Halfway House and a Doll's House : a Comparison

Throughout the play Ibsen takes pains to enforce and reinforce Nora's identity. Right at the beginning of the play we witness the following exchange between Helmer, Nora's husband and Nora herself

Helmer. Is it my little squirrel bustling about?

Nora. Yes!

Helmer. When did my squirrel come home?

Nora. Just now. (Puts the bag of macaroons into her pocket

and wipes her mouth.) Come in here, Torvald, and see what I

have bought.

Helmer. Don't disturb me. (A little later, he opens the door

and looks into the room, pen in hand.) Bought, did you say?

All these things? Has my little spendthrift been wasting money

again?

Immediately even with this brief introduction several things become clear. First and foremost every time Helmer talks to Nora he uses the word my, a first person adjective used to denote things which we possess or things which we own. Helmer sees Nora only as a pretty little thing. Nora is a doll and their home is her dollhouse. Here she is confined to her duties as a mother and a wife. She is not to decide how much she can spend – she has no autonomy, financial or otherwise and is dependent on her husband for all her needs. In exchange she agrees to be caged and agrees to please and amuse. This is the contract which society has bound Nora by and this is the contract which Nora honours right until the end. This contract stipulates that Nora must be a doll and fulfill her husband's wishes. This contract makes her impulsive, naïve and frivolous on the outside although as we realize later on that Nora is in fact a clever and world weary woman. This tension which all women of that time must have faced, the tension between the inner, true self and the outer, fake self cuts Nora as a lonely, isolated figure living through society like chaff caught in the wind.

The characters in Halfway House are even more helplessly trapped and isolated. Unlike Nora they seem not to have the option or rather the ability to make an exit. They try to leave the house (Mahendranath, Binni and Savitri all try) but return eventually. In the words of critic N.S. Dharan:

"Each individual in the family feels lonely but none dares to leave the coop. And if at all anyone leaves, it is only to come back. The play, in effect, portrays loneliness in the midst of relationships, and also the impossibility of escaping into the world outside. One goes out only to come back and live as one used to in the past. The wheel goes round and round, but the spokes are precariously hinged, likely to fall off any moment. But nothing happens, the stasis is frightening."

In fact the depiction of the trapped and isolated individual was one of Mohan Rakesh's foremost concerns while writing this play. He says

"Most of my stories are about people living through the torture of relationships and loneliness, where I have tried to depict through the individual his environment. The loneliness is not the loneliness of the socially isolated individual but the loneliness that comes from living within society and it leads not to any kind of cynicism but the need to live through it."

Thus living such a life of isolation only frays and weakens bonds. It is the spring of disharmony and dissatisfaction in A Doll's House and the spring of uneasy incompleteness in Halfway House.

For any marriage to be successful, it is a given that both the husband and the wife must know and understand each other – feelings, motives, ideas and emotions thoroughly. It also goes without saying that a stable marriage is the foundation stone of a happy family.

But neither Nora and Helmer nor Mahendranath and Savitri understand each other and hence do not empathise with each other. They are unable to take that next crucial step to cement their marriage: reconciling their differences so that love can grow between them.

Nora. We have been married now eight years. Does it not

occur to you that this is the first time we two, you and I,

husband and wife, have had a serious conversation?

Helmer. What do you mean by serious?

Nora. In all these eight years—longer than that—from the

very beginning of our acquaintance, we have never