In the following excerpt, Gosse speculates that A Doll's House aroused controversy because the play features a female protagonist seeking individuality.

Gosse was a prominent English man of letters during the late nineteenth century. A prolific literary historian, biographer, and critic, he is best knownforhis work Father and Son: A Study of Two Temperaments (1907), an account of his childhood that is considered among the most distinguished examples ofVictorian spiritual autobiography. Gosse was also a major translator and critic of Scandinavian literature, and his importance as a critic is due primarily to his introduction of Ibsen to an English-speaking audience.

No work of Ibsen's, not even his beautiful Puritan opera of Brand, has excited so much controversy as A Doll's House. This was, no doubt, to a very great extent caused by its novel presentment of the mission of woman in modern society. In the dramas and romances...