A Doll’s House or A Prison Escape?

         After watching the 1973 film A Doll's House, directed by Joseph Losey, I have a whole new respect for the play written in 1879 by Henrik Ibsen. I have read the play before as a senior in high school; but, only after watching this film version, was I able to grasp the full concept of what this story actually portrays.

         Part of the reason I believe that the film has such great success was in part due to the acting of the one and only Jane Fonda, who portrayed the leading role of Nora Helmer perfectly. She did an exceptional job of showing Nora in a weak and frail light at the beginning; she is a wife that is just doing anything and everything for her husband, Torvald, played by Anthony Hopkins, that she can do in order to cure his illness. Nora borrowed money from Krogstad in order to pay for a trip that was the only thing that could save her dying husband, in obtaining the loan Nora had to forge her dying father’s and has been struggling to pay it off since.

         Then at the end after Torvald has both rejected her after finding out of the deal she had made with Krogstad then decided he loved her again when Krogstad was not going to enforce the loan agreement; when Nora knows that Torvald will never love her the way that she deserves to be loved. She then becomes the epitome of a strong woman when she leaves life of comfort and security and embarks on a journey to find her “real” self.

         This movie also presented its audience with an unheard of idea, the woman leaving her husband; back then it was perfectly acceptable for a husband to walk out and leave his wife but for the wife to leave her husband, she basically had no identity. At the time of the release of this film the woman's movement was on the forefront of 70's; I believe that this was Fonda's way of expressing her beliefs on the matter of feminism and how society should be changed.

Tiffany Melton

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