Ibsen and Dolls House
Ibsen and Dolls House
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The
Jakovljevic
Performative
(on) Stage
certain
utterances:
performative
"a
performative
utterance
will,
for example,
. . .
be in a peculiar way hollow or void if said by an actor or spoken in a soliloquy
a
in
in
not
circumstances
is
such
special way?intelligibly?used
Language
seriously,
its normal use?ways
fall under etiolations of
but in ways
which
parasitic upon
this attempt to exclude literature
(22, italics in the original). Paradoxically,
language"
acts
attracts
from the theory of performative
speech
literary critics, and rightfully so;
the performative
speech act theory not only introduces "plain speech" to philosophy
but also establishes powerful
literature and its surroundings,
between
connections
between writer and reader, or writer and critic. That is, until we hit upon Austin's
Branislav
University.
and Museum
Acto,
Iwould
Gluzman
Bennett,
his
the Department
Studies at New York
of Performance
PhDfrom
been published
in The
Drama
Primer
Review,
Rec,
PAJ, Theater,
and
Management
Curatorship.
recently
Jakovljevic
His
articles
have
received
at the various
like to thank Peggy Phelan, who
read this work
and Yelena
stages of writing,
I am also grateful
to Susan
Yankelevich
for being
and loving readers.
insightful
comments
David
and the outside
readers
of Theatre Journal for their valuable
and
Rom?n,
and Matvei
suggestions.
1
was marked
of Austin's
in the seventies
J. Searle
Reception
theory
by the Jacques Derrida-John
on the pages
in the eighties
of the journal Glyph, while
debate
Jean-Francois
theory of
Lyotard's
new set of contradictions.
to Austin's
and a whole
Alain
added
postmodernism
theory a new valence
one of the most
French
thinkers
of the 1990's, adamantly
Badiou,
prominent
rejects Austin's
theory
and philosophical
that rest on it.
projects
2
How
to Do Things with Words
Harvard
Press,
J. L. Austin,
1962), 12, italics
University
(Cambridge:
in the original.
will be included
in the text.
references
Subsequent
parenthetically
432
Branislav
Jakovljevic
3
Barbara
he gives
names
found
Johnson,
asserts
Johnson
to that from which
theatricality:
in Austin's
The Critical
he excludes
in the Contemporary
Essays
Difference:
Press,
1980), 65, italics in the original.
A Doll's House,
trans. Frank McGuinnes
Rhetoric
of Reading
University
Hopkins
4
Henrik
Ibsen,
(London:
in the text.
will be included
references
Subsequent
parenthetically
5
Freddie Rokem,
Theatrical Space in Ibsen, Chekhov and Strindberg: Public
UMI Research
Press,
1986), 17.
Faber
Forms
The
(Baltimore:
and
Faber,
of Privacy
Johns
1996),
(Ann Arbor:
1.
SHATTERED
BACKWALL
433
"Ibsen's most
optimistic social drama," does not have "a clear focal point with which
on the sidewall is not
the hero has to struggle."6 However,
the large, curtained window
room.
in this bourgeois
the only window
family living
At the end of the second act of A Doll's House Nora Helmer anxiously expects the
in which he threatens to reveal the major misdeed
letter from Krogstad
of her past. It
arrives:
surely
A Letterfalls into the post box.We hear Krogstad's footsteps which gradually diminish as he goes
down
a
gives
stifled
post box. The
enters with
the costume.
Mrs
Linde
Nora:
Mrs
Linde
Mrs
Linde:
Nora:
Mrs
cry, runs across the floor to the sofa table. There is a short pause.
-we
are lost.
letter's
there. Torvald,
Torvald
.
. . Nora
a
in
stifled way.
speaks hoarsely,
come here.
Kristine,
throws the clothes on the sofa.
are you
so
What's
wrong?
Why
upset?
Come
here. Do you see the letter? Look
Linde:
Yes,
I can
see
through
the glass
in the post
box.
it.
[67]
can see
We
Ibsen's
drama:
the
entire
on
is centered
play
letters,
cards,
contracts,
signatures
and
are
are
see
to
can
each
not
the
go wrong"
to
used
parallel
(52).
perform
between
By
an
statements
and
"statement"
Austin
and
utterances,
performative
to constatives,
utterances
refers
action
instead
to describe,
but
report,
or
"constate"
how
that
a
his
social
circumstances
conventions,
Ibid.,
and
lectures he returns
to considerations
of ceremonial
of utterance.
27.
acts,
434
Branislav Jakovljevic
Certainly, Austin's
objective
in appearance
interested
and
performance,
language
and
In his
action.
He
is
Harvard
doubt,
he
examines
how
that is incorrigible:
something
Reflections of this kind apparently give rise to the idea that there is or could be a kind of
sentence
in the utterance
I take no
of which
so that in
minimal;
principle
would
be "incorrigible."7
could
nothing
chances
show
that
at all, my
I had made
commitment
is absolutely
and my
remark
a mistake,
of empirical philosophy's
If, in Sense and Sensibilia Austin denies the "incorrigibility"
non-committed
speaker, in How to do Things with Words, he sets out to find the total
is absolutely
opposite to this absence of commitment. The "speaker" of a performative
utterance
to the utterance. Indeed, the very possibility
committed
of the performative
to her speech. A performative
utterance does not
depends on a speaker's commitment
to the world of disembodied,
It reminds us that
purely linguistic statements.
comes
not
it
and
is a bodily act.8
from
the
but
that
that,
language always
body,
only
belong
two examples
First
is the
to illustrate
sudden
this point.
appearance
of
the
reference
to Greek
tragedy
in the
of
conclusion
the introductory
lecture by restating the
the first lecture. Austin begins to wrap-up
a
an
utterance
be
that
may
by
appropriate gesture or
point
performative
accompanied
to a performative
that
that itmay be completely replaced by a gesture. Then, he moves
does
not
rely
on
a conventional
phrase,
speech,
and
even
gesture:
"the
awe-inspiring
that
to . . ." (9). Three years later, during the discussion
performative
at Royaumont,
followed his presentation
of the paper Performative-Constative
France,
Austin addressed briefly the structure of the "awe-inspiring"
performative, which, he
act which
in general
from "that species of mental
said, is inseparable
accompanies
in good faith to another, and which makes us say sotto voce T
every promise made
...
promise
7
myself
I promise
to keep
the promise
I've
just made'."9
Toward
the end
of
the
Press,
1962), 112, italics in the original.
(London: Oxford
University
to date The
act
in
dramatic
literature written
of a literary
speech
York: Cornell
Press,
1983),
(Ithaca, New
University
Literary Speech Act: Don Juan with J. L. Austin
at
utterance
is "a relation
Felman
and body
that the relation between
Shoshana
observed
consisting
8
utterance
is
that for this reason
and
and of inseparability,"
of incongruity
performative
it is doing"
in the fact that the act cannot know what
"the scandal
consists
"scandalous":
(96).
9
E. Caton
in Philosophy
ed. Charles
and Ordinary
"Performative-Constative"
J. L. Austin,
Language,
of Illinois Press,
1963), 38.
(Urbana: University
once
SHATTERED
BACKWALL
435
the respondent
Poirier characterized
this kind of "mental act" as a
on
the
which
"hazier
laws of belief, of probability, of
"performative
depends
thought,"
a
utterance
to
of
From
of
volition."10
loud
desire,
(sotto voce), to thought,
hope,
whisper
a
to the unconscious,
of
decreases
until it completely
performative
perceptibility
and
from
But
at Harvard, Austin
the
fields
of
back
disappears
philosophy
linguistics.
to
the
laws"
his
toward
the question of
escape
argument
managed
"hazy
by driving
discussion,
commitment:
Imust
not
be
joking,
nor
for example,
writing
a poem.
are
But we
to have
apt
feeling
that
their being serious consists in their being uttered as (merely) the outward and visible sign,
or other
for convenience
which
purposes
inward
it is but
a short
the
outward
record
step to go
utterance
or
on
for information,
of an inward
or to assume
to believe
without
is a description,
true
or
act: from
spiritual
that
for many
realizing
of the occurrence
of the
and
false,
performance.
[9]11
in the original Greek. In his comments on
He then offers the example from Hippolytus
Austin's
the significance
of this
lectures, philosopher
Stanley Cavell underlines
in discussion
of Austin
and theatre:
reference which was customarily
overlooked
"When Hippolytus
says, 'My tongue swore to, but my heart did not,' is he an actor on
a stage? Does he think he is, that is, takes himself to be on some inner stage?"12 Austin
line: "i.e. my tongue swore to, but my heart (or
offers his own translation of Euripides'
mind
or other backstage
(10).
stage
hands,
and
there
are
also
and
managers,
even
prompters.
Second,
discussion
elsewhere,
Austin
cunningly
insists
camouflaged
on
the
concreteness
so that it looked
10
Ibid., 49.
11
Italics in the original. Austin's
dismissal
The
whose
Arithmetic
Foundations
of
Frege,
book-length
work
that Austin
published
of
experience:
"If
his lifetime.
during
see The Foundations
church
were
and empiricism
of psychologism
This
into English.
translated
he
...
can be
traced
translation
to Gottlob
was
the only
on
For Frege's
and
empiricism
opinion
Northwestern
Arithmetic
(Evanston:
of
in relation
to analytic
logic,
psychology
and 37.
Press,
1968), especially
pages v, viii, 3,11,
University
12
A
Pitch
Exercise
Harvard
Cavell,
Autobiographical
Stanley
of Philosophy:
(Cambridge:
University
Press,
1994), 90.
13
one can not avoid
the obvious
how was
this footnote
Here,
raising
question:
(per
presented
in the lecture?
formed)
436
Branislav Jakovljevic
be raised about what we see when we look at it?We see, of course, a church that now
looks like a barn. We do not see an immaterial barn, an immaterial
church, or an
It is the
immaterial anything else."14 The analogy with theatre is more than obvious.
not
its
illusionist
the
that
of
theatrical
very materiality
stage,
just
provides
qualities,
continuity
between
The "abstracted" and "erased" fourth wall is just that: an abstraction and an erasure.
the spectator to
immaterial fourth wall permits
of the "invisible,"
The convention
scrutinize the events on stage, while at the same time it prevents
the events to "spill
over" from the stage into auditorium. A happy, successful performative
speech act
as
"break the
threatens
theatre
uttered on the naturalistic
to,
it,
stage
put
professionals
fourth wall" and render null and void the very conventions under which itwas uttered.
to propose
that the performative
This is, I hope, the appropriate moment
force of
not
wall
but
toward
the
theatre
toward
the
immaterial
naturalistic
is directed
front
rear
If
wall that delineates
of the stage.
the
the physical boundaries
visible, material
the relation of discontinuity
immaterial
front wall establishes
between
stage and
then the material back wall restores the continuity; it is a concrete object
auditorium,
with other concrete objects arranged on and in relation to it,which evokes the concrete
world behind it. The offstage area of the naturalistic
theatre is just as important as the
stage itself. It is the realm of pure potentiality. The encounter between the playwright,
and the audience does not happen, as it is commonly
assumed, on the
performers,
screen
occurs
It
in
front
wall.
is
of
the
invisible
the
transparent
offstage area. Offstage
event
the
the ambiguous
where
of
theatrical
and
sphere
experiential
"unreality"
"reality" of the audience interact, merge, and shape each other. If the footlights and the
convention of the immaterial fourth wall affirm the neat distinction between "reality"
and "unreality,"
the back wall and offstage area question
this distinction. As the
continuation
of the fictional reality of the stage event, the offstage area is the most
concrete immediately behind the back wall. The cleft on the mail box inA Doll's House
suggests what is beyond the Helmer
family room, the staircase, the entrance door of
the apartment building,
the street, and the city.
The offstage is not only a spatial but also a temporal category. In relation to the
in general, the generation of the theatrical event, from
opening night and performance
to dress rehearsals, happens offstage. Offstage
time is just
the process of script writing
as ambiguous
as offstage space: it can be slowed down or accelerated;
it can be
in
and
immediate
dramatic
observed
the
the
of
described, analyzed,
temporal vicinity
tense of the play "for
event, or in a distant past. The importance of the present
to
of
the
Peter
the
Szondi,
conjuring up
key element of Ibsen's
past" is, according
so
case
not
his
later
This
in
the
is
of
of A Doll's House: here
analytical technique
plays.15
the ongoing events of the play have the function of conjuring up the future. Or, more
the offstage past, the dramatic present, and the performative
future are
a
acts.
series
in
of
Considered
their
aligned by
performative
speech
totality, performative
speech acts employed on and backstage of A Doll's House reveal much more about the
characters than is discernable
from the naturalistic
logic of the play.
precisely,
14
Sense
Austin,
15
Peter Szondi,
Minnesota
Press,
and Sensibilia,
30, italics in the original.
ed. and trans. Michael
Drama,
Theory ofModern
1987), 16.
Hays
(Minneapolis:
University
of
SHATTERED
BACKWALL
Nora's
437
Knowledge
considerations
of a hypothetical
of "verbs that act" Austin
dictionary
two kinds of sources: the plain English dictionary and the law books.16 He
used in his analytic philosophy
with
repeatedly compared the word "performative"
the word "operative" as used in the language of jurisprudence. One of his favorite
antithesis was to compare itwith the
ways of illustrating the performative-constative
In his
mentions
her
workings
of the "transformational
grammar"
of shame
multiple
ways.
The
entire
macaroon
game
reveals
a network
of
unhappy
performatives.
16
In the last chapter
His
idea of a
a
list of performative
to do Things with Words Austin
outlines
of How
provisional
was
See her English
of performatives
pursued
by Anna Wierzbicka.
dictionary
Press
Academic
Australia,
1987).
Speech Act Verbs: A Semantic Dictionary
(Sidney:
17
23.
Austin,
"Performative-Constative,"
18
Ibid., 23.
19
Eve Kosofsky
'The Art Of the Novel/"
GLQ: A
"Queer Performativity:
James's
Henry
Sedgwick,
Journal of Lesbian and Gay Studies 1.1 (1993): 4.
20
Ibid., 13.
verbs.
438
Branislav
Jakovljevic
at the same
performatives
and
means
effective
for
is portrayed as being
is scared to death of
...
newspapers
[that] can do ...
on the
body; it bruises, injures,
such wicked
things about Papa
reaching
a writer
their
goals.
In act
two
of A Doll's
House
before
Krogstad
that she
meeting."23
21
Judith Butler,
In McFarlane's
22
reads:
Bodies
that Matter:
translation
On
the falsity
the Discursive
of Krogstad's
that anything
"It's hardly
to suppose
flattering
me\" Henrik
Ibsen, The Oxford Ibsen, vol. 5, ed. and
Press,
1961), 244, italics in the original.
University
23
Ibid., 301.
Limits
of "Sex" (London:
is much more
writing
this miserable
pen-pusher
trans.
James Walter
Routledge,
1993),
The
emphasized.
wrote
could
McFarlane
(London:
121.
line
frighten
Oxford
SHATTERED
BACKWALL
Unlike
effective,
original
seems
can
Nora-the-actress
only
an
imitate
439
any kind of
of producing
incapable
already
existing
text.
She proudly admits to Kristine Linde that a year earlier, while her family was in deep
financial trouble, she got a copying job and she worked
the rest of the
secretly, while
... like
was
to
Kristine
"it
She
confesses
that
felt
like
family
asleep.
being aman" (19).
Of course, this work remained hidden from Torvald. He has been led to believe that
Nora spent long winter nights making Christmas paper decorations, which were at the
in secrecy
end destroyed by a cat. Surely, that is not the only copying Nora undertook
and without Torvald's knowledge
and approval. She also copied her father's signature
on the contract for the loan she took from Krogstad. At one moment, Nora's
inau
is suddenly
from
thentic, forced, and forged writing
interrupted, but as it disappears
a
never
it
in
In
actions.
continues
her
and
about
Ibsen
paper,
gestures
play
writing,
shows the act of writing or reading explicitly on stage. All letters are written and read
in the play's back rooms, their contents are never fully presented
in view of the
audience. The network of performatives
forms an alternative notation of the play. This
in stage
hidden notation parallels
the conventional
notation of the play executed
directions.24
writing
is important
because
knowledge.
Torvald's performative
establishes his wife's
interpellation
effectively
ignorance;
awoman-child.
the skylark is a feather-brained woman,
The expense that Nora pays is
In the opening scenes of the play, this ignorance appears as
precisely her knowledge.
studied and artificial; it is as feigned as is the signature on the contract that she has
given
encounter
to Krogstad.
with
Kristine.
The
same
begins
pretense
of
to deteriorate
a careless
in her
already
intellectual
relation with
in Nora's
first
feather-weight
Torvald
becomes
24
are the
to drama
inherent
and theatre
that Austin
Stage directions
only performatives
readily
into his taxonomy
includes
acts.
In
How
to
of performative
Do
speech
Things with Words he classifies
them into the family
"a kind of performative
that he names
concerned
behavitives,
roughly with
to behaviour
reactions
and with
others
and designed
to exhibit
behaviour
toward
attitudes
and
(83).
feelings"
25
Commenting
"it's the closest
440
Branislav
/
Mrs
Linde:
Jakovljevic
this
Nora,
I know
Nora:
Mrs
Linde
Mrs
Linde:
is so kind
of you,
you want
-1 know
little
to
help
me
especially
you who
knows
are a child,
Nora.
smiles.
Dear
God,
you
do
some
needlework,
you
embroider
you
[15]
finds insulting this comment about her childishness:
"You are as bad as the rest
of them. You all think that I'm useless when
it comes to knowing how hard life can
be -" (15). Ignorance is not the lack of learning, but the lack of experience,
the lack of
In this bourgeois home, inexperience
amounts
to uselessness
empirical knowledge.
not only inwork but also in dealing with the "facts of life," which are incorrigible and
use of knowledge
fundamental. Nora's question about the possibility
of woman's
("if
a wife knows how to use her brains") sets her on a journey out of ignorance. However,
Nora
her emergence
from structural stupidity
is not procured by accumulation
of knowl
and
Ibsen
avoids
the
of
the
experience.
edge
skillfully
trappings
bildungsrornan, that
more
masculine
excellence.
is
Nora's
task
much
difficult
than collecting
genre par
an
and
archival
Her
out
of
the feigned
way
experiences
building
knowledge.
not
leads
her
toward
but
true
toward
kind of
This
ignorance
knowledge
ignorance.
and forgetting
ignorance cannot be achieved through learning, or through unlearning
of the already existing knowledge.
This kind of ignorance is not a matter of exposure
and experience,
and commitment.
but of decision
The only way out of the false
out
of
the
learned
and toward true ignorance is a
absence
of
ignorance,
knowledge,
leap,
a decisive
and momentous
break.
us
to see
unravels
the
only
in a series
rehearsal,
the promise
of performance.
and
rehearsals
try-outs,
of deliberations,
this movement
in a way
similar
to Austin's
In this
sense,
of Nora's
isolation
A Doll's
decisive
of a perform
utterance.
the silk stockings from her costume box and shows them to Rank. That is not enough.
The room is in semi-darkness,
and she describes
the stockings: "The colour of flesh.
aren't
Rank
with
She
touches
the stockings. Flesh to flesh: a
Lovely,
they?" (57).
a
woman
to
and
Nora is not a seductress: she
Flesh
death.
healthy young
living corpse.
is being seduced by the possibility
of a disfiguring
death. She rejects this possibility,
and this decision
resonates
throughout
BACKWALL
SHATTERED
441
Nora reaches the nadir of her seductive play with death during her second agon
the protagonists'
In the early draft of A Doll's House, in which
with Krogstad.
family
name is Stenborg, Ibsen composed dialogue that abounds with references to death and
in the final draft of the play Nora briefly and unconvincingly
self-destruction. Where
warns Krogstad
commit suicide, in the early draft they discuss that
that she might
that she will
and
detail. Here, Nora is almost convinced
at
much greater length
issue
to
confesses
she
have to die young and leave her children behind;
Krogstad that in the
then
lists the
He
else."
about
painstakingly
nothing
past few days she "thought
acts
is the
in
final
of
this
suicide. Incorporated
inventory
possible ways of committing
name
But
what
be.
means?
That
Helmer: "Krogstad:
first mention of the family
may
by
Poison? Not so easy to get hold of. Shoot yourself? That takes a fair amount of skill,
Mrs.
Helmer.
Ugh,
Hanging?
that's
an
business...
ugly
you
get
cut down."26
As
we
are
Famous for his intimacy with his fictional characters, Ibsen once made a remark that
the proper name of A Doll's House's heroine "was not really Nora." He continues, "She
was christened 'Eleonora.' But at home they called her 'Nora' because she was such a
is real about the name of a
little pet."27 (At which home? Who christened her? What
was
the
unshaken
followed
Ibsen's
fictional character?
public conviction in the
by
play
as 1924, the Boston
a
As
a
late
and
doll's
house.
real
Nora
Helmer
real
existence of
the article entitled "The Real Doll's House"
The Living Age published
based magazine
was portrayed as the model
for Ibsen's
Laura
Kieler
inwhich the elderly Danish lady
out
the
of the
Koht
Nora Helmer.28) Ibsen's biographer Halvdan
points
symbolism
stone.
the
word stenbo,
name Stenborg, which at its root has the Norwegian
According
into a
husband"
to Koht, Ibsen changed this "too obvious reference to domineering
to
class Helmer."29 However,
"neutral middle
stenbo, the stone, also refers
weight,
a baptism
turns
into
of
Nora
suicide
The
failed
and
Stenborg
sinking.
gravity, falling,
In the first version of the play, Krogstad hypothetically
of the heroine Nora Helmer.
Mrs.
Helmer deep into the cold water of the noisy, wild
new-named
the
submerges
river:
Nora:
Krogstad:
What
Krogstad:
Nora:
26
river.
The
You
Yes,
is?
see
it all,
it's no use
trying
to hide
it. I haven't
courage
to die.30
321.
Ibsen,
1971),
House,"
and
ed.
trans.
Einar
Haugen
and A.
E. Santaniello
318.
The Living Age
320
(1924): 415-16.
321.
(New
York:
442
Branislav
Jakovljevic
of the play
this scene
is considerably
condensed:
then, in the
the ice, perhaps? Sinking into the black, cold water? And
Krogstad:
Under
Nora:
to the surface,
spring,
floating
You can't frighten me.
with
unrecognizable,
ugly,
your
hair
fallen
out.
[66]
"I haven't courage to die" turns into "I am not afraid of life" and "I have courage to
live." The elaborate drama of sneaking out from the house, of a terrifying night walk
to the riverbank, and of a desperate
leap into the stream of "black water" has been
replaced by the final image of a disfigured, bloated, and hairless female body. In his
narration of Nora's eventual suicide, Ibsen relies on the literary tradition of feminine
the body of the victim initially remains intact.
death. In the suicide by drowning,
this un-heroic body receives an excess of liquid. In
Instead of heroic blood shedding,
of "the Ophelia
her discussion
complex," Elaine Showalter asserts that "water is the
and
of
the liquid woman whose eyes are so easily drowned
profound
organic symbol
in tears, as her body is a repository of blood, amniotic fluid, and milk."31
the ridge. The possibility
of the leap seems
young woman
approaches
can
side by pushing
from
the
the
of
She
reach
the
other
disaster
inseparable
plummet.
means
stream
herself
with
the
exposure, desecration,
go
resolutely upwards. Letting
and fatal inversion of the interior. Nora's rejection of suicide is her decisive turn away
in the final version of Ibsen's
from the drowned Ophelia. Although
underemphasized
as her refusal to compromise with Torvald.
drama, this rejection is just as momentous
The two rejections constitute the two sides of the same decision: the image of a lifeless,
The
bloated
body
doll.
At one point in A Doll's House, the play's visual and verbal contents are violently
at the moment
is exhausted
The meaning
of the spatial organization
separated.
Torvald opens the letterbox. The notation of performance hidden in letters ceases with
the burning of the contract that contains Nora's
forged signature. This separation of
voice and image is accurately described by Austin:
to say
It is better
you something
often are void
of
that
but
because
the putative
it is not mine
the objects
statement
is null
or
been
(having
are about
they
and void,
exactly
is no longer
exist, which
as when
I say
in existence.
burnt)
do not
involves
that
I sell
Contracts
a breakdown
reference.
[137]
this "breakdown of reference"
evidence has been destroyed. However,
The material
"Precision in
does not end the drama. What is left, then, is the force of performatives.
- its
Austin:
what
is
it
said
makes
clearer
"explicit
meaning," explains
being
language
ness,
in our
Austin
sense,
referred
other meaning,
makes
clearer
the
force
of
the utterance"
to the performative
force as "the second
true
and
false, is the expressiveness
beyond
(73). On
another
occasion,
kind of
'meaning'."32 The
and explicitness
of action.
31
Elaine
of Feminist
and the Responsibilities
Madness,
Showalter,
"Representing
Ophelia: Women,
Hartman
in Shakespeare and the Question
Patricia
and
ed.
Parker
(New
Geoffrey
of Theory,
in literature
in his Water
the "Ophelia
Bachelard
discusses
York: Methuen,
1985), 81. Gaston
complex"
Criticism"
and Dreams:
32
Austin,
Essay on Imagination
"Performative-Constative,"
An
ofMatter
43.
(Dallas:
Pegasus
Foundation,
1983),
80-85.
SHATTERED
BACKWALL
443
In the coda of A Doll's House, the language becomes more real than the objects on stage.
This force is the only reality of theatre, continuous with the offstage reality. Nora's
ends before she slams the
voyage from false ignorance into true absence of knowledge
street door offstage. By the moment
she declares her ignorance
she has already
told
departed: "I don't even know what religion is... I only know what Pastor Hansen
me when Iwas confirmed"
of life,
(101). Her leap is not calculated. It is not knowledge
but an affirmation of life, of the outside, infinite, boundless.
The
Prospect
to
the promise
to
her
the wedding
ring
"good-bye," opens the door, passes
the sound comes from downstairs.
street. Nora's final exit is not seen
She has made
returned
of
the Performative
to herself. She
leave, the awe-inspiring
promise
husband.
She un-married
herself. Now
she says
in the stairwell. Then
and disappears
the mailbox,
Another door slams shut. She is outside, on the
or reported. It comes as a noise. This sound is raw
As Nora
on
the pavement
entrances
and she
Dances,
Into the laughing
circle
The magic
of her
As Nora
on
dances
circle
the grey
of her
glances,
the midnight
hour
power.
pavement.33
imagined
33
Arthur
Symons,
34
Bernard
Shaw,
Brentano's,
35
Ibid.,
1922),
260.
and reimagined,
corrected,
reversed,
Seeker,
1924), 173.
an
With
Apology
and questioned.
by Bernard
Shaw
(New
York:
444
Branislav
Jakovljevic
In the early stage history of A Doll's House, this urge to "epilogize" Nora's story was
often indistinguishable
from the urge to apologize
for the play. In Germany,
Ibsen's
text was appended with a fourth act in which a "reconciliation"
is achieved between
at the price of the cynical scorn of Nora. At the end of this phantom fourth
the Helmers
in
Nora
which
act,
begs his forgiveness, Torvald "pulls an enormous paper bag out of
his pocket, opens it, takes out a macaroon
and pops it in her mouth,"
at which Nora
cries in rapture: "The miracle
of miracles!"36 The actress Hedwig
Neimann-Raabe
refused
to perform
in this bowdlerized
Less
to Besant's thermodynamics
fortunes. According
of fate, when the Helmers plummet,
the Krogstads
rise: Torvald becomes a desperate drunk, and Krogstad the chairman of
the bank's board and a mayor. And Nora? She, says Besant, "went forth to find Herself. She found something
and called it Herself."39 In short, she became a writer
and a prominent women's
her new vocation
takes her on a
rights leader. Although
tour through European capitals, "Norah" (Besant spells Nora's name with
perpetual
an "h" at the end,
to make it closer to his English readers) never entirely
apparently
ever
leaves the scene of her crime: she occasionally
returns to her hometown without
her
visiting
children
and
husband.
mother's
36
York: Harper
and Brothers,
1892),
1971),
459,
Camellia
italics
in the original.
Stephanotis
327.
and Other
Stories
BACKWALL
SHATTERED
445
there, and so is Christine. The burden on the hands of the people in the procession
finally revealed. It is the body of Emmy who did precisely what her mother refused
do twenty years earlier. There she lies in the image of fair Ophelia:
Emmy
lay upon
her
had arranged
cheek
lashes
was
white
lying
on
is
to
who
had
found her; someone
formed
by the coats of the fishermen
as if in prayer;
across her bosom;
her
her hands were
joined
long fair hair
the long
her eyes were
and waxen,
in no way
closed,
injured by the water;
at rest, and for ever.40
the cheek; her face was
a bier
The publication of Besant's story launched a frenzy of the writing of sequels to A Doll's
of literary sequels, the genre that marked
House. This was not an ordinary progression
the literature of the Victorean era. While
sequels to A Doll's House, as well as sequels'
a
continuation
in
of the narrative, what
the form of
they
sequels, often appear
reverse
installment.41 It is a debate
the main point of the previous
effectively do is
is actually a
carried out under the guise of literary sequels. In a debate, continuation
a
and context. Besant's story
critical citation used against its original meaning
citation,
Ibsen's play. As a response to the
does not continue, or complete, or set in motion
statement made by the play, it clearly represents the play's effect, which brings us back
if the
and his insistence that "an effect must be achieved on the audience
act
to
out"
The
effect
the
is
be
carried
(116).^
illocutionary
produced
by
illocutionary
speech act is a part of the total speech act: "generally the effect amounts to bringing
and of the force of the locution. So the
of the meaning
about the understanding
an
act
involves
of
securing uptake" (117, italics in the
illocutionary
performance
to Austin
original).
is a theatre review. In his
response to a theatrical performance
the
Besant
Ibsen's
takes
unconventional
up
response,
literally
play and presents
ensues
wants
to
Besant
of the play.
that
after the conclusion
inevitable outcome
autonomous
that
Helmer
is
somehow
convince his "fair readers"
the
family history
from the writer's will, that it develops
according to laws and certainties that are far
more predictable
than mere intentions of the author. Thus, A Doll's House becomes a
return and continuation. Nora can not
of perpetual
house haunted by the possibility
once.
In Besant's sequel, Christine says to Norah, who is about to depart
return only
The conventional
"perfectly cold and indifferent" to the fate of her family: "Go! you will be haunted for
ever with the destruction
of your own children by your own hand."43 Nora's
story,
of definite
however
trivialized by Besant, is the story of haunting and impossibility
departure. But from where? Toward what?
Besant's treatment of Ibsen's play was again taken up
Shortly after its publication,
Bernard
His
Shaw.
by George
sequel of the sequel, entitled "Still After The Doll's
40
Ibid., 337.
41
Gerard Genette
new
a work
in motion
asserts
that a literary sequel
"set[s]
again with
episodes"
Literature
in the Second Degree,
Gerard
considered
Genette,
Palimpsests:
already
complete.
trans. Charma Newman
and Claude
of Nebraska
Press,
(Lincoln: University
1997), 162.
Doubinsky
we
are
between
where
in
^Austin
distinguishes
illocutionary
performatives,
doing
something
that was
saying
and
something,
Butler
something.
Judith
Performative
conventions,
43
Besant,
(London:
perlocutionary
discusses
performatives,
this
important
1997). She asserts
Routledge,
acts proceed
perlocutionary
338.
"The Doll's,"
by way
where
distinction
that "whereas
of consequences"
we
are
doing
by saying
something
in Excitable
Speech: A Politics
of the
acts proceed
illocutionary
by way of
(17).
446
Branislav
House,"
was
Jakovljevic
in "Time"
published
in
1890.44
February
Besant's
story
with
concludes
the laconic address of the carriage driver to Norah: "Madame will be in time to catch
the train."45 In Shaw's continuation of the narrative, she changes her mind and returns
for her. In the ensuing
the elder waiting
(again) to her room only to find Krogstad
reverses
all of its major
and
Shaw
Besant's
story by revisiting
reinterpreting
dialogue
within
Doll's
House?And
After":
House"46
resides
"The
"Still
After
The
Doll's
points.
comes
it.
to
He
and
enters
and
examines
the
cracks
haunt
Shaw
Besant's tale
gaps in
secret
and exposes
the architecture of Besant's narrative, brings down false walls,
name
rooms. Nora
is restored in this sequel) discovers
(the original spelling of her
in their sons' successful
"cupboard skeletons" in the lives of Krogstad and Christine,
of the bank's Board of Directors over
affairs of the members
careers, in the hypocritical
which Krogstad presides. Besant's offstage world shrugs, trembles, and cracks open as
Ibsen's play and all of its sequels return to it.
is the sequel to Ibsen's play, which
Shaw's story is a sequel to Besant's story, which
is based on a biographical
accident from the life of Laura Kieler, who first came in
a
touch with Ibsen as a twenty-year-old
sequel to his play Brand.
girl who published
The suffering caused by her affair with the forged bill of exchange, which Ibsen used
as a pretext for his play, was much harsher than any theatrical and literary sequel: her
husband Victor Kieler divorced her; her children, including a newly born baby, were
to a mental
from her; and she was committed
asylum. She told her
to
two
that
[Victor Kieler's] plea and returned to
years later she "agreed
biographer
their marriage,"
primarily in order to get back to her children.47 A decade later Laura
the play The Men of Honor in which
she "turned the sting against the
Kieler wrote
life's most serious subjects."48 Ibsen
artists' and writers' purely aesthetic play with
a public statement about
endorsed her play but carefully avoided making
privately
and
his
The
of Men of
Nora Helmer.
between Laura Kieler
differences
publication
the newspaper
Honor provoked heated debate in the Kopenhagen
press.49 Eventually,
an article which
referred to the past of the author of The Men of
Politiken published
taken away
Honor,
of
her
asserting
male
that
she
colleagues."50
doesn't
The
have
the
article
was
"to
right
signed
constitute
herself
"Helmer."
Laura
judge
Kieler,
of
"the
some
real
44
Another
was
provoked
reconciliation
woman
a prominent
Ednah D. Cheney,
to A Doll's House, written
New
England
by
in Boston. This story of
In April
1890, a slim volume was published
sequel.
by Besant's
not surprisingly,
Nora's
told in epistolary
and Helmer
between
Nora
prose was entitled,
sequel
Return.
45
"The Doll's,"
338.
Besant,
46
and Company,
Bernard
Shaw, Short Stories, Scarps and Shavings
1932).
(New York: Wise
47
in Edda: Nordisk
Ibsen og Laura Kieler"
B. M. Kinck,
"Henrik
tidsskrift for litteraturforskning,
Argang
"Laura
See also B. M. Kinck,
translation
into English
22, Bind 35,1935,
by Anja Musiat.
unpublished
and Bookman 37 (1937): 12-15.
The London Mercury
for Ibsen's Nora,"
Kieler: The Model
48
21.
"Henrik Kieler,"
Kinck,
49
were Danish
that raised campaign
to Laura Kieler,
the main
against her
conspirators
According
was at that time member
who
brother
Brandes
and
his
friend
and
Ibsen's
critic
Edvard,
Georg
literary
of the management
of Royal
affair and on the relationship
1935.
Kieler,"
50
Ibid., 26.
Theater
in Kopenhagen,
between
which
Kieler,
rejected Kieler's
see B. M. Kinck,
of this
play. For details
"Henrik
Ibsen og Laura
SHATTERED
BACKWALL
447
society suffering
wants
to aid
in
. . .
. . . the
marriage
revolutionizing
Eleanor
relationship."52
used
poet.
Marx
reversing
the
in order
out
these
sanitary
repairs.
We
repeat,
we
have
carried
out
our
work
to A Doll's
House
do
permits
not
prove
the onstage
only
Shaw's
that
to merge.
the performance
The
of
this
sees
as
the performative
a "discoursive
production,"
and
performativity
as
the
51
Bernard
52
Edward
dwelling,
he returns
of human
inferiority,
to the problem
of dwelling
The Master
Builder
action,
and,
above
and dolls.
IfA Doll's
House
to think
is an attempt
of return.
all, the impossibility
was
through
ameditation
the problem
on
of
448
Branislav
Jakovljevic
one opposes"
in that which
and "turning the power
of being implicated
never
Austin
the relation between
the
itself."55 While
against
explicitly
analyzes
utterance and the uttering subject, it is clear that a performative
haunts its speaker:
to loud utterance,
it binds the speaker's body to
from a mental
act, to whisper,
the utterance
retains the same form, but the
discourse.
By the end of this process,
"relation
Kieler,
irrevocably
Nora
Helmer,
transformed.
Eleanor
Marx.
Laura,
Eleanor.
Eleonora/Nora,
There
are
Henrik
reversals of performative
force, of interpellations and misrecog
unhappy performatives,
nitions. Ifwe take Victor Kieler and Edward Aveling as the two cardinal points in the
of discourse,
will become
the power of its performatives,
chain, the actual persistence
obvious. At the end of the chain, the story unravels with an almost unbearable certainty.
At home they called her Eleanor Tussy. She was a pet child of an aging father. When
he died she wrote the obituary for secularist monthly Progress edited by another older
and impressive man, Dr. Edward Aveling. She fell in love. He was already married, but
his wife ran away with a priest, or so believed Eleanor's father's best friend, Friedrich
Engels. Eleanor confided in a letter to a friend: "I cannot be his wife legally, but itwill
as much as if a dozen registrars had officiated." They
to me?just
be a truemarriage
shared their political opinions and love for theatre: he was an emerging dramatist, and
a reading of A Doll's
she was an aspiring actress. In the same year they organized
inwhich they commended
House, they co-authored the article "The Woman Question"
and debts. In the future society,
of marriage based on borrowing
Ibsen's denunciation
the
the constant lying, that makes
there will be no "hideous disguise,
they wrote,
life of almost all our English homes an organized hypocrisy."56 They toured
domestic
Great Britain and the United States, giving lectures and organizing political rallies. She
in theatre, and he achieved some recognition as a playwright
performed
occasionally
In June 1897 the playwright Alec Nelson married
Alec Nelson.
under the pseudonym
the actress Eva Frye at the registry office at Chelsea. The political activist and lecturer
Dr. Edward Aveling
continued his "free union" with Eleanor Marx. Two years later
life of her partner. She summoned
Eleanor received a letter that exposed the hidden
him home, and "a stormy interview" followed. He left. Eleanor did not drown: she
had a bath, dressed inwhite, retired to bed, and drank chloroform mixed with prussic
acid. Eleanor, the reversed Nora, left a note: "Dear, itwill soon be all over now. My last
- love."
word to you is the same that I have said during all these long, sad years
55
Butler,
56
Eleanor
Bodies,
Marx
241.
and Edward
Aveling,
The Woman
Question
(London,
1886),
36.