but the unknown prospect
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of women’s liberation. As a matter of fact, Nora’s departure opens

up a new space for her. It is not just a physical space, but also a
spiritual space. Only in this new, open space can Nora’s potential
for self-development be realized.4 In terms of dramatic structure, A
Doll’s House can be seen as the first modernist experimentation with
an open-ended structure that breaks away from the tradition of
ending a play with a resolution.5 This open-ended structure not
only suggests the possibility of an ‘‘after-action’’ in the play, but
also new possibilities for a dramatic structure that does not have to
be ‘‘complete,’’ or ‘‘conclusive.’’ Hence, Ibsen’s experimentation is
anti-Aristotelian, for its breaks the formula that a play must be
complete with ‘‘a beginning, a middle and an end.’’ In the history of
drama, the significance of A Doll’s House lies exactly in its innovative
experimentation with a new type of ending and a new dramatic
structure without a resolution. Underlying such a structure of
drama is Ibsen’s new vision of modern life, which is so complicated
that it does not guarantee a resolution for every problem.
The structural change in Ibsen’s drama corresponds to its
structural reconception of the self, which Charles Taylor describes
as a ‘‘reorientation’’ in ‘‘webs of interlocution.’’ Ibsen is called the
father of modern drama because of his invention of a moral-
dramatic structure that leads to a new poetics. The historical
significance of Ibsen’s open-ended structure in drama can further be
seen in his use of the ‘‘principle of suggestiveness,’’ which later
leads to further experimentation with notions of incompleteness
and inconclusiveness in (post/)modernist drama. In terms of
structure, August Strindberg’s The Ghost Sonata (1907) also ends

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with a scene of discussion about the problems that lead to the
‘‘contamination’’ of life and death of the daughter. The death of the
daughter is a way to leave the other characters in a state of loss
while they are arguing with each other about an irredeemable past.
Anton Chekhov’s ‘‘drama of indirect action,’’ exemplified in The
Cherry Orchard (1904), shares a similar structural principle as that in
A Doll’s House. The Cherry Orchard can be regarded as an extension
of Ibsen’s ‘‘scene of discussion,’’ or ‘‘interlocution’’ in Charles
Taylor’s theory, because the whole play centres on discussion about
the meaning of life, but without any resolution. Similar to what
Nora does in A Doll’s House, the characters’ leaving their house in
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The Cherry Orchard constitutes an act in leaving the unresolved

problems behind while they embark on a new journey of life. The
same principle of ‘‘incompleteness’’ and ‘‘inconclusiveness’’ is
found in The Cherry Orchard, in which Chekhov demonstrates that
‘‘discussion’’ is the only means to an inquiry into meaning when
life’s problems lack resolution:

Liubov. No, let’s continue what we were talking about yesterday.

Trofimov. What were we talking about?
Gayev. About pride.
Trofimov. We talked a lot yesterday, but we didn’t agree on
anything….
…
Trofimov…. I am afraid of serious talk. It would be better for us just
to keep quiet.
(The Cherry Orchard, 1959/1904, p. 363–364)

However, for most characters in The Cherry Orchard, discussion is

life and the meaning of life lies in talking, which is a concept that
Charles Taylor discusses as ‘‘interlocution.’’ At one moment they
say they better keep quiet; at the next they start talking again. What
is envisaged in the play is the postmodernist notion that meanings
are constituted in language and language produces new meanings.
In Waiting for Godot (1952), Samuel Beckett also experiments with
an extended scene of ‘‘discussion.’’ The two characters, Vladimir
and Estragon, are caught in a situation, in which they have no
alternative except to talk about what to do. Unlike Nora, they do

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not leave the scene because leaving does not resolve their
problems. However, for the two characters, staying does not mean
any resolution either. The play ends in an incomplete and
inconclusive way, suggesting an ‘‘after-action’’ in its repetitive
structure. It is apparent that these structural devices found in
Waiting for Godot were first experimented with by Ibsen more than
half a century ago. If Chekhov’s play can be regarded as a Russian
extension of Ibsen’s poetics of ‘‘incompleteness,’’ then Beckett’s
play is a French experimentation with the technique of ‘‘inconclu-
siveness’’ in the absurdist mode.
Ibsen’s contribution to (post/)modernist poetics can be seen first
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in his experimentation with a new form of drama which departs

from the Aristotelian structure. By placing personal choices in social
‘‘webs of interlocution,’’ Ibsen has also extended the consideration
of personal morals to a debate on social issues. In doing so, he
actually reframes moral issues in a new structure with his drama of
‘‘inconclusiveness.’’ The dramatic treatment of morality is
reformulated by Ibsen in a (post/)modernist poetics of incomplete-
ness, which represents a sophisticated reflection upon life in the
modern sense. Ibsen is visionary in his foresight of a new poetics
that opens up different directions and calls for all sorts of
experiments in twentieth-century drama. Perhaps one may call
him the father of not just modern drama, but also postmodernist
poetics.

1 I was interested to learn that Unni Langås has written on gender performativity
in A Doll’s House, though her focus differs from mine.
2 Ibsen entitled his notes on A Doll’s House as ‘‘Notes For the Modern Tragedy.’’
Apparently, Ibsen has in mind a new form of tragedy after Shakespeare, which
depicts the inner conflicts of the protagonist in his/her struggle against social
institutions, as well as in her quest for a new identity.
3 It is for this reason of didacticism, which is externalization of the protagonist’s
internalization, that Michael Meyer, the Ibsen biographer, takes issue with
Bernard Shaw by calling his book The Quintessence of Ibsenism a ‘‘brilliantly
misleading book which should have been called The Quintessence of Shavianism’’
(Meyer, 1971, p. 457).
4 I am grateful to Erik Østerud for discussing with me the issue of space in Nora’s
leaving, and Asbjørn Aarseth for the idea of claustrophobia in Nora’s life with
Helmer, both at the International Ibsen Conference in Wuhan, May 2005.

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5 At a lecture given at the East-West Center, Honolulu, in 1984, I already
discussed the concept of an open-ended structure in Ibsen’s A Doll’s House and its
implication for postmodern experimentation in drama. In my article ‘‘From
Social Problem Play to Socialist Problem Play: Ibsen and Contemporary Chinese
Dramaturgy’’ (1986), I have also discussed technical innovations in Ibsen’s
drama. I am grateful to Knut Brynhildsvoll for drawing my attention to articles
on Ibsen’s dramatic techniques published in Scandinavia.

References
Chekhov, Anton (1959): The Cherry Orchard (1904). In Anton Chekhov Plays (Penguin
Classics), pp. 331–398. Trans. by Elisaveta Fen. London: Penguin.
Gosse, Edmund (1889): ‘‘Ibsen’s Social Dramas.’’ Fortnightly Review. 1 January.
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Ibsen, Henrik (1978): ‘‘Notes for the Modern Tragedy’’ (1878). In William Archer (ed.):
From Ibsen’s Workshop: Notes, Scenarios and Drafts of the Modern Plays, pp. 91–92.
Trans. by A. G. Chater. New York: Da Capo. First published as Volume 12 of The
Collected Works of Henrik Ibsen by Charles Scribner’s Sons in 1911.
Ibsen, Henrik (1980): The Pillars of Society (1877). In Ibsen Plays: Four, pp. 9–119. Trans.
by Michael Meyer. London: Methuen.
Ibsen, Henrik (1980): A Doll’s House (1879). In Ibsen Plays: One, pp. 9–98. Trans. by
Michael Meyer. London: Methuen.
Ibsen, Henrik (1980): Ghosts (1881). In Ibsen Plays: Two, pp. 9–105. Trans. by Michael
Meyer. London: Methuen.
Kristeva, Julia (1984): Revolution in Poetic Language. Translated by Margaret Waller;
with an introduction by Leon S. Roudiez. New York: Columbia University Press.
Krutch, Joseph Wood (1953): ‘‘Modernism’’ in Modern Drama: A Definition and an
Estimate. Ithaca: Cornell University Press.
Meyer, Michael (1971): Ibsen: A Biography. New York: Doubleday.
Shaw, George Bernard (1913): The Quintessence of Ibsenism. New York: Brentano’s.
Tam, Kwok-kan (1986): ‘‘From Social Problem Play to Socialist Problem Play: Ibsen
and Contemporary Chinese Dramaturgy.’’ The Journal of the Institute of Chinese
Studies of the Chinese University of Hong Kong, Vol. 17, 387–403.
Taylor, Charles (1985): Human Agency and Language. Cambridge; New York:
Cambridge University Press.
Taylor, Charles (1989): Sources of the Self: The Making of the Modern Identity.
Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press.

KWOK-KAN TAM received his Ph.D. in English and Comparative Literature from the
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in 1984, with a thesis on the reception and
influence of Ibsen in China. He has worked at the East-West Center, Honolulu, and is
currently Professor in the Department of English at the Chinese University of Hong
Kong. He is the recipient of many research fellowships and grants. His publications
on Ibsen include the book Ibsen in China 1908–1997: A Critical-Annotated Bibliography of
Criticism, Translation and Performance, and numerous articles published in Norway,
USA, Germany, Slovakia, China, Taiwan and Hong Kong. E-mail address:
kwokkantam@cuhk.edu.hk

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