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Situational Irony
Style
Explanation and Analysis:
Henrik Ibsen’s play A Doll’s House is a prose drama written in three acts. One of the core elements of Ibsen’s style in this play is his dialogue. The play is written in common, everyday speech rather than elevated language. The conversations, like the characters' personalities, flow in ways that are believable and organic. This style of dialogue is a characteristic feature of realism, and a striking departure from previous trends in playwriting up to this point. Characters start and stop their sentences, mumble to themselves, and use colloquialisms, bringing their dialogue closer in form and structure to the same kind of language Ibsen’s own audience would use.
Each of the play’s three acts are composed of a single, long scene set in the same apartment, with each scene occurring one day apart. The structure of the play is therefore extremely self-contained and deliberately paced—characters are confined to a single set, and interaction with the outside world is limited, mirroring the isolation that Nora feels within her marriage. Structurally, the central conflict of A Doll’s House revolves around the choices made by Nora and Krogstad prior to the events that occur onstage. Rather than focusing on the lead-up to their initial deceptions, the play explores the consequences and aftermath that these decisions have wrought upon the lives of all involved.
Related Themes:
