A Doll’s House: Research outline for the first and second points

o What was theater at the time like? (1870) examine common theatrical styles at the time period.

In the early 1800s, mainstream theater in Europe consisted of tragedies, melodramas, comic operas, vaudevilles and spectacle plays.
Audiences attended performances of epic tragedies about idealized heroes, or melodramas with stock or stereotypical characters.
Many plays were written in verse, or heightened language, and performed in a larger-than-life, exaggerated style.
However, with the scientific and technological advances of the 19th century, intellectual thought turned to social reform and everyday human concerns. These scientific advances led to the Realism movement in literature and the arts, started in the mid-1800s, in which authors addressed contemporary social issues, providing a forum for debate in their art.
Realism, in theater, sought to represent characters and situations from real life, without idealization or embellishment.
Henrik Ibsen was at the forefront of this movement. He began to write plays in prose, the way that people spoke to each other in real life, and to focus on realistic social issues. His plays Pillars of Society, A Doll’s House, Ghosts and An Enemy of the People are considered classic works of Realism that changed the way the western world viewed drama. In each of these plays, Ibsen addressed a contemporary social problem and wrote his play as a forum for debate or criticism of the issue.
Ibsen avoided the idealized heroes or stock characters from the other plays of his day. Instead, he created fully developed, realistic characters with deep psychological motives.

Theater design:

The environment that they inhabited was not the traditional, two-dimensional backdrop, but a fully furnished living room—as life-like as the living rooms in the homes of the audience members.
At this time, the tradition developed in staging realistic dramas in which directors would call the barrier between the stage and the audience the “fourth wall,” as if the stage were an actual living room with one of the walls removed to allow the audience to observe the happenings inside.
Around this time, the house lights also began to be dimmed for the performance—taking the focus of the audience’s attention away from the social event of “being seen” at the theatre, and on to the work of art itself.

o What constitutes a “well-made play” at the time? Is A Doll’s House considered a well-made play?

Originating in France as the pièce bien faite, the well-made play is a style of dramatic writing originated by Eugène Scribe.
The plot is most often based on a withheld secret—known to the audience but unknown to the characters—which, when revealed at the climax, reverses the fortunes of the play's hero. Scribe was fond of using conversations between servants to introduce the audience to the situation. In A Doll's House, Isben uses conversations between Nora and Mrs. Linde to set up the withheld secret.
However, Ibsen does not solely rely on motivated exposition to set the scene. There are times in A Doll's House where Ibsen does not allow the characters to reveal information until it is needed in the character's situation. Known as retrospective analysis, this technique was first used by Ibsen, later to become a staple in realistic drama. Isben does not have Mrs. Linde reveal her close relationship to Krogstad until she decides that it is pertinent to helping Nora in her situation.
During the course of the play, the overall pattern of the drama is reflected in the movement of the individual acts, in which a steadily mounting suspense is achieved through the battle of wits between the hero and the villain. In A Doll's House, the relationship between Krogstad and nora is used to build suspense .
Scribe also uses pointers and planters in developing a "well-made play." A pointer gives important information to the audience. Scribe thought since this information was so important to the outcome of the play, it must be repeated three times in order to ensure that the audience has heard it. A planter is an object which is "planted" on stage and is an integral part of the plot. For example, if a gun is needed to shoot someone in Act III, the audience will see the gun and know where it is on stage during Acts I and II. In A Doll's House, the letters from Krogstad serve as planters. The audience knows the letter is sitting in the mailbox. Moreover, the letter is referred to several times by Nora, thereby also serving as a pointer. In Scribe's plays, pointers and planters were used to eliminate resolving the play suddenly by new information . A Doll's House, an example of early realism, relies less on planters and pointers to justify a solution simply because the play is more grounded in reality.
Another technique used to define a "well-made play" is the use of a raissoneur character. This character serves as a guide or leader to the audience and often reveals the opinions of the playwright. Although Ibsen does not have a character whose only purpose is to be "the reasoner," he does use Dr. Rank to express his feelings towards Nora and her situation. Dr. Rank represents reality. He enters the Helmer's house in order to escape reality (in his case, a terminal illness). Moreover, when Dr. Rank "escapes" to the Helmer house, he brings reality with him. Isben uses Dr. Rank to illustrate that the Helmer house is a "doll house" where no one cares to pay attention to reality. One sees the effects of Dr. Rank's bringing reality to the house as everything begins to fall apart. Dr. Rank represents Ibsen's main idea of not hiding from reality and taking control of one's own life
The hero's fortune fluctuates during his conflict with the adversary until finally, at the climax, the secret is revealed in an obligatory scene (scène à faire) and the hero is benefitted in the final dénouement, or resolution.Nora's secret is reveled in the climax when Torvald learns what Nora has done. Nora finally realizes that she must take control of her own life, and leaves her family behind.
Isben uses many of the conventional "well-made play" techniques in A Doll's House, he develops his ideas more fully. In doing so, both the plot and the characters seem less formulated and more human. Therefore, in blending "well-made play" techniques with truthfulness, Isben took the first steps in developing what is now known as realism.