Successful marriages today involve communication and support from both partners, yet it was not always like this. Historically, women were supposed to serve their husband—with the only support coming from his finances. This can be seen in supporting-character Christine Linde in Henrik Ibsen’s A Doll’s House. This play focuses on the family life and the secrets behind husband and wife Torvald and Nora Helmer. From the outside, the Helmers seem like a happy couple. Nora, however, is keeping a secret that threatens to ruin this visor. Mrs. Linde is a long-time friend and recent confidant of Nora’s secret. Christine Linde’s husband has passed, and she finds herself rekindling an old romance with a man named Nils Krogstad. While Mrs. Linde keeps …show more content…
Linde transforms her role in the house—from serving others to supporting others. Mrs. Linde begins this play feeling “unspeakably empty.” (9) Her husband and mother have died and younger brothers have grown up, so Christine is left with no one to serve. Serving others is all she has done and, when that is taken away, she feels lost and alone—as if she does not have a purpose in life. This characterizes Mrs. Linde as the ideal wife in the 1800s. Women, as discussed in Carroll Smith-Rosenberg’s article about sex roles in the nineteenth century, were supposed to manage everything about the home. Women should “manage the family’s day to day finances, prepare foods, make clothes, compound drugs, [and] serve as family nurse,” which is exactly what Mrs. Linde had done. (656) In the last act, however, Mrs. Linde not only finds a new family to love and care for, but also a new sense of self in the relationship. As Christine and Nils are planning their future, Christine realizes she does not just want to serve Nils like she had done in her previous relationship. She still wants to care for Nils but she also wants Nils to care for her. This can be seen when Christine speaks of her and Nils leaning on each other like “two shipwrecked people” standing together. She mentions, “two on the same piece of wreckage would stand a better chance than each on their own.” (54) While each half of the marriage is imperfect, together they can fill the areas where the other …show more content…
Linde expects to be treated in her new marriage. Christine is first introduced in the play as someone lost because she has “no one to live for anymore” (9). Christine is seen here as being fulfilled by living for others. Consequently, she shows the submissive role a woman “should” play in society’s ideal marriage at the time. Contrasted with the first act’s need for someone to serve, act III shows Christine wanting a more active role in her marriage. When speaking to Krogstad about their future, she explains, “a woman who has once sold herself for another’s sake, doesn’t do it a second time” (78). Because she had previously put her needs after everyone else’s, she therefore does not want another marriage of submission to others. While Christine’s previous marriage was full of suppressing her needs, she now strives for an equal role in her marriage. Christine hopes for a marriage of shared responsibility, different to her relationship of servitude to her past husband. This contrast of Christine’s old and new outlook of her role in her marriage is indicative of society’s view of marriage and the progressive view Ibsen tries to present within A Doll’s House. Nineteenth-century ideals held that women were dependent on men and needed to serve them. Ordinarily, women were seen as needing to rely on men and in turn “should reward [their] male protector[s] with affection and submission” (Smith-Rosenburg 656).