Play for study: A Doll's House

Ibsen began plotting A Doll's House on 19 October 1878, in a café in Rome. Writing to the critic Edmund Gosse in July 1879, he described the play as ‘really a domestic family drama, dealing with contemporary problems in regard to marriage’.

Real-life events partly inspired A Doll's House. Aged 19, the Norwegian-Danish novelist Laura Petersen sent Ibsen her sequel to Brand (Brand's Daughters), and they became friends. Ibsen nicknamed the attractive Petersen ‘skylark’ (as Torvald does Nora). In 1876, Laura's husband Victor Kieler contracted tuberculosis and doctors advised a trip to a warmer climate. Laura funded their travels via a loan she could not repay; when Laura wrote another novel and begged Ibsen for help publishing it, Ibsen refused. Despairing, Laura forged a cheque to clear the debt. When the bank discovered this, Victor threatened to divorce Laura as a criminal, temporarily incarcerated her in a mental asylum, and denied her access to their children for two years: all while Ibsen was writing A Doll's House. Petersen's association with Nora appalled her, not least because (unlike Nora) she never left her children, but was removed from them by force.