People in Love in Ibsen\'s a Doll\'s

¶ … People in Love in Ibsen's a Doll's House and Chopin's "The Story of an Hour"

Berkove, Lawrence I. "Fatal Self-Assertion in Kate Chopin's "The Story of an Hour" American

Literary Realism 32.2 (2000). Print. Berkove makes a very interesting point. Mrs.

Mallard's self-assertion does end her life. He argues that Louise Mallard is not a feminist heroine but "an immature egoist and a victim of her own extreme self-assertion" (10). His theory is that Louise is not a woman to look up to as a feminist icon, but a monstrous figure.

This article is useful in that most criticisms of both the Ibsen play and the Chopin story are from a feminist perspective. His argument is the direct opposite. He believes that Mrs. Mallard is too weak to face the reality of her imagination. When there is a challenge to her newly-found sense of self, she collapses.

Dagenhart, Natalia. "Freedom as a Sense of Life In Kate Chopin's "The Story of an Hour" Web.

Nov. 2010.

One of the things Ibsen's work and Chopin's has in common is the female who has been made into a child by a domineering husband and a domineering society. What is different is in how the two women respond when they realize the position they have allowed themselves to be placed in. It is evident after reading this article that Mrs. Mallard was by far the weaker of the two women.

Harlow, Barbara. "From the Women's Prison: Third World." Feminist Studies 12.3 (1986).

Harlow compares the woman's existence in the late 19th century as a prison. In the hour she believed her husband dead, "Mrs. Mallard has lived and hour of liberation and dreamed an entire future of independence" (501). The realization that all this was impossible since her husband was not really dead is what kills her.

The crux of "A Story of an Hour" is in Mrs. Mallard's realization that her tears upon hearing of her husband's death are not ones of mourning, but of joy. Her husband's death means she is free to live life as she chooses. Unlike Ibsen's character Nora, Mrs. Mallard has not the strength to keep this freedom if challenged.

"The Social Significance of the Modern Drama: A Doll's House." Berkeley Digital Library

SunSITE. Web. 22 Nov. 2010. . The argument of this article is that the theme of A Doll's House is "the social lie and duty." In effect, humans have a role imposed on them by society and must keep up a respectable image in order to fulfill this role. In the case of Nora, her role is to be a good little wife and mother and to keep up her husband's reputation. When she fails this, she fails as a woman.

Nora's husband accuses her of being a failure. This is a major question in a comparison of Nora and Louise. Which one is a success and a woman and which one fails. What defines a successful woman? The sociological understanding of the time period that these woman lived in is thus extremely important.

To-rnqvist, Egil. Ibsen: A Doll's House. Cambridge [u.a.: Cambridge Univ., 2000. Print.

Historically, Ibsen base the play A Doll's House on a real woman he new named Laura Kieler (2). In 1876, Laura's husband became seriously ill and she had to secretly borrow money to finance the trip. When she could not pay back this loan, she forged a note from her husband. When this came to light, her husband was incensed. "He, regardless of the fact that she had done it purely for his sake…told her she was unworthy to have charge of their children and…had her committed to a public asylum…and demanded a separation so that the children could be removed from her care" (3). For the sake of her children, after her release from the asylum she begged her husband to take her bag which he did.

This text is useful in discussing a historical basis for the play. Unlike Nora in A Doll's House, Laura was not able to separate herself from her family. She needed to be a mother but Nora was more interested in becoming a fully-developed human being than in motherhood.