¶ … Doll's House (Henrik Ibsen)
The title of Ibsen's masterpiece -- A Doll's House -- doesn't lack meaning or symbolism; that is to say that the house in which Nora, the protagonist, lives is a house, which, for all intents and purposes, is one that has been constructed for the sole purpose of keeping her a kept woman (i.e. A doll in a doll's house). Like a play thing, Nora makes up dances to please her husband, wears seductive outfits and exists, for the most part, to entertain those around her. She is often whimsical and spontaneous -- downing five macaroons in a sitting if she feels like it. The poignancy of this play comes with Nora's realization that sometimes women think for themselves. This happens when Nora forges her father's signature, takes out a loan without asking her husband, Torvald, and then leaves him and her children in order to find herself....
Becoming her own person is not possible for Nora if she is to live inside the confines of her gilded cage.
Within the context of this play, it is easy to see the impact of a rigid and paternalistic culture on an everyday woman. Along those lines, the message of the play has long been speculated upon. Is it a feminist piece, or not? The answer to that question can be answered with an unequivocal 'yes.' Inside the house, Nora is forced to keep up her role as the good wife and the good mother. The roles of men and women in Victorian society are clearly presented. Men took care of all the business, provided for their wives and children, and the wives found ways to busy themselves in ways that would not be disruptive to the men around them. Nora, therefore, acts like just this type of woman -- until she discovers that her family is having financial problems, which is when she decides to step outside of her role and, as she believes, help out. Before this, Nora is the ideal wife whose only flaw is that she occasionally over-indulges in her macaroons -- a characteristic that is not unlike a child sneaking too many jelly beans.
Ibsen was making a statement…
Ibsen's a Doll's House Henrik Ibsen's play A Doll's House dramatizes its heroine's dilemma by providing an example of what fate might possibly await her: the subplot involving Mrs. Linde is designed by Ibsen as a deliberate contrast and warning to Nora, the "little doll" of the play's title (Ibsen 84).. I hope by an examination of the different uses Ibsen makes of his counterplot to demonstrate that Ibsen intends the
Henrik Ibsen's a Doll's House Henrik Ibsen's characters are not the people they appear to be. On the surface and at the beginning of the play audiences see typical people, pursuing typical lives with typical problems. Not until the play progresses, and in retrospect, do audiences realize that society negatively or positively stimulates the characters motives and actions. This paper looks at three such characters in Henrik Ibsen's play A
Doll's House" by Henrik Ibsen, and "Trifles" by Susan Glaspell. Specifically, it will compare and contrast Torvald and his attitude toward Nora in the play, to the men's attitudes toward women in the play "Trifles." Both these pieces show women treated simply as idiotic "things" by the men in the pieces, but the women are clearly smarter than the men are, and it is the men who end up
Finding no recourse or way to express her true feelings and thoughts, the Narrator began reflecting on her oppression through the yellow wallpaper patterns on the walls of her room: "The front pattern does move -- and no wonder! The woman behind shakes it! Sometimes I think there are a great many women behind, and sometimes only one, and she crawls around fast...and in the very shady spots she just
Mr. Alving's many affairs on the other hand, including with their maid (resulting in Regina's birth), though not exactly condoned by society are not frowned upon as much as Mrs. Alving's leaving. This hypocrisy forms one of the central conflicts of the play, and is also one of the major sources of controversy. Another issue that is raised in the play is inheritance. Mrs. Alving is building the orphanage at
" Otherwise, Nora's interest in who is employed at the bank -- Krogstad or Mrs. Lind -- would wholly ruin Torvald's carefully constructed social reality. This, essentially, is the only way in which a woman playing the feminine role is able to bend the rules; Nora can exert her influence, but only by emphasizing her helplessness. Throughout A Doll's House there is an interesting relationship between parents and their children. Recurrently,
