![]() Her husband finally says, “I give you complete freedom. She tells her husband that she wants to meet her visitor. The heroine is married, and her former lover lives across the sea, but one day he seeks her out to ask her to elope with him. What would have prevented Nora from leaving? Ibsen may have supplied the answer himself in Die Frau vom Meer (The Lady From the Sea), translated into Chinese as Hai Shang Furen(The Lady At Sea). So she walks out, and the play ends with the sound of the front door slamming shut. At the outset, Nora is living contentedly in a supposedly happy household, but eventually she is awakened: she is her husband’s puppet, and her children are her puppets. However, the word Puppe refers not only to a puppet or marionette but also to a doll that children play with more broadly, it also refers to people whose actions are controlled by others. The play’s title in German is Ein Puppenheim (A Puppet’s Home). At one period in his life he wrote plays that were mainly on social problems, known to the world at large as “social drama,” and among them was the play known in China as Nuola (Nora). Apart from a few dozen poems, his work was mostly in drama. ![]() My talk today is on the subject “What Happens after Nora Walks Out.” Henrik Ibsen was a Norwegian writer in the second half of the nineteenth century. Then in a fortnight or so, we – being the editors, together with reviewer Liz Carter – will compile and discuss those thoughts, and get to the bottom of the essay and what it means. – Alec AshĪ talk given to Literature and Arts Society at Beijing Women’s Normal College, December 26, 1923 One random reader who writes in will receive a copy of the collection, courtesy of HUP. Rather than say more, we invite you to read it and make up your own mind, then write to us at with a short paragraph explaining what you think the most interesting aspect of the essay is, plus any questions you have about it (see below for some prompts). There is much to unpack and question in this masterful essay, from attitudes to feminism to Chinese politics of the time, and while a product of its era it touches on the universal, with hidden meanings that can be applied to today. Lu Xun picks it up from there, and compares Nora’s predicament to that of the fledgling republic of China. At the end of the play, belittled by her husband and a constrictive society, Nora walks out on her family, slamming the door behind her as the curtain falls. In this essay, originally a talk to a women’s college in Beijing in 1923, Lu Xun tackles a range of topics, all under the guise of wondering about the fate of one of literature’s most famous figures: Nora, a Norweigen housewife in the late 19th century and protagonist of Henry Ibsen’s celebrated 1879 play A Doll’s House. ![]() ![]() Our first offering is an exclusive excerpt from Jottings under Lamplight, the new collection of Lu Xun’s essays in translation, published by Harvard University Press, that Liz Carter reviewed for us. Each month we will publish a Chinese story, fiction or nonfiction, in translation, and invite you, our readers, to write in with your thoughts. Now to close our first week out, we’d like to introduce a new monthly feature: story club. An exclusive essay by Lu Xun to kick off our monthly story clubĮditor’s note: For our opening week at the China Channel, it has been our pleasure to bring you a smorgasbord of delights to celebrate both Lu Xun’s birthday, and our own as a new channel for sinophiles and the sinocurious.
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