Voices ResourcesA website for the worldwide community around the journal Voices: A World Forum for Music Therapy

Who is Nora of "A Doll's House"? In the Norwegian dramatist Henrik Ibsen's play, written in 1879, everything seems to be the opposite of our first impression. When reading or viewing the play we realise that the weak are strong and the strong are weak, that the ill-willed have kindness, and that the gentle simmer with dark passions. The play is about a world of play, or maybe rather about the illusions of our real world.

Nora is the main character of "A Doll's House", and the play may be understood as the story of her journey into regaining self-esteem and self worth. Nora is married to Torvald, a (stereo)typically strong and dignified husband, while she is herself "little skylark twittering". Torvald refers to her as a singing bird or as a squirrel, characterising her as a weak person that cannot think for herself, an image that she has internalised and that shapes her self-understanding. Due to a series of circumstances Nora gradually manages to start asking dangerous questions though, and to search for new answers. Her husband cannot handle this, he continues to speak of her as a bird or a squirrel, to treat her as irresponsible and irrational, and to insist on her need for protection. But Nora is able to contest this and to cut herself lose. This act, rather this process, brings Nora at odds with the social conventions of her time, which is part of the drama of the play.

Thinking it over, who is Nora? An immature narcissist finally and slowly taking responsibility for her life? A woman fighting for her respectability, a hero because she is willing to pay such a high prize for it? A repressed female and a feminist before feminism even existed as a concept? Interpretations are indeterminable, and most readings and performances of the text produce doubts and subtleties as to who she is and who she wants to be. "A Doll's House" has been an influential play on the development of modern drama, but also on the way women's roles have been defined in the modern industrial society of the late 19th and early 20th century. As such "A Doll's House" could be a challenge to contemporary music therapy also, where feminist perspectives so far have been rather rare, almost to the degree of being muted voices.

Other interpretations of "A Doll's House" insist on going beyond the gender perspective and to read the piece as an existentialist elaboration of the human condition. (While others again suggest that this "going beyond" argument in itself is repressive, and that the existentialist elaboration must take the feminist perspective implicit in the play as the point of departure in order to be meaningful). Be that as it may; from Nora we can learn something about the need for reflexivity, for consideration of alternatives to status quo, and for hope and anticipation. Through a series of confrontations Nora expresses her search for what she terms "something glorious".

"A Doll's House" also illuminates how the requirements of society may dramatically be at odds with the needs of the individual human being. The social roles that we put on may make us less human, they may strangle our capacity to grow, and they may keep us from fully knowing our real selves. Our real selves are not static masks or roles (as birds or bears or whatever). Our real lives are elusive, sometimes they are streams beneath the showy surface of our social lives. Ibsen's play seems to say that society may stiffen this elusive life, and that those who are living in the margins of society and culture are those who may achieve the most developed self-knowledge and mastery.

Such ideas are not foreign to modern therapeutic thinking at all. Therapy is often understood as a process where the client is given the possibility to achieve individuation though cutting through the showy surface of social life. Therapists therefore take interest in the individual, and the collective is only a backdrop, or - sometimes - a drawback. Socially or culturally oriented clinicians may oppose to such arguments, and state that this in itself shows how therapy is part of culture, since individualism is a strong value in modern capitalist societies. They may make a case for music therapy for collectivist values, or at least for the value of exploring the social and cultural context of each client.

What is this "something glorious" that Nora searches for? The play does not tell, and we do not know where she goes and what she does in order to find it. Thus, there is a lot we do not know about Nora. This is probably as it should be, since the play touches upon some large issues where lasting answers are difficult to find. We learn that Nora has to leave the restricting context of her marriage, but we may also assume that she will soon find herself situated in new contexts with new possibilities for being repressed. This play is therefore as much about individual development as it is about the limiting conditions of society, and the need to transcend a simplified opposition between these aspects is implied. It is through collaboration and confrontation that Nora's individuality is achieved.

In music therapy we usually are satisfied with searching for something less than glorious, but change and hope for something better than status quo is at the heart of the enterprise. This change is traditionally sought for at the individual level, although the last few years have seen an increasing interest for social music therapy, cultural music therapy, and ecological music therapy. The story of Nora may remind us that it will be less than helpful to think that we either concentrate on the individual level or on society and culture, whatever approach to music therapy we choose.

How to cite this page

Stige, Brynjulf, 2001 Something Glorious. Voices Resources. Retrieved January 15, 2015, from http://testvoices.uib.no/community/?q=fortnightly-columns/2001-something-glorious