Henrik Ibsen’s Doll House

I sometimes think that I travel to different places, just so I can escape the reality of life where my abode is. I am continuously bombarded by political cacophony where I am being told what is good and bad for me in this world, how the bad people are destroying society, how the leaders are fighting for my well-being, and why I must support them with my good behavior for my own as well as society’s good.

This uneasy feeling is not new after I left my job. Even in my employment years, I was constantly told about what was good for me and the organization, and how I must confirm to the acceptable and sanctioned protocols for the general benefit of all in the organization and other stakeholders.

I am not suggesting that my feelings are anywhere close to that of living in an Orwellian world. They may however have some traces of living in Huxley’s Brave New World. Someone else is looking after my happiness and I cannot let that someone down by compromising the established protocol. That someone could be a person or an organization or increasingly technology by itself, with its inbuilt intelligence.

It is not that I disagree with what is being told as good for me and how I need to think or behave. It is that I am constantly being told of it at all, through media and other megaphones. It is as though I am treated like a doll, with gentleness and care, but also with a heavy patronizing authority.

I am under no illusion that my uneasy feelings are solely due to the environment where my residence is. I recognize that the places I visit all over the world are not any better, and if I embed myself in those societies for a slightly longer period than I usually stay as a tourist, I will certainly not find the lost Paradise. But having a different geographical perspective helps me from seeing that “it is not just me”.

Moreover, my visits during the travels also include visits to museums and historical sites. My perspective therefore broadens in time dimension, not easily achieved through any other means.

Henrik Ibsen was a well-known nineteenth-century Norwegian playwright and director. His residence in Oslo is now a museum. Ibsen’s book “A Doll's House” is on the UNESCO heritage list.

The protagonist of the play, Nora is a housewife. Her husband Torvald is a banker. Nora feels constantly being told by her husband and others what is good for her and how she needs to think and behave. At the end of the play, Nora tells her husband that she has been treated like a doll to play with for her whole life. She tells him that she is now leaving because she has duties to herself that are just as important and she cannot be a good mother or wife without learning to be more than a plaything.

Ibsen’s play questioned the traditional roles of men and women in 19th-century marriage. The play was perceived as the case for “women's rights” in the nineteenth-century era. But Ibsen himself disagreed with that characterization. For him, it is the need of every individual to find out the kind of person he or she is and to strive to become that person.

I stop at this point. Some will likely find my interpretation hypocritical and self-centered. Even I have those self-doubts. But perhaps it may resonate for others. After all, plays are meant to have different interpretations, especially after many years and different geographical and cultural settings.

The photos are from the Ibsen Museum in Oslo.