Summary:
One of the motives in Henrik Ibsen's A Doll House is that of the tarantella, an Italian folk dance that Nora performs on Christmas night. This dance express one of the play's central themes: the idea that an uncomfortable truth, though it might cause an authentic pain and be misinterpreted as a deadly poison, which in fact may be the only medicine that could heal the marriage of Helmer and Nora.
One of the motives in Henrik Ibsen's A Doll House is that of the tarantella, an Italian folk dance that Nora performs on Christmas night. This dance express one of the play's central themes: the idea that an uncomfortable truth, though it might cause an authentic pain and be misinterpreted as a deadly poison, which in fact may be the only medicine that could heal the marriage of Helmer and Nora.
The tarantella is seen as the traditional belief of a tarantella bite which is as painful as deadly. Someone bitten by the tarantella usually moves around widely in agony, but in the process of such wide movements, ends up working the poison out of the system.
Nora sees Krogstad himself as a deadly spider, threatening to destroy the happiness of her marriage, by injecting his venom into her life. When Krogstad and Nora Have their first conversation, Krogstad threatens to expose Nora Forgery. From that point Nora is trying desperately to hide her distress and trying to find a way out of her dilemma. That is a way to get her poison out of her life. Her mental and physical pain is manifested in her rapid and often undirected movements.
The action of Krogstad depositing the letter in the mailbox, it takes on the semblance of a spider. This point reflects the image of a tarantella is introduced. For stopping Torvald from getting the letter, Nora insists that Torvald help her rehearse her dance for the next night. While rehearsing Nora starts dancing faster and faster until everyone starts to call for her... but she is so caught up that she does not even hear their cries, until she collapse in exhaustion onto the floor.
After she finished dancing Torvald comments, "you dance as if your life were at stake." Similarly, after she actually dances at the party, Torvald tells Nora that it went well but that "the performance was a trifle too realistic." Of course, as far as Nora is concerned, her life is a stake. She is not performing at all, but "dancing" to save everything that matters to her. The letter that is in the mailbox is to Nora the deadly poison of the tarantella, and that will destroy her marriage and her life.
At first Kristine accepts Nora's assessment of the deadly threat represented by the letter. But she later on realises that Nora is wrong. The truth is not poison that will destroy an otherwise healthy marriage. On the contrary poison is the only medicine that might save it. The Helmer's marriage is only based on lies small and big. No truth is present in their marriage at all.
Just like a powerful medicine, the truth contained in that letter delivers a shock to the marriage, a shock so great that the marriage dies right then and there. Once the truth has been administered Nora and Torvald sit still and speak quietly and seriously, like a patient whose illness has finally been treated, perhaps by drastic, even dangerous means, and who is still to weak to display any energy. At last the poison has been drained from their marriage, but that poison was the pervasive falsehood in the marriage, not the truth that cleansed it from the system.
This is the complete article, containing 539 words
(approx. 2 pages at 300 words per page).
