The movement of the letter in A Doll House

Abstract

The letter plays a decisive role in A Doll House. Condensing the triple meanings of a signifier, an epistle, and the Law into the letter, Ibsen has shown how the movement of the letter decides the subjectivity of the characters. Nora’s life first is determined by a forged signature (‘the Name of the Father’), then its later metamorphosis into the letters, and finally the whole Symbolic Order. The itinerary of the letter also shapes the identities of other protagonists who have adopted a concordant negative attitude towards the letter. These frustrated responses towards the letter reveal Ibsen’s postmodernist scepticism about language: the ontological uncertainty over linguistic determination of human subjectivity.