Victorian Contexts

• A


  Angel in the house (Coventry Patmore, 1854) conveys how the victorian woman was idealised as domesticated and angelic i.e. not sexual: linked to light, beauty, passivity, nurturing, domesticity - and entrapment, limitation, confinement
• B


  Bourgeois: aspiring middle-class setting of ADH - although performed in a single room giving the play a claustrophobic atmosphere. Many New Woman were educated and belonged to the bourgeoisie.
• C


  devout Christianism - Rosetti, part of the Oxford Movement of Tractarianism which promoted using literature to spread the message of the Bible: self-sacrifice, redemption, salvation, resisting temptation, the Holy Eucharist, rebirth - see Lizzie's Christlike saving of her sister, Laura in GM

  
  

  Consumerism: GM can be read as a critique of Victorian advertising and consumerism. There is something overwhelming and obscene/unnatural about the abundance of the goblin's produce. Perhaps like Laura, Nora seeks to enter the world of commerce as an expression of freedom - but her domestication and lack of experience of such a male-dominated sphere severely limits her. (see money)
• E


  Emancipated woman: Ibsen was widely credited with "virtually inventing the emancipated woman in the last act of ADH" (Gail Finney)
• F

  Fallen woman: powerfully conveys the discrimination of patriarchal power - linked to the Fall (from God's grace in the Garden of Eden narrative), women who had sex outside of marriage and who became pregnant were deemed to be 'fallen' - out of favour, out of social acceptance. "new woman criticised the 'sexual double standard': the permissive attitude to male extra-marital sex versus the stigmatisation of 'fallen women' Reference Rosetti's work at the Mary Magdalene Penitentiary for Fallen Women in Highgate - she sympathised: cf. Rosetti's portrayal of the 'rehabilitated' Laura in "Goblin Market", is restored to a wifely and maternal role.
• G


  Ghosts (1882) - the play written after ADH which was even more controversial with Ibsen frankly discussing venereal disease, incest and euthanasia. The next play, Hedda Gabler (1890) shocked with its depiction of a pregnant woman's suicide.
• H


  Hair - fetishized by Victorians; golden hair was an obsession, symbolising wealth and female sexual power.

  
  

  Hysterization - Michael Foucalt terms the 19th Century process of defining women in terms of female sexuality as 'hysterization', the result of which was to bind them to their reproduction function
• I


  Individual: Ibsen wanted to make the individual the sustaining element of society and thereby dethrone the bourgeois family as the central institution of society.
• J


  Juedo-Christian: within a Juedo-Christian tradition, fruit is associated with temptation and sin. In Genesis, Eve is tempted by the serpent to eat fruit from the Tree of Knowledge
• M


  Marriage

  
  

  Melodrama

  
  

  Mad woman in the attic - reflects the 19th century conservative pathologizing of rebellious women as unwell hysterics

  
  

  Money

  
  

  Motherhood
• N


  the New woman = woman who were pushing against the limits which society imposed on woman.

  
  

  Norway - wives in 19th centuary Norway could not borrow money without their husbands permission. Objectors to the New Woman's mobility blamed Ibsen's influence. Art was affecting life..

  
  

  Naturalism

  
  

  Nature
• P


  Pre-Raphellite Brotherhood - macho environment of the PRB, Rosetti's poetry provides a counterbalance to the objectification and idealisation of women. Despite their avant-garde aims, the PRB was less progressive when it came to gender politics
• R


  Real-life origins of ADH - novelist Laura Peterson asked Ibsen for help in publishing her next novel, which he refused, and Laura forged a cheque to pay for her husband's tuberculosis treatment in a warmer climate. Her husband found out, called her a criminal, incarcerated her in an asylum and denied her access to her children for 2 years. Note how Ibsen adapts 'real life' and to what effect this empowers Nora -giving her agency (unlike Laura) to leave and 'slam the door
• S


  Sexual double standard (see fallen woman)

  
  

  Social problem play
• T


  Tarantella - the dance origins are in South Italy (ironically where Nora sponsored her holiday to save Torvald) where it serves as a form of hysteric catharsis, permitting women to escape temporarily from marriage and motherhood into a free, lawless world of music and uninhibited movement. The Young Vic production (2012) directed by Carrie Cracknell shows Nora breaks down, dancing chaotically like a performing doll out of control. The following day, Nora dances the tarantella in a more empowered sense, dancing with abandon, wildly her hair" coming undone and falling around her shoulders, in a manner perceived by Torvald as 'sheer madness' (cf Mad Woman in the Attic)