A Doll House

A Doll House by Henrik Ibsen

This play was a lot better than I remember it in high school. Nora is a ditzy materialistic housewife. She seems very excited about the promotion to bank manager her husband Torvald is about to receive. He chastises her for plotting to spend it before he has started to receive it. She has three kids, but likes to have the hired-help take care of them. She likes to buy presents for others, but just presents for herself. An old friend comes to town. She has been divorced and needs a job. Nora pulls some strings with her husband to secure a job at the bank. However, this ends up causing things to unwind for her. To give a job to her friend, her husband is letting Krogstad go. Nora had received a loan from Krogstad with a forged signature from her dying father. Krogstad holds this against her. (Nora had taken out the loan to help her husband convalesce in the south.) Nora doesn't want her husband to find out. However, he reads the letter from Krogstad and flips out. He is more concerned for himself than for Nora. Then when he receives the paid off note, he is happy again. It is Nora's turn to flip out and decide she will leave them to be independent.

Nora is quite unreliable and is prone to take things to extreme. I wasn't sure that she had really taken out the loan. Was she just exaggerating to feel better with her friends? When it appeared she did take out hte loan, she went to extremes to hide it from her husband and prevent it Krogstad from doing negative things. There was a lot of toeing around issues to try to get what was needed. Then when it came to that she did it, she flipped out and decided to drop her life and not live in a "Doll House". They both seem to delight in controlling each other. There seemed to be some love in the relationship, but also some mutual manipulation. They both were most interested in caring for themselves. Nora also came from a family with some not-so-good characters. Is the rash behavior and familial abandonment just another case of this behavior? The L.A. Theater Works production was well done with some great actors. This helps the play come alive.

Daisy Miller

After the discussions of Henry James in Reading Lolita in Tehran, I decided to try out some more Henry James. Daisy Miller looked like a short work. It has a super simple plot. An American girl meets an American guy in Europe. They develop something of a friend/romantic relationship. The girl also meets with other local guys. She tells the American she was engaged. She later dies from a fever after a late-night rendezvous with a European guy. However, before she died, she wanted to make sure the American knew she was not really engaged. Surprisingly, the story is good and well written. Daisy comes across as a striving flirt among a "moderate new money" crowd. She is not part of the "upper" ex-pat crowd in Europe and she knows it. Yet, she also knows she is quite pretty and will use her charm on men to get what she wants. There are "rules" of societal engagement in the late nineteenth century America that she likes to flout. She takes advantage of her position in Europe to be different and try to live her life as she sees fit. You get the sense she is striving to move up the social ladder, but is not quite ready to commit. Eventually her behavior catches up with her, leading to her untimely death. The male interest, Winterbourne seems nearly passive in this experience. While initially taking an active role in the introduction to Daisy, he later seems to be a passive participant.
Despite being written almost 140 years ago, Daisy Miller reflects some of the "American Elitism" that is seen today. Despite spending extended time in Europe, the Miller's still view Schenectady, New York as the source of everything great. Even far away from home, the American norms are expected to apply.