In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:

• Torvald's Question:Italo Svevo and James Joyce Stage Modern Masculinity
• Christine Froula (bio)

Nora! Nora! … Empty. She's gone. (A sudden hope leaps in him.) The greatest miracle—?!

Torvald in Henrik Ibsen, A Doll House (1879)

I have peeped into a great many doll's houses; and I have found that the dolls are not all female.

Nora in George Bernard Shaw, "Still After the Doll's House" (1890)

The Doll's House … has caused the greatest revolution in our time in the most important relationship there is—that between men and women. … Ibsen has been the greatest influence on the present generation. … His ideas have become part of our lives.

James Joyce to Arthur Power, Conversations with Joyce (1920s)

When Nora Helmer departs Torvald's doll house to educate herself as an adult human being, she leaves behind a paragon of nineteenth-century masculine "honor" whose questions as to what he must do, how he must change, she cannot answer.¹ Whereas most commentary on A Doll House assumes that Ibsen leaves Torvald no escape,² this essay highlights Torvald's echo of Nora's word "miracle" in his hopeful question at the play's open end and argues that two of Ibsen's heirs— the Triestine writer Italo Svevo (1861–1928) and his English tutor and literary soulmate the Irish James Joyce (1882–1941)—pursue Torvald's question in plays that stage crises of modern masculinity in parallel with Nora's awakening. Read comparatively, Ibsen's A Doll House (1879), [End Page 229] Svevo's A Husband (1895/1903), and Joyce's Exiles (1913–1915) embody a dramatic dialogue on freeing all the characters—Torvalds and Noras alike—from an antiquated socio-economic sex/gender system. Taking Ibsen's critical-realist dramaturgy into daring new territory, Svevo and Joyce stage avant-garde psychodramas in social worlds that put traditional masculinity—formed by man-made laws, rights, values, freedom, conscious and unconscious assumptions, prerogatives, and motives—in tension with Ibsen's revolutionary modernity. Their diagnostic dramas of toxic-masculinity-with-a-good-prognosis distill from Torvald's question a Shavian quintessence of post-Ibsenism that illuminates Ibsen's subsumption of feminism within the dialectical vision of human possibility that Nora's departure opens.

Ibsen's Pharmakon: "the greatest miracle—?!"

The shock waves sent through Europe and the world by the 1879 Copenhagen premiere of Ibsen's A Doll House (Et Dukkehjem) reverberate in innumerable debates and interpretations, from the play's first reviews to its 2023 Broadway adaptation.³ In "Ibsen's first fully modernist play," Nora catches the light as an enduring touchstone for women's struggles to claim full humanity in the private and public realms.⁴ Yet she exists with "other people in the great dolls' house of the social world," where all the characters interact in "painful change, creative accommodation, or apathetic resignation."⁵ In the 1890 story "Still After the Doll's House" by Ibsen's great champion George Bernard Shaw (who "turned playwright in order to carry on Ibsen's work"),⁶ a future Nora observes that "it is not always the woman who is sacrificed"; "I have peeped into a great many doll's houses; and I have found that the dolls are not all female."⁷ Shaw lauded Courtenay Thorpe's 1897 Torvald, played with unprecedented "passion" to "overwhelming" effect as no longer "an object lesson in lord-of-creationism" but a "fellow-creature blindly wrecking his happiness."⁸ The next year, addressing the Norwegian Association for the Cause of Women, Ibsen resisted the reduction of his play's world to one character or one sex. More "poet" than "social philosopher," he felt he "must decline the honor consciously to have worked for the cause of women. I am not even quite clear what the cause of women really is. For me it has appeared [End Page 230] to be the cause of human beings. … My task has been to portray human beings."⁹

The play's long reception and Nora's many eponymous adaptations¹⁰ tend to obscure the fact that Torvald speaks last: "Nora! Nora! … Empty. She's gone. (A sudden hope leaps in him.) The greatest miracle...

中文翻译：

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托瓦尔德的问题：伊塔洛·斯韦沃和詹姆斯·乔伊斯演绎现代男子气概

以下是内容的简短摘录，以代替摘要：

• 托瓦尔德的问题：伊塔洛·斯韦沃和詹姆斯·乔伊斯演绎现代男子气概
• 克里斯汀·弗鲁拉（简介）

诺拉！诺拉！… 空的。她走了。（他突然燃起了希望。）最大的奇迹——？！

亨利克·易卜生的《玩偶之家》（1879）中的托瓦尔德

我窥视过很多娃娃屋；而且我发现这些娃娃并不全是女性。

萧伯纳《玩偶之家之后》（1890）中的诺拉

玩偶之家……在我们这个时代最重要的关系——男人和女人之间——引发了最大的革命。……易卜生对当代人影响最大。……他的想法已经成为我们生活的一部分。

詹姆斯·乔伊斯 (James Joyce) 致阿瑟·鲍尔 (Arthur Power)，《与乔伊斯的对话》(Conversations with Joyce )（1920 年代）

当诺拉·赫尔默离开托瓦尔德的玩偶之家去教育自己成为一个成年人时，她留下了一位十九世纪男性“荣誉”的典范，他无法回答他必须做什么、必须如何改变的问题。¹尽管《玩偶之家》的大多数评论都认为易卜生让托瓦尔德无处可逃，²这篇文章强调了托瓦尔德在剧中开放式结局中充满希望的问题中对诺拉一词“奇迹”的呼应，并认为易卜生的两位继承人——的里雅斯汀作家伊塔洛·斯韦沃（1861-1928）和他的英语导师兼文学灵魂伴侣爱尔兰人詹姆斯·乔伊斯（1882-1941）在戏剧中追寻托瓦尔德的问题，这些戏剧与诺拉的觉醒同时上演了现代男子气概的危机。相比之下，易卜生的《玩偶之家》（1879）、[完第 229 页]斯维沃的《丈夫》（1895/1903）和乔伊斯的《流放者》（1913-1915）体现了一场戏剧性的对话，将所有角色——托瓦尔兹和诺拉斯——从过时的社会经济性别/性别制度。斯韦沃和乔伊斯将易卜生的批判现实主义戏剧艺术带入了大胆的新领域，在社会世界中上演了前卫的心理剧，将传统的男性气质——由人为的法律、权利、价值观、自由、有意识和无意识的假设、特权和动机形成——与易卜生的革命现代性处于紧张状态。他们对有毒男性气质的诊断戏剧从托瓦尔德的问题中提炼出后易卜生主义的沙维亚精髓，阐明了易卜生将女权主义纳入诺拉的离开所开启的人类可能性的辩证视野中。

易卜生的Pharmakon：“最伟大的奇迹——？！”

1879 年，易卜生的《玩偶之家》 ( Et Dukkehjem ) 在哥本哈根首演，从该剧的首次评论到 2023 年的百老汇改编版，在欧洲和世界范围内引发了无数争论和解读。³在“易卜生第一部完全现代主义的戏剧”中，诺拉将其视为女性在私人和公共领域争取完全人性的斗争的持久试金石。⁴然而，她与“社交世界的大玩偶之家​​中的其他人”一起存在，所有角色都以“痛苦的变化、创造性的适应或冷漠的顺从”的方式互动。⁵在 1890 年易卜生的伟大拥护者萧伯纳（他“为了继承易卜生的作品而成为剧作家”）的故事《玩偶之家之后》中，⁶未来的诺拉观察到“牺牲的并不总是女人” ”; “我窥视过很多娃娃屋，发现娃娃并不都是女性的。” ⁷萧伯纳称赞考特尼·索普 1897 年饰演的《托瓦尔德》，他以前所未有的“热情”达到了“压倒性”的效果，不再是“神创论之主的实物教训”，而是“盲目地破坏他幸福的同胞生物”。⁸第二年，易卜生在挪威妇女事业协会发表讲话时，反对将他的戏剧世界简化为一个角色或一种性别。与其说他是“社会哲学家”，不如说他是“诗人”，他觉得自己“必须有意识地拒绝为女性事业而奋斗的荣誉。我什至不太清楚女性事业到底是什么。对我来说，它已经出现了[尾页] 230]成为人类的事业……我的任务就是描绘人类。” ⁹

该剧的长期受欢迎和诺拉的许多同名改编¹⁰往往掩盖了托瓦尔德最后说话的事实：“诺拉！诺拉！……空了。她走了。（突然的希望在他心中跳跃。）最伟大的奇迹……