In 1878, a woman named Laura Kieler wrote to the Norwegian playwright Henrik Ibsen. She asked him for help with a financial scandal that threatened her family. Laura had signed an illegal loan to save her husband Victor from tuberculosis. When Victor discovered the secret, he divorced her and had her committed to an asylum. This real-life tragedy became the foundation for Nora Helmer in A Doll's House. Ibsen watched his friend suffer while she begged for his intervention. He felt unable or unwilling to act on her behalf. Instead, he turned this painful situation into a dramatic work of art. The play opened at the Royal Danish Theatre in Copenhagen on the 21st of December 1879. It featured Betty Hennings as Nora and Emil Poulsen as Torvald. Every performance during its initial run sold out completely.
The Publisher And The Playbook
Ibsen began thinking about the play around May 1878. He did not start writing the first draft until a year later. On the 15th of September 1879, he sent a fair copy of the completed play to his publisher. The text was first published in Copenhagen on the 4th of December 1879. An edition of 8,000 copies sold out within a single month. A second edition of 3,000 copies followed on the 4th of January 1880. A third edition of 2,500 copies was issued on the 8th of March 1880. Ibsen outlined his conception of the play as a modern tragedy in a note written in Rome on the 19th of October 1878. He argued that women could not be themselves in an exclusively male society. The play challenged laws made by men who assessed feminine conduct from a masculine standpoint. This bold stance created immediate demand for the script across Scandinavia.