#MeToo in 1870s Norway
Ibsen was the father of modern drama; his most famous character was the mother of the modern woman
Henrik Ibsen was a 19th-century Norwegian playwright. His most famous works include Peer Gynt, An Enemy of the People, and A Doll’s House (among many others). A Doll’s House was first performed in 1879, and it single-handedly ushered in modernism in Western dramatic literature — not only because of its feminist subject matter, but because it was the first play ever written in natural dialogue, as opposed to metered verse.
In Norway in 1879, it was practically unheard of for a couple to divorce. Even more unlikely was that a woman who was not physically abused, who was financially well-off, and who had three small children would leave her husband and her family. But Nora Helmer, the main character in Henrik Ibsen’s legendary work A Doll’s House, did just that. She decided she wanted to know what it was like to be human — “or at least to try “— and that required an independence and self-sufficiency she was unable to achieve as the simpering wife to a condescending husband that she had always been.
On Nora’s Leaving
When Nora Helmer realized at the end of A Doll’s House “the miracle” she had dreamed of (her husband stepping up to save her reputation upon the exposure of a crime she had committed) did not happen, she had an awakening…