I hated A Doll's House upon first reading and upon second reading. Upon third reading I'm alright with it. I guess I just needed to get over the fact that it is intensely boring. And as form follows function, I guess it must have been a pretty boring life for Nora. Anyway, I wanted to discuss how the doll house in the play extends into all of our lives, not just the woman's role in the house and not just established norms. I want to discuss the porcelain material that lines all of our walls to some degree.

**SPOILER**

To start things off I'll explain the alternative ending that Ibsen wrote for the play, this is the ending that was forced upon Ibsen for the play's German premiere. The final scene we are all familiar with is Nora slamming the door in Torvald's face and leaving him and the children. In the alternative ending, Nora tells Torvald she doesn't love him and all and then is led by him to the room where her children sleep. When she sees her children she cries and collapses to the floor implying that she will stay with Torvald because of the children. This ending completely nullifies the entire point of the play. And Ibsen had to do it because of his own role in the German theater world. He too was living in a role exactly as Nora was and in changing the ending of the play to meet society's standards he knowingly forgoes his independence for the sake of others.

**SPOILER OVER**

We may not all live in Doll Houses built on lies and false relationships, but to some degree we all exist in a Doll World. We live in a world where often times our hands are forced and we  must do what is expected of us. There are a set of rules that make society function and when we forget that we, humans, are the ones that made those rules we let the porcelain walls grow higher and thicker around us.  In works like Ibsen's, we see a movement of people who want to tear down those walls, to shatter the misconceptions when they appear most fragile. That is a narrative that will never end, for as we destroy these walls others go up. For example, A Doll's House in 1879 anticipated the suffrage movement and feminist movements of the 20th century. As we realized that these rules that defined the household were really false the walls began to shake and warble and eventually came down with a pinprick so today we think it's naive to impose the house onto women. But as some barriers go down others go up. Think about the artificiality that rules the day today. Is it even possible to break through this vortex of technology? We are so dependent on the internet that we forget we made it and a lot of people have let it control their lives through work just as Nora let her role as the woman take her away from herself.

Doll Houses are artificial prisons. We build them for ourselves and let them take over the control from our lives. Although this play is nowhere near my favorite, it goes beyond the feminist point of view to a lesson we all need to hear, that we make the rules, that we make our own houses. Power is something that we can give and take away. It's important to remember that there are no specific roles that were made for us. And while some Houses of Control, like gender relationships, do crumble, others go up, and it is our responsibility to not forget that they are all made out of porcelain and can shatter with just one pin prick.

That's a lot to take out of a play I hardly like. Has anyone else read or seen it? I'd be interested to hear from someone who has seen the play performed (apart from the movie which I remember falling asleep during?) How does the staged performance relate to the themes developed and does the stage call attention to the fact that it too is something of A Doll's House? Isn't the stage just a model for our amusement like Nora was an object of amusement in her house?