Mrs. Linde

Mrs. Linde is portrayed in the first act as a woman who has gotten through a lot of hardships but has become an independent, mature and strong-willed woman. However, what is more important than Ibsen’s portrayal of her is Nora’s portrayal of her and how we are able to explore Nora using the character of Mrs. Linde. Her matureness and independence mean that she has become Nora’s idol and her interaction with Nora is essential for us to understand Nora’s dreams and ambitions.

Firstly, although Nora treats her with a good amount of respect, for example she catches herself when she begins to speak too much, she speaks to Mrs. Linde in a very childish and informal manner. She uses phrases like ‘Pooh!’ and she playfully built up the drama before she told Mrs. Linde that she borrowed money for Torvald’s life-saving trip to Italy. This is in clear contrast to Mrs. Linde’s more sober phrases like ‘I haven’t a father to pay my fare’. Thus Nora is portrayed as a lot more childish and immature than Mrs. Linde, a fact which can easily be deduced by their contrasting histories.

By itself this fact doesn’t highlight Nora’s aspiration to achieve Mrs. Linde’s degree of independence. But this can be shown by how Nora has heroized her one act of independence: borrowing the money from Krogstad. She also gets very reproachful when Mrs. Linde calls her a baby. This shows that Nora doesn’t want to be dependent on her husband. She says that Mrs. Linde looks down on her even though Mrs. Linde says she doesn’t. This shows that in Nora’s eyes that the impression she made on Mrs. Linde; that of a dependent immature woman who’s never experienced hardship, is something that Mrs. Linde has the right to look down upon. Therefore Nora already believes that a woman who has to rely on the constraints of male-dominated society is inferior to a woman independent of those constraints.

This would explain why Nora gets very dramatic and triumphant when she describes how she borrowed money to send Torvald on his life saving holiday. But there is no doubt that Nora must’ve felt that her sense of independence has been challenged by this visit. For example before she describes how she borrowed the money Nora suddenly starts getting very aggressive, saying phrases like ‘Don’t be so superior’ and, as mentioned before, when she accused Mrs. Linde of looking down on her. That means that the reason she describes her secret is in response to Mrs. Linde’s passive challenge to her independence. Although Mrs. Linde appears satisfied at this proof of Nora’s independence, it’s highly unlikely that Nora will.

In conclusion, the importance of Mrs. Linde in A Doll’s House is not as a character but as a way for Nora to reflect on her independence in a male-dominated household and to serve as a personal goal which Nora strives to reach.

A Doll's House p, 1-5 scene directions+dialogue

The first four or five pages of A Doll's House is meant to highlight the relationship between Torvald and Nora Helmer at the beginning of the play, before the introduction of new characters such as Krogstad, Mrs. Linde and Dr. Rank.

Possibly one of the main ideas prevalent through these first few pages is the way Torvald always seems to treat Nora like a pet or a child. He always calls her 'my little skylark' and 'a sweet little songbird'. This shows that in Torvald's eyes Nora is, and always will be, the frivolous innocent girl he considers his own. His pet names often begin with "my", signifying his belief that he owns Nora like a man can own a pet songbird. He gives Nora a lot of teacher-like gestures, like 'wagging his finger at her' and telling her 'But the thing is, you cant [save money]!', showing that he seems to view himself as Nora's father, which is an easy role to fill considering she no longer has one. This might explain why he always speaks to Nora with a playful, innocent tone: to him, Nora has the sophistication of a little girl and won't be able to contend with more serious, adultlike conversations. Finally, Torvald seems to think that this is what happens with all woman. When Nora claimed that if she owed money to someone and Torvald died then she wouldn't care about the money, Torvald claimed 'That is like a woman!'. These all show that Torvald views Nora as a pet unable to survive on her own and that Torvald thinks he must keep Nora as such an animal.

It seems that at face value Nora accepts Torvald's childlike depiction of her. She never complains that she is being called herself such names and even calls herself one of Torvald's pet names when she says 'You haven't any idea how many expenses we skylarks and squirrels have, Torvald.'. In someways the audience feels that Nora does act like a child or a pet sometimes. For example, she sometimes uses childlike words such as 'Pooh!' and the stage directions once described her 'squealing'. She also seems quite careless when it comes to finiancial matters; she carelessly bought a bag of macaroons and paid the Christmas tree porter twice what she should've. This childlish behaviour is heightened even more when Mrs. Linde, a widow for three years, arrives and the contrast between Nora and Linde's hardworking capability can be seen easier. This also shows that the reason Nora sometimes acts so childishly is because unlike Mrs. Linde she has a husband who expects her to behave like that.

However, it is also obvious that Nora aspires to be more than a child. This has caused her real personality to drift slightly from the personality her husband sees in her. For example, she had very little trouble keeping away the secret that she bought a bag of macaroons, even when Torvald told her to look him in the eyes. She has experience in keeping secrets from Torvald and probably derives some mischeivous sense of satisfaction from doing it (when she told Mrs. Linde how she borrowed money and kept it a secret from Torvald she felt proud of herself). Because she has diverged from Torvald's 'perfect wife model she begins to feel more afraid and secluded from Torvald than normal. For example she is afraid of disturbing Torvald at his study so she just cautiously sidles to the door and waits. When Torvald asks her whether she bought macaroons or not, or when he tells Nora he won't give her any more money, she retreats to some furniture object, such as a stove or a table, as if it's a place where she can feel secure and keep away from Torvald's probings. She also feels afraid of asking something from Torvald; for example when Torvald was asking her what she wanted for Christmas (money) Nora just hesitated and played with Torvald's coat buttons. In fact, this fear of Torvald seems to be the reason that Nora continues acting like a child; because it's what Torvald wants 'her little skylark' to act like, and Nora is to afraid of upsetting Torvald.

The final important idea of these first few lines is that all these relationships seems to revolve around money. Money was at the heart of middle class life at that time and Henrik Ibsen, being born to a middle class family which encountered severe monetary problems, understood the influence and power money can bring. In A Doll's House money seems to be at the hub of Nora and Torvald's relationship. For example, when Torvald agreed to give Nora forty dollars her mood suddenly brightened from cold to overjoyed as she turned quickly and shouted 'Money!'. Torvald himself views money very conservatively, telling Nora that the family can never borrow money even if greater riches (in this case Torvald's promotion) are just a few days away. The house seems to revolve around this attitude of fiscal conservatism, with the furniture inexpensive and the main investment being the books on the shelf. Nora, on the other hand, seems very careless around money, as we have already saw. Torvald says that 'as soon as you have got it [the money] it seems to melt in your hands.' Later we realize that this is partly because Nora actually does owe a large sum of money and is using the money she gets from Torvald to pay the debt. The fact that she's in debt, which Torvald would see as a mortal sin, probably contributes to Nora's slight emotional distance from Torvald. The importance of money in Nora and Torvald's relationship is a common feature of middle class life those days and hints that the imbalance of family status between Nora and Torvald draws some of its roots from the elements of the 19th century bourgoisie culture.

In conclusion, the stage directions and dialogue of the first five pages of A Doll's House shows how Torvald views Nora as a pet, how Nora half goes along with this notion and half wishes to be more than a pet, and how this entire relationship seems to be wrapped in the golden foil of money. Although covered by the warm, merry glow of Christmas Eve, their conversations and actions highlight the harsh coldness of their situation just outside the room, blowing its frosty reality at them all day long.

Henrik Ibsen - Biography

Henrik Ibsen

Henrik Ibsen, born in 1828 to a middle class merchant who often experienced monetary problems, grew up dissatisfied with the world around him. For example he believed that the needs of the individual was greater than the needs of the society. Although at the beginning of his life he wanted to be an artist or a physician, he eventually decided to go into playwriting, writing Catiline and The Burial Mound when he was around 20. The Burial Mound was played three times but wasn’t really noticed, and neither was Catiline. Still, his playwriting career had started. After writing a few dozen plays in Norway, mostly about Norwegian folklore and history, and not attracting very large audiences he decided to move abroad, and focus his plays on the more complicated aspects of human nature and society. He wrote abroad for the next 27 years.

He started his abroad trips with a play that brought him a much larger audience than any of his plays back at home: Brand, 1865, was about a priest who felt he had to combat the ungodly society he lived in. After losing his family he failed and was buried in an avalanche. Liking where this was going, he wrote two other plays along the same rebellious lines; Peer Gynt in 1867 about a rebellious, wasteful youth and The Emperor and the Galilean in 1873 about Julian, a pagan emperor of Christian Rome. After The Emperor and the Galilean he began to write plays that stressed more on modern day society, like A Doll’s House in 1879 and The Wild Duck in 1884. His subjects got more frightening and touchy, for example Ghosts, 1881, which included philandering and syphilis, and Hedda Gabler, 1890, about a neurotic woman.

Many of these plays focus on problems with society and the individual. A Doll’s House focuses on the oppressed place of women in society while other plays like Brand and The Wild Duck attacked the mix of political idealism and weakness in society. Because of this he was sometimes criticized as being too conservative, although in The Enemy of the People he attacked both the ideologies of conservatism and liberalism at the same time. It appears that many of his earliest works were influenced by Henrik Wergeland, although after brand he began to pay closer attention to other philosophers and playwrights such as Kierkegaard. Bjornsterne Bjornson was also no doubt a big influence on his plays.

Persona in "I go back to May 1937"

"I Go Back to May 1937" opening lines:



I see them standing at the formal gates of their colleges,

I see my father strolling out

under the ochre sandstone arch, the

red tiles glinting like bent

plates of blood behind his head, I

see my mother with a few light books at her hip

standing at the pillar made of tiny bricks,

the wrought-iron gate still open behing her, its

sword-tips aglow in the May air,

....



The perspectives and tones of the persona in the first part of 'I Go Back to May 1937' manifest themselves in numerous ways. Her pain, regret, sober sense of foreboding and ways of distingishing her two parents can all be seen in the ten opening lines of the poem.



Firstly, she feels quite distanceds from the parents she observe. Of course it is highly unlikely anyway that she is really with her parents, watching them leave college, so a reasonable amount of distance is expected. However, the fact that she can only see them and not use any other sense and only refers to them in the third person in the opening lines show that she is keeping distance from her parents on purpose. Is she looking at a photograph? Does this distance hint that her family will become distressing or dysfunctional in the future? Maybe.



Secondly, she uses visual imagery to portray her father and mother in different lights but in describing them uses the same pattern of lines. She sees her father "strolling under the ochre sandstone arch", making her father sound like a confident young man, as sturdy and stubborn as the stone arch he is walking under. On the other hand she sees her mother with "a few light books at her hip" and "standing at the pillar made of tiny bricks". This visual description of her mother makes her seem like an easygoing lightweight woman who would carry easygoing lightweight books around with her. It also makes her look as fine, fragile and delicate as the fine, fragile and delicate as the pillar made of tiny bricks she stands next to. Although these two people are pictured in different lights, Olds uses the same pattern to describe them. She uses four lines to describe each parent; one line to describe the parents nature, one line to describe the parent's surrondings, and two lines to link this to some unusually violent metaphor. This is the first hint that the father and the mother are equal in some way, if not in their character than in what they did to the persona.

What exactly did they do to the persona, their daughter? The use of unusually violent imagery, such as "bent plates of blood behind his head" and "sword-tips aglow in the May air" give a hint. These visual metaphors and similies seem to connect her parents with violence in a deep, fundamental way. Although they might not seem violent, the seeds of violence are looming behind them (and, in fact, really are spacially behind the parents) and one day that violence might break out. Usually when one needs to create a dark sense of foreboding about something they put the most ominous phrases at the end of its description. Likewise "bent plates of blood" appears at the end of the description on the father and "sword-tips aglow" appears at the end of the description of the mother, highlighting the importance of these images. The persona includes these images because she feels they are important to her.

Despite the persona's dark foreshadowings and the pain that her parents would give her in the future, she plays a very passive, sober role in these ten lines. She never explicitly states her feelings and always begins sentences with "I see" highlighting her role in this recollection as a passive observer unable to change anything. And of course in reality she can't. This is a recollection. She can't change the past. Her only hope is to find a way to change the future, using this recollection to explore why her family became the way it is and making sure that doesn't happen to her kids and herself. If she can find out why her parents got twisted in this web of violence then she can also find a way to deal with her parents and get out of the web. So although she can't change the past she can use it to change herself, her parents and her future. This may be why the title, "I Go Back to May 1937" sounds so awkward; it was never meant to be published. It's a poem for herself, to help her learn about the dynamics of her family.

In conclusion, the persona in the first ten lines of "I Go Back to May 1937" exhibits a myriad of different qualities of emotions. Although she feels a certain amount of pain in the future, in the past it only becomes sober omens and a role as a distant observer. She view her father and mother in different ways, even though ultimately what each of them did to her will be the same. Finally, her present is stained with violence; violence that has spread through her mind into this day on May 1937, not only as a dark reminder of the years to come but also as a lesson that will help her find a solution to her twisted family and give her lessons that she will carry with her to the future.

Sharon Olds-Background

Sharon Olds

Personal Life:

Sharon Olds was born in 1942 in San Fransisco, USA. If her poems mean anything she probably didn’t have a very happy early life. One aspect she found irritating about her upbringing was her family’s stern Calvinist religion, so by the time she was 15 she had identified herself as atheist. She graduated from Stanford University in 1964 and got her PhD from England’s Columbia University in 1972. Besides writing poetry she also teaches poetry and creative writing, for example in the Theodor Herzl Institute from 1976 to 1980, the year she released her first poetry collection Satan Says. She still teaches poetry and creative writing after Satan Says, first in the New York University and now in the Goldwater Hospital for the disabled.

Writing Style:

1. Not afraid to talk about her personal life e.g. in “I Go Back to May 1937” in which she recalls her parents marrying and how this set off the chain of events which are detailed in most of the poems in the rest of the collection, The Gold Cell.

2. Her works are often on morbid topics e.g. in “Photograph of the Girl”:

“She cannot be not beautiful, but she is/ starving. Each day she grows thinner, and her bones/ grow longer, porous. The caption says/ she is going to starve to death that winter/ with millions of others.”

However all in all she means to be painfully shocking but not outright depressing. For example right after the passage above the poem finishes with:

“Deep in her body/ the ovaries let out her first eggs,/ golden as drops of grain.”

3. She often touches on aspects of human interaction and relationships, for example in “The Talk” in which a mother and her 8-year-old daughter talk about the daughter’s rudeness, ending with

“She [the daughter] took it and took it and broke, crying out/ I hate being a person! diving/ into the mother/ as if/ into/ a deep pond – and she cannot swim,/ the child cannot swim.”

This paints a picture of how children and mother interact and the mother’s role in helping the child “learn to swim”. This poem might even be a personal experience the author had, either as the child or the mother.

4. She is not afraid to be politically incorrect. This is reflected in horrifying sensationalist poems like “1954”, which is about a murdering rapist, and in other poems such as “The Pope’s Penis”. As shown in the passage from “Photograph of the Girl” she isn’t afraid to describe sexual topics like ovaries and has even developed a habit of using them in understanding human nature, as well as generating bolder feelings within the readers. Her first collection, Satan Says; and her fifth one, The Wellspring, contain exceptional use of this technique.

5. She not only likes to explore the relationships between the people in her family but also likes to explore the relationships between the black and white races. For example in the poem “On the Subway” she tries to make many accurate political comparisons between a white woman(the narrator) and a black man:

“He [the black man] has the casual cold look of a mugger, alert under hooded lids...I am wearing dark fur, the whole skin of an animal taken and used.”

“I didn’t know if I am in his [the black man’s] power –he could take my coat so easily, my briefcase, my life – or if he’s in my power, the way I am living off his life, eating the steak he does not eat, as if I am taking the food from his mouth.”

Influences:

1. Galway Kinnel: Like Sharon Olds, Galway Kinnel is a contemporary poet whose poems often detail painful truths about human nature.

2. Galway Kinnel, in turn, is a follower of the humanist poet Walt Whitman, known for his sexually “obscene” poems, and Sharon Olds’ poems have in fact been connected to Whitman.

3. Sharon Olds isn’t influenced any more by woman than by men. Although she respects writers like Sylvia Plath and believes that her IQ is probably twice that of Sharon Olds’, she decided not to follow her writing style.

Collections:

1. Satan Says (1980)

2. The Dead and the Living (1984)

3. The Gold Cell (1987)

4. The Father (1992)

5. The Wellspring (1996)

6. Blood, Tin, Straw (1999)

7. The Unswept Room (2002)

8. One Secret Thing (2008)

Bibliography

· http://famouspoetsandpoems.com/poets/sharon_olds/biography: Famous poets and poems.com. Information published around 2006-2010.

· http://www.enotes.com/poetry-criticism/olds-sharon: enotes.com, Olds, Sharon, Introduction. Information updated up to 2011.

· http://www.helium.com/items/1022128-biography-sharon-olds: Helium.com, Biography: Sharon Olds. Information published around 2006 by Cheryl Flyod-Miller.

· The Wikipedia on Sharon Olds, Galway Kinnel and Walt Whitman:

· http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sharon_Olds

· http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Walt_Whitman

· http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Galway_Kinnell

Resources from the Literature Resource Center at www.tki.org/epic

· Sharon Olds: Overview. Author: Tim Woods. Source: Contemporary Popular Writers. Ed. Dave Mote. Detroit: St. James Press, 1997.

· Soul Substance. Author: Christian McEwen. Source: Contemporary Literary Criticism. Ed. Christopher Giroux. Vol. 85. Detroit: Gale Research, 1995

Poems by Sharon Olds:

· I Go Back to May 1937

· On the Subway

· Photograph of the Girl

· The Talk