Nora's tarantella: Dancing on the edge of gender norms

Abstract

This article focuses on the tarantella scene in Henrik Ibsen's drama A Doll's House. Based on a close reading of the text, it discusses whether this scene can be interpreted as the moment of Nora's famous disillusionment in the patriarchal bourgeois ideology. The aim of this paper is to present arguments against such conclusion. In contrast to the interpretations of Nora's tarantella as a successful ritual performance during which the play's protagonist undergoes a full cognitive transformation, this article argues that the tarantella scene from the Act Two can rather be seen as a moment which symbolizes the (melo-)dramatic peak of the protagonist's devotion to the strictly defined bourgeois norms of 'proper behaviour'.