In “Text and the City,” Melisa Guleryuz ’27 reviews books through a lens of modern femininity.
Editor’s Note: This article is a review and includes subjective thoughts, opinions and critiques.
Henrik Ibsen’s “A Doll’s House” might be 145 years old, but it still hits like a glass of cold water to the face. I reread the play not as a dusty classic of “proto-feminism,” but as a guidebook for women who are still, in 2025, being told that self-discovery should always come after self-sacrifice. If you think ghosting someone via text is ruthless, imagine doing it with a door slam that echoed across Europe. That’s Henrik Ibsen’s “A Doll’s House” — the original breakup text, written in longhand and drenched in Victorian angst.
“A Doll’s House” tells the story of Nora Helmer, the cheerful little wife who suddenly realizes that marriage, motherhood and middle-class stability have been merely a pretty form of imprisonment. The trouble starts when a secret from Nora’s past — an illegal loan she took to save her husband’s life — threatens to surface, and the façade of her marriage begins to crack. When she finally walks out, she isn’t just leaving her husband — she’s leaving the entire idea of what it meant to be a “good woman.”
The play’s surface is simple — one living room, one family, one secret — but what explodes within it is the question of female selfhood. Now, reading “A Doll’s House” in 2025 feels like scrolling through a centuries-old group chat on the patriarchy. Nora’s realization — “You have never loved me. You have only thought it pleasant to be in love with me” — could fit neatly into a viral breakup text. Her husband, Torvald’s line, “No man would sacrifice his honor for the one he loves,” lands like a comment section full of self-pitying men who believe “providing” is the same thing as empathy. Nora’s reply, “It is a thing hundreds of thousands of women have done,” could be tattooed on the forearm of every exhausted woman who’s ever cleaned up someone else’s mess in the name of love.
What makes Ibsen’s play so timeless is that it isn’t actually about marriage, but about performance. Nora performs “wife,” Torvald performs “man,” and both are trapped by the roles they think make them respectable. It’s theater about theater, about the lies we tell ourselves to keep the script going. But when Nora stops acting, everyone panics.
Modern femininity still asks women to perform, only now the doll dresses herself in “self-care,” “lean-in feminism” or the dreaded “soft life” aesthetic. The details have changed, but the subtext hasn’t: be small, be charming and above all, be pleasant to be in love with. Nora’s revelation that she “must make up my mind which is right: society or I” still feels like a dare.
And yet, “A Doll’s House” isn’t just a feminist tragedy; it remains relevant for its near-laughable accuracy. Torvald’s condescension could have its own podcast. The man literally panics at the idea that his wife might have independent thoughts. Imagine a tech bro who believes therapy is “manipulative.” When he realizes Nora forged his signature years ago, he loses his moral footing faster than an influencer caught photoshopping. The play is both a cry for liberation and a roast of male fragility.
Mrs. Linde, Nora’s pragmatic friend, is the anti-doll. “When you’ve sold yourself once for the sake of others,” she says, “you don’t do it a second time.” It’s one of the great, under-quoted feminist lines, weary, wry and absolutely true. Mrs. Linde represents the women who have already learned that self-sacrifice has diminishing returns. She doesn’t need slogans; she has experience.
By the final act, Nora’s decision to leave isn’t explosive, it’s inevitable. “I must stand on my own two feet if I’m to get to know myself and the world outside.” It’s the first “I’m working on myself” in literary history, and unlike most modern versions, she actually means it. No spa days. No productivity hacks. Just the terrifying, exhilarating act of walking out the door with nothing but your own name. The sound of that door slamming at the end had to have echoed around the world — and honestly, it’s still ringing.
When “A Doll’s House” premiered in 1879, audiences were scandalized. A woman leaving her husband and children? Immoral! Today, we call it “boundary setting.” But the play still provokes because it asks a question that never gets old: What does freedom cost and who pays for it? For women, the answer is still: more than it should.
Nora Helmer is every woman who’s ever realized that love built on obedience isn’t love at all. She’s every person who’s ever thought, “If I stay, I’ll never meet myself.” And when she finally leaves, it’s not an ending, it’s an origin story.