In both incident and theme, Agatha Christie's short story "Magnolia Blossom" has several parallels with Henrik Ibsen's A Doll's House. In Christie's story, Theodora Darrell is on the point of leaving her husband Richard for another man, his associate Vincent Easton. Just as she and Vincent are about to leave for France, Theodora learns that Richard's business has gone bankrupt. Despite Vincent's pleading, she returns to Richard, not telling him about the attempted elopement. Richard confesses to her that he faces criminal prosecution, and that Vincent has some papers which would clinch the case against him. He implores Theodora to ask Vincent to give her the papers. Reluctantly, Theodora goes to Vincent. He does give her the papers, which she burns before returning home to Richard. Their subsequent conversation causes her to realize that Richard had expected two things: Vincent would ask Theodora to sleep with him in exchange for the papers, and Theodora would do so. She tells Richard that Vincent did not ask her for any sexual favors, and she reveals their aborted elopement. Richard asks if during the thwarted elopement, she and Vincent had been physically intimate. She says that they had not, whereupon Richard says that in that case, he can forgive her. She replies that she cannot forgive Richard for being willing to sell her honor in exchange for his own. The story ends with Theodora's leaving the house, and the context makes clear that she is not returning to Vincent.
To spell out some of the parallels:
- Financial secrets that one spouse has
- The necessity of destroying papers that could reveal the secret
- A man in love with another man's wife (as Dr Rank is in love with Nora)
- A wife's realizing that her husband does not value her as much as she does him, nor loyalty to their marriage as much as she does
- The consideration of suicide as a way out
- Once the threat is defused, the husband's claim that he forgives the wife being summarily rejected by the wife
- The sound of the door closing behind the departing wife.
The most salient parallel between the two works is around the concept of honor. Nora has naïvely expected that Torvald will take the guilt for her forgery upon himself. But he says he would have done no such thing:
HELMER: I would gladly work night and day for you, Nora—bear sorrow and want for your sake. But no man would sacrifice his honour for the one he loves.
NORA: It is a thing hundreds of thousands of women have done.
Ibsen, Act III
Theodora echoes this:
"You wanted to save your skin—save it at any cost—even at the cost of my honor."
Christie, p. 221
Like Nora, Theodora realizes that her husband has a distorted understanding of honor, focusing on social prestige or a good name rather than on personal integrity. This causes both heroines to reëvaluate their previous view of their respective marriages. At the end, both women leave to face the future alone.
"Magnolia Blossom" was first published in 1926, some 40 years after A Doll's House was first publicly performed in England. By the 1920s, Ibsen's stature in England was very high, thanks to champions such as George Bernard Shaw. Christie herself wrote plays, beginning with Black Coffee in 1930, and some knowledge of theatre can be presumed on her part. For these reasons, it is conceivable that Christie was familiar with Ibsen's play. But is there any evidence that Christie had Ibsen in mind when writing this story? Do her memoirs or autobiography mention Ibsen? Failing such evidence, have critics or scholars discussed the thematic connections between these two works?
References
Christie, Agatha. "Magnolia Blossom." Originally published in The Royal Magazine issue 329, March 1926. Reprinted in A Deadly Affair: Unexpected Love Stories from the Queen of Mystery. New York: HarperCollins, 2022. pp. 201–223.
Ibsen, Henrik. A Doll's House. 1879. Accessed at Project Gutenberg 23 January 2024.
