HOW TO TEACH A DOLL'S HOUSE TO KCSE CANDIDATES

A DOLL’S HOUSE-IS IT RELEVANT IN THE KENYAN CURRICULUM? 

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A number of Kenyan literature tutors have raised concerns over the suitability of Henrik Ibsen’s 1879 play A Doll’s House.

A few teachers argue that the book may impress on the learners the idea of divorce as a problem solving measure.

One literature teacher remarked: “It is quite difficult to discuss marriage and divorce with your fifteen year old form 3 student.”

Does A Doll’s House revolve around marriage and divorce?

A Doll's House KCSE analysis 

On the surface that may seem like the case, however, a keener look reveals a play about how majority of women in conservative patriarchal societies are oppressed by repressive laws, norms, customs or traditions. This play is relevant in Kenya today because women face more hurdles than men since the society is largely patriarchal and most men are still chauvinistic.

The objective of studying literature in the Kenyan curriculum is to make learners appreciate the universal human values such as self-sacrifice, selflessness, love, family values, honesty etc.

In literature good deeds are usually rewarded whereas evil is punished.

In A Doll’s House good characters like Nora and Mrs. Christine Linde are rewarded for their kindness whereas bad characters like Torvald Helmer suffer.

The value of self-sacrifice is highlighted through Nora, the protagonist, when she borrows 250 pounds in order to take her ailing husband to Italy for a rest after he overworks himself and falls dreadfully ill. This is a show of selflessness since she procures the loan under stringent and difficult circumstances. In this male dominated society, women are not allowed to borrow money without express permission from the husband or father.

She tells Krogstad; “You put so many heartless difficulties in my way  ...” (P 40)

Nora is forced to forge her father’s name. She had tried asking Torvald to borrow but he is sternly against loans and debts. He says: “No debt. No borrowing.” (P 3)

After a year in Italy, Torvald recovers from his illness. This is the outcome of Nora’s selflessness. Her husband gets ‘as sound as a bell’ (P13). She says: “the trip was to save my husband’s life” (P 40)

Therefore the didactic value here is that selflessness/self-sacrifice and love is always rewarded.  That’s the take home message from that episode that the students ought to learn.

Krogstad manages to blackmail her concerning the forgery because the society is judgmental based on its repressive influence. Is it an unpardonable crime for a person to commit a misdemeanour with the view of saving a loved one’s life?

It raises the question of individual vs society. The society would judge Nora harshly for borrowing the loan and for the forgery. Nora does a prudent thing that any sensible person under the circumstances would do for the sake of a loved one.

Sometimes the individual is right when the law or society is wrong. Krogstad says the “law cares nothing about motives” to which Nora asks: “Is a wife not to be allowed to save her husband’s life?” (P 41)

The text also raises the concern of deception. Any relationship or association (marriage/work/friendship/business) is bound to fail in the absence of sincerity/frankness/honesty.

The Helmer’s relationship is an illusion of a happy marriage. It’s built on lies and pretense. Torvald seems like a loving benevolent husband but in reality he is vain, conceited and selfish. He only cares about his reputation and what other people say or think about him. He falsely promises to protect Nora selflessly in case of any danger. He says: “I have often wished that you might be threatened by some great danger so that I might risk my life and everything for your sake” (P 102). This is the deceptive nature of appearance.

Nora risks everything for Torvald’s sake but he is ungrateful. When Torvald learns about Nora’s secret, he does what we all expect of him. He selfishly insults her and even bars her from raising their children. He calls her a hypocrite, a liar, a criminal … (P 104)

Torvald only thinks about himself and his happiness. He says: “Now you have destroyed my happiness. You have ruined my future” (P 104)

He only cares about his reputation and appearance. “Very likely people will think I was behind it all.” (P 103) He doesn’t care about Nora’s needs or happiness. He says: “all that concerns us is to save the remains, fragments, the appearance …” (P 105)

Torvald does not stop to think that Nora sacrificed herself for his own sake. She says: “I did it for love’s sake.” (P 42)

Nora is shocked to learn where she stands is her husband’s esteem. He perceives her as a play object/a doll/decoration like the Christmas tree. He says that a woman’s sacred duty is to take care of her husband and children.

When she chooses to leave him, she does so in pursuit of reasonable opportunities for self-fulfillment. Leaving her children is also an act of sacrifice. “Deprave my little children? Poison my home?”(P 48)

Ibsen tackles the issue of how individuals (regardless of gender or social class) struggle to cope in a judgmental, repressive society. Nora’s subservient role in the suffocating marriage symbolizes how society sometimes strangles individuals’ ambitions or aspirations through needless laws and cultural/societal norms.

In H.R. Ole Kulet’s Blossoms of the Savannah the Maa shed off some negative cultural aspects such as throwing the dead and dying to the hyenas (P 128), or emuata a culture that demanded that young brides (isiankikin) wear painful, heavy copper wires around their limbs. (P 263)

In Margaret Ogola’s The River and the Source the Luos have since shed off cultural practices such as removal of six lower teeth and wife inheritance (tero).

All these practices were licit and necessary in the wisdom of the society at the time but they are no longer in practice because they are needless and unnecessary.

Slavery was once legal in law in the UK until 1833 when it was abolished!

It’s is possible that man-made laws maybe be flawed and repressive. Therefore trying to defend Torvald by saying that Nora broke the law and that he was only innocently abiding by the acceptable norms in society is laughable. A man should have the wisdom to question meaningless traditions while upholding useful cultural or societal norms.

We should guide our learners to see that selflessness is a virtue and is always rewarded whereas selfishness is a vice and results in pain or agony.

Do you know this secret method to hack Literature Paper 3 essay questions? 


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