Dance the Tarantella
Torvald had always chided me of my silly outbursts and spendthrift manners, and I had always taken the joking with good will, but I was not ready for Ibsen’s own version of my violent physical manifestations in the scene of the tarantella. Up until this point, my feelings had always been securely tied inside of me. One critic commented, “Any confession bothers [me] because it puts an end to the fluctuating interplay of interplay of being and appearance” (Meyer). I have to admit that I am rather afraid of the truth, seeing the truth could, and ultimately did, result in marital problems. My obsession with appearances, however disillusioned by the nearing of certain demise on Torvald’s part, continues through the tarantella. Superficially, it can be described as “quasi-pornographic, a mere display of sexualized body” as I am unmercifully “de-soul”ed by Torvald and Dr. Rank’s gazes and transformed into the “mechanical doll” (Moi 239). On the other hand, I admittedly contributed to my own status as doll, as I create my own diversion, or “spectacle,” to keep Torvald’s attention from his mailbox (237). But at times I feel that the criticism of A Doll’s House is hypocritical – what wife does not morph occasionally into the perfect doll to please a tyrannical husband?
In retrospect, however, I had not yet understood the true harshness of my oppression and ignorance; hence, the tarantella must be Ibsen’s method of making me realize my own situation through “the best picture of my soul,” in other words, the involuntary actions of my body (Bradbrook 238). Overall, the dance of the tarantella is one of the major turning points of the play, in which I finally comprehend my purpose and position in life.
In addition, the tarantella gives a picture of myself before and after that belated realization; consider the exact moment of epiphany as when my hair comes undone: “Ibsen, I am sure, here deliberately invokes the theatrical convention known as ‘back hair,’ which the nineteenth century melodrama handbook signifies the ‘onset of madness’ (Bradbrook 238). Through physical changes during the tarantella, Ibsen paints my transformation as “light and frivolous on the surface, but concealing underneath a dreadful secret,” and the duality of the dance causes it to be “the gruesome climax of doll life” (Lee). The tension is ultimately felt by the audience in the following stage directions:
Helmer has taken up a position beside the stove, and during her dance gives her frequent instructions. She does not seem to hear him; her hair comes down and falls over her shoulders; she pays no attention to it, but goes on dancing. (Ibsen)
And later, with these ironic lines,
Torvald – But dearest, best Nora, you are dancing as if your life were at stake.
Nora – But it is! (Ibsen)
Fortunately, of all the criticism on my frenzied dancing skills, one critic summarizes both my feministic and humanistic purposes. And that is, “It may be better simply to say that Nora’s tarantella is a graphic representation of a woman’s struggle to make her existence heard, to make it count” (Moi 237).