The door slam that ended the nineteenth century. Nora Helmer, the happy little lark of her household, discovers the terms of her marriage and walks out. Ibsen's 1879 play caused such outrage that in some productions he was forced to write an alternative ending where Nora stays. But the original ending is the one that mattered, the one that gave language to what women had been feeling and could not say. The play invented modern drama, replaced theatrical artifice with recognizable domestic life, and made the personal political before the phrase existed.