For my personal investigation I have decided to explore Ibsen's character of Nora Helmer, from his play A Doll's House. I find the character herself very fascinating and I wish to explore her feminist views and her change in attitude through my photography. I would like my photographs to document Nora's story and I would like to present my final photos as digital negatives I have developed in the dark room. I think the dark room is a great place to experiment with different ideas within photography and it really cuts to the core of what photography is. I really enjoy the creativity of the dark room and all the different things you can do with it. I would like my photographs to show a feminist side to photography where in female empowerment is key. I see Nora Helmer as a very idealistic counter piece in the feminist movement and I want my photographs to show proof of that.
A short summery of who Nora Helmer is.
Nora Helmer is a 1870's woman who is married to a man named Torvald. Torvald is a business man and thinks very highly of himself, his beliefs are that a woman's place is in the house. Nora takes this as a given and throughout the play due to certain situations (her fathers death, her husbands illness) she begins to question this and decides there is more to life then this housewife she has been degraded to. The play is called A Doll's House because Nora feels as though all her life she has been treated like a doll by first of all her Father and then her husband, she then feels that because she has been treated this way it has corrupted her perception on the world and and as a result she has been treating her children in the same way. She decides she wants to leave her husband and to step out into the great unknown. I would like to base all my photographs on mainly this monologue Nora Helmer gives at the end of the play.
Nora – A Doll's House
Sit down here, Torvald - you and I have a
lot to talk over. This’ll take some time. You don’t understand me. And I’ve
never understood you – until tonight. No, you mustn’t interrupt – just listen
to what I have to say. Torvald, this is a reckoning. We’ve been married for
eight years now. Don’t you realize that this is the first time that we two –
you and I, man and wife – have ever had a serious talk together? For eight
whole years – no, longer than that – ever since we first met, we’ve never
exchanged a serious word on any serious subject. I’m not talking about worries;
what I’m saying is that we’ve never sat down in earnest together to get to the
bottom of a single thing. You’ve never understood me. I’ve been dreadfully
wronged, Torvald – first by Papa, and then by you. You’ve never loved me;
you’ve only found it pleasant to be in love with me. It’s true, Torvald. When I
lived at home with Papa, he used to tell me his opinion about everything, and
so I had the same opinion. If I thought differently, I had to hide it from him,
or he wouldn’t have liked it. He called me his little doll, and he used to play
with me just as I played with my dolls. Then I came to live in your house – I
passed out of Papa’s hands into yours. You arranged everything to suit your own
tastes, and so I came to have the same tastes as yours… or I pretended to. I’m
not quite sure which… perhaps it was a bit of both – sometimes one and
sometimes the other. Now that I come to look at it, I’ve lived here like a
pauper – simply from hand to mouth. I’ve lived by performing tricks for you,
Torvald. That was how you wanted it. You and Papa have committed a grievous sin
against me: it’s your fault that I’ve made nothing of my life. I haven’t been
happy. I thought I had, but really I’ve never been happy. Only gay. And you’ve
always been so kind to me. But our home has been nothing but a playroom. I’ve
been your doll wife here, just as at home I was Papa’s doll child. And the
children have been my dolls in their turn. I liked it when you came and played
with me, just as they liked it when I came and played with them. That’s what
our marriage has been, Torvald. Ah, Torvald, you’re not the man to teach me to
be a real wife to you – and how am I fitted to bring up the children? Didn’t
you say yourself, a little while ago, that you daren’t trust them to me? You
were perfectly right – I’m not fit for it. There’s another task I must finish
first – I must try to educate myself. And you’re not the man to help me with
that; I must do it alone. That’s why I’m leaving you. I must stand on my own
feet if I’m going to get to know myself and the world outside. That’s why I
can’t stay here with you any longer. Tomorrow I shall go home – to my old home,
I mean – it’ll be easier for me to find something to do there. All I know is
that this is necessary for me. I believe that before everything else I’m a
human being – just as much as you are… or at any rate I shall try to become
one. I know quite well that most people would agree with you, Torvald, and that
you have warrant for it in books; but I can’t be satisfied any longer with what
people say, and with what’s in books. I must think things out for myself and
try to understand them. I only know what Pastor Hansen taught me when I was
confirmed. He told me that religion was this, that, and the other. When I get
away from all this, and am on my own, I want to see if what Pastor Hansen told
me was right – or at least, if it is right for me. I’m so bewildered about it
all. All I know is that I think quite differently from you about things; and
now I find that the law is quite different from what I thought, and I simply
can’t convince myself that the law is right. That a woman shouldn’t have the
right to spare her old father on his deathbed, or to save her husband’s life! I
can’t believe things like that. I’ve never seen things so clearly and certainly
as I do tonight. I can hardly bear to, Torvald, because you’ve always been so
kind to me – but I can’t help it. I don’t love you anymore.
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