What the exam asks
Eligibility rule (no reuse): A literary work may be used in only one assessment component. If you use A Doll’s House for your Individual Oral or your HL Essay, you cannot write on it in Paper 2.
- Paper 2 (25 marks, 1 hour 45 minutes, closed book): You answer one of four general literary questions by comparing and/or contrasting two literary works. Criterion B1 (5 marks) rewards analysing and evaluating how small-scale features and broader authorial choices shape meaning; Criterion B2 (5 marks) rewards how far your comparison deepens the reading of both works.
- Individual Oral (40 marks, 15 minutes): You examine how a global issue is presented in a continuous extract of up to 40 lines from the play (and in the play as a whole) alongside a non-literary extract and body of work.
- HL Essay (20 marks, 1,200–1,500 words): You investigate a broad formal or conceptual line of inquiry across the whole play.
Core ideas
Mapping the play to Paper 2 question types (Criterion B1)
Never build a Paper 2 essay around plot summary. Build every argument on Ibsen’s dramatic choices:
| General Paper 2 question focus | Key moments in the play | Authorial choices to analyse (B1) |
|---|---|---|
| Public performance of a role and its private cost | Nora from “my little lark” (Act 1) to “I must stand quite alone” (Act 3) | Register shift from childlike babble to plain syntax; stage directions ([pale with terror] vs [firmly and decidedly]); the rehearsed tarantella; the costume change; the slamming door. |
| Concealing the truth (from others or oneself) | The secret loan, the forged signature, the macaroons; Helmer’s illusion of himself as manly rescuer | Retrospective exposition (the past enters the room via Mrs Linde and Krogstad); dramatic irony as the audience watches the locked letterbox. |
| A character changed by events | Nora’s awakening in Act 3 set against Helmer, who remains static and measures her transformation | Contrast in Nora’s speech length and syntax before and after Helmer reads Krogstad’s two letters. |
| One character set against another (foils) | Nora vs Mrs Linde; Helmer vs Krogstad; Nora vs Dr Rank | Mirror characters and the structural pairing of two-person dialogues across Acts 1 to 3. |
| Power held and resisted | Money as the household language; Krogstad’s “The law cares nothing about motives” vs Nora’s “hundreds of thousands of women have done” | Stage props that materialize power (the locked letterbox, Rank’s black-crossed card, the returned bond) and control over who may enter Helmer’s study. |
| A place made central to meaning | Three days inside one middle-class sitting-room | The single set with its doors (to the hall, to Helmer’s study, to the inner rooms); the Christmas tree stripped between Acts 1 and 2; the threshold between study and hall. |
| Words that wound or heal | Helmer’s animal diminutives; his panicked outburst after the first letter vs his hollow forgiveness after the second | Animal and possession motifs (“my little lark”, “papa’s doll-child”); Nora’s unadorned clauses (“I believe”, “I must”). |
| The limits of love | Helmer’s failure to live up to the rescue Nora waited for; Rank’s coded declaration; Mrs Linde and Krogstad’s pragmatic union | The structural juxtaposition of the counter-marriage (Mrs Linde and Krogstad) immediately before the Helmers’ final reckoning. |
| An ending that reshapes the whole work | The sit-down discussion and the sound of the street door | Subversion of the well-made play’s resolution, forcing the audience to reread Act 1’s domestic charm as a claustrophobic performance. |
| A recurring object or motif | The tree, the macaroons, the letterbox, the Neapolitan costume, the rings, the lamp | Visual stage symbols that track Nora’s growing fear and the exposure of the marriage across three acts. |
Pairings by authorial choice (Criterion B2)
Pair works by how they are made, not just what they are about. One sentence of checkable fact (for example, that a wife of Nora’s day could not borrow without her husband’s consent) can sharpen a B2 contrast, but context is never the argument and never a paragraph.