Feminism and "A Doll's House"
In the globe, feminism is a common practice in the social customs of both developed and developing nations. This is because, in both cases, there has been an apparent similar portrayal of women, who have gone through various phases of social levels compared to the consistent social dominance, which is evident in almost every society in the globe. Feminism seeks to know why women continue to play a subordinate role in most human social settings. In addition, the idea of feminism shows concern in respect to how the women's lives have changed in history. It also asks why women's experiences differ from those of men, whether the variations may have arisen due to historical or social construction.
In addition, feminism involves the belief in the social, economic, and political equivalence of the genders. Although research suggests that the practice originated in the est, currently, it is a…...
mlaWorks cited
Casad, Bettina J., and Alian S. Kasabian. "Feminism." Encyclopedia of Group Processes & Intergroup Relations. Ed. John M. Levine, and Michael A. Hogg. Thousand Oaks, CA:
SAGE Publications, Inc., 2010. 282-285. SAGE knowledge. Web. 26 Nov. 2013.
David M. Galens and Lynn M. Spampinato. "Overview: A Doll's House." Drama for Students.
Ed. Vol. 1. Detroit: Gale, 1998. Literature Resource Center. Web. 26 Nov. 2013.
" Ibsen demanded justice and freedom for every human being and wrote a Doll House to inspire society to individualism and free them from suppression." (http://www.helium.com/items/1121047-henrik-ibsen-dolls-house).
In the play, the family exists in the way society defines it -- a husband, a wife, children and a home; but in reality it is just a collection of strangers living in the same house. For Nora the crisis of blackmail and her husband finding out about the loan and forgery becomes a moment of enlightenment. When Torvald yells at her and does not takeover to save he, she learns that he is not a real husband and she is not valued as herself but for the role she plays in Torvald's efforts to meet society's expectations. Nora turn her crisis into a moment of self-actualization.
For Torvald, the crisis he thought he faced was the consequences of Nora's actions, however, the real crisis Torvald…...
Ibsen's a Doll's House as Modern Tragedy
The most powerful and lasting contributions to the literature of a given era are invariably penned by bold thinkers struggling to comprehend the ever changing world in which they live. Spanning the 18th and 19th centuries, the European Modernist movement, which was propelled by the authorial brilliance of authors and playwrights such as like the Norwegian Henrik Ibsen, was shaped and inspired by the momentous political and social upheaval roiling all the Old Continent following decades of societal transformation. The toppling of previously infallible monarchies and the sudden distribution of democratic ideals across boundaries of gender and class forced the literary-minded creative class to recalibrate their worldview instantly, and the result is a wealth of material -- including novels, plays and critical pieces of nonfiction -- all of which focuses intently on the crumbling conventions of marriage and faith. ith the external foundations of…...
mlaWorks Cited
Gassner, John. "The Possibilities and Perils of Modern Tragedy." The Tulane Drama Review 1.3
(1957): 3-14.
Goldman, Emma. The Social Significance of Modern Drama. Boston: The Gorham Press, 1914.
Ibsen, Henrik. A Doll's House [Illustrated with photographs]. William C. Archer translator.
Nora's life has been made economically easy by her husband, but that subordination is what takes the ease out of her life of comfort. Torvald is the dominant partner in their marriage. Without his consent, she cannot make major decisions, like make a loan, without her husband's permission. "Frankenstein" is also about parental and filial obligation and relationship. Dr. Victor Frankenstein is the creator and father of the monster, but this creator and father immediately abandons his creation the moment he beholds this ugliness. As a child pursues its parent, the creature pursues Victor for his care, protection and instruction. When unable to satisfy these basic needs, the creature of ignorance, ignominy and intelligence turns to the dark and hidden part of him in calling the attention of his creator and displacing the energy his creator infused him with. He begins to destroy the people close to Victor's heart…...
mlaBibliography
Ibsen, Henrik. A Doll's House (1828). Dover Thrift Editions. Paperback, February 21, 1992
Shelley, Mary Wollstonecraft. Frankenstein (1816). A Bantam Classics. Mass Market Paperback, June 1, 1984
Ibsen's "A Doll's House"
In A Doll's House by Henrik Ibsen, the play's protagonist Nora Helmer has her character defined, in part, by the use of a dramatic foil for her -- her former schoolmate Christina, always addressed as "Mrs. Linde" because she is a widow. Ibsen uses Mrs. Linde's secondary subplot as a way of commenting or drawing attention to the primary storyline about Nora and her husband Torvald. But in each of the three acts of Ibsen's drama, the dramatist uses Mrs. Linde effectively as a foil, by advancing each element in her lesser storyline as a means of providing a constrast to (or perhaps at times a reflection of) Nora, the protagonist and the "little doll" of the play's title (Ibsen 84). I hope to demonstrate this by showing how Mrs. Linde is used as a foil in each of the three acts, and concluding by noting how…...
Doll's House
Henrik Ibsen's play A Doll's Housemade him the father of modern literature. His writing showed tragedy and drama in a new and rather modern way. Prior to an analysis of the story at hand, it is only relevant that the plot and main characters are discussed in detail. This story does not revolve around a whole bunch of characters and is based on only a few days. The story starts off on A Christmas eve when Nora is in the living room and has just gotten back from a shopping trip. Nora is the protagonist of the play and is a wife and a mother. As soon as the play commences, the audience can tell about the rigid relationship between Nora and her husband, Torvald Helmer.
The conversation that the two are having shows that the couple and the family had to go through some tough times before. However, due…...
mlaWorks cited
Adams, Robert Martin. "Henrik Ibsen: The Fifty-First Anniversary." The Hudson Review, 10. 3 (1957): 415 -- 423. Print.
Fjelde, Rolf. Four major plays: Volume I. New York City: Signet Classic. 1992. Print.
Forward, Stephanie. "A New World for women? Stephanie Forward considers Nora's dramatic exit from Ibsen's A Doll's House." The English Review, 19. 4 (2009): Print.
Freedman, Morris. The moral impulse. Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1967. Print.
Doll's House
Henrick Ibsen's work, A Doll's House, focuses largely on the theme of obligation, which can be viewed in turn as a basis of the human experience to which all human beings can relate. In viewing this overarching theme of "obligation" within the text, the reader can not only see the ways in which Ibsen uses specific literary devices to hone in on this theme, but lays the basis for a deeper meaning beyond the words that the reader can gauge in applying their own experiences to those addressed in the text.
A Doll's House has largely been viewed as a work that embodies the need of the individual to find out the kind of person he or she really is, along with the constant struggle one feels within themselves to become that person in every aspect of their lives. In this, comes not only an obligation to ourselves, but an…...
mlaReferences
Ibsen, H. (2005). A Doll's House. Clayton, DE: Prestwick House.
A Doll's House, Ibsen
He feels that Nora's freedom is not a reality since she couldn't possibly just leave her house and establish her own identity without money. "Nora needs money -- to put it more elegantly, it is economics which matters in the end. Freedom is certainly not something that can be bought for money. But it can be lost through lack of money." (Found in Schwarez)
In short, whatever were the reasons behind subjugation, the fact remains that women in the 19th century and to a large extent, even today are considered the second grade citizens of the world. Though men around the world would reluctantly accept that their lives are meaningless without women, the world in general wouldn't allow women to occupy an equal place right beside men. If the situation is still such today, we can only imagine how restrictive they must have been in the 19th century when the…...
mlaReferences
Vera Schwarez. (1975) Ibsen's Nora: the Promise and the Trap. Bulletin of Concerned Asian Scholars Volume: 7. Issue: 1.
Harold Bloom (ed) (1999) Henrik Ibsen; Chelsea House Publishers; Philadelphia;
Brian W. Downs. (1950) a Study of Six Plays by Ibsen. Cambridge University Press. Cambridge, England.
Cynthia Griffin Wolff (1994) Lily Bart and the Drama of Femininity. American Literary History. Volume: 6. Issue: 1.
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 -- Torvald, the protagonist Nora and the antagonist Krogstad.
Though not the antagonist or the protagonist, Torvald plays a central role in A Doll's House. He is not the character that he appears to be. In the beginning of the play Emma Goldstein notes,
He is an admirable man, rigidly honest, of high moral ideals, and passionately devoted to his wife and children. In short, a good man and an enviable husband. Almost every mother would be proud of such…...
mlaBibliography
Goldman, Emma. "The Scandinavian Drama: Henrik Ibsen: A Doll's House." The Social Significance of the Modern Drama (Boston: Richard G. Badger, 1914; The Gorham Press, Boston. 21 October 2003. http://sunsite.berkeley.edu/Goldman/Writings/Drama/doll.html .
Henrik Ibsen (1828-1906)." 2000. Pegasus web site. 20 October 2003. http://www.kirjasto.sci.fi/ibsen.htm.
Isben, Henrik. A Doll's House. 1 August 2003. Guttenberg Project. 21 October 2003. http://www.farid-hajji.net/books/en/Ibsen_Henrik/dh-index.html .
Johnston, Ian. "On Ibsen's A Doll's House." 2000. Text of a lecture delivered, in part, in Liberal Studies 310 at Malaspina University-College, Nanaimo, BC, Canada. 21 October 2003. http://www.mala.bc.ca/~johnstoi/introser/ibsen.htm.
Rank. "But, Nora darling, you're dancing as if your life depended on it!...This is sheer madness - stop, I tell you!...I'd never have believed it - you've forgotten everything I taught you" (Ibsen 204). Torvald must now take her in hand and re-teach the wild Italian dance, the tarantella.
The choice of this particular dance by Ibsen is a stroke of genius as it aptly illustrates the nature of the situation arising within Nora. The dance derives from an Italian belief that the only way to purge the poison of the tarantula was to dance wildly and dance the poison out of the body. "The tarantella is an expression of fear bordering to madness and a sensuous zest for life that also operates as a regenerative process" (Rekdal 168). ithin Nora in this dance, the audience sees the fear and madness, but the scene also foreshadows the zest for real…...
mlaWorks Cited
Drake, David B. "Ibsen's a Doll House." Explicator. Fall 1994, Vol. 53, Issue 1, 32.
Ebscohost. Academic Search Premier. 16 March 2007. http://web110.epnet.com.
Gilman, Richard. The Making of Modern Drama. New York: Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 1974.
Ibsen, Henrik. A Doll's House and Other Plays. Trans. Peter Watts. New York:
Doll's House" by Henrik Ibsen
The Theme of Woman Empowerment in "A Doll's House" by Henrik Ibsen
The play "A Doll's House" by Henrik Ibsen centers on the story of Nora Helmer, a simple housewife who is portrayed as a woman who holds a 'romanticized' picture of her family -- that is, she will do anything for her family to be happy. However, Nora tries to achieve this happiness through material things, where she buys things that she perceives her family will appreciate.
In this essay, a character analysis of Nora Helmer is conducted to illustrate how Nora, as the main character of the novel, has gone through character transition, i.e., from being an indecisive wife to her husband, to being a resolute woman. In this event, she finally gains her freedom and self-identity after realizing that she and her husband are living a life where love no longer exists.
Nora's character has…...
mlaBibliography
Ibsen, H. A Doll's House. From Project Gutenberg Literary Archive.
DOLL'S HOUSE AND MOAL VIEWS
"A Doll's House" is one of the classical social plays of all time. Written by Henrik Ibsen, the plays deals with deep-rooted social issues and confronts long held views about morality. It seeks to challenge the idea of morality that people held in late nineteenth and early 20th centuries and exposes the double-standards embedded in moral views of the society in those days. In Doll's house, the author explains that every person has his sense of what is moral and what is not; and what may appear moral to one might appear something restraining and restrictive to someone else.
Nora and Torvald are the two central characters in the play. They are a married couple leading a traditional married life. Nora is a timid, submissive wife who believes that it is her moral duty to take care of her husband and children. In the process, she…...
mlaReference
1) Ibsen, Henrik. A Doll's House, Electronic version; 2004 Retrieved online: http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/etext01/dlshs11h.htm
Nora leave family end Ibsen's play "A Doll House"? 2. Define conflict Ibsen's "A Doll House"? 3. The past important understand present.
hy does Nora leave her family at the end of Ibsen's play "A Doll House"?
In spite of going through a process that makes her feel that she is guilty, Nora eventually comes to gain a more complex understanding of her life. This means that she is no longer willing to be in a position where she is solely appreciated for her role as a wife instead of her personality and thinking type. It would be safe to say that Nora reaches a point where she wants to focus on herself rather than to give everything she has for Torvald. A sudden realization makes it possible for her to see the degree to which her life was a lie. The lie was not actually connected to her borrowing money…...
mlaWorks cited:
Ibsen, H. " A Doll's House," (Arc Manor LLC, 1 Jan 2009)
"The dramatically active question of the last act is whether the "wonderful thing" will happen or not. The scene in which Nora realizes that it won't is one of the great scenes in modern drama, not only in precipitating the same mordant speeches" (loom, 32). Nora rapidly discovers that she cannot save Torvald and sadly leaves him as she knows that she needs change in her life and that she needs to do it with or without Torvald, as he does not deserve to join her as long as he does not understand what the most important values in life are.
In contrast to Nora, Torvald is exactly what society wants him to be: an individual who acknowledges the importance of material values and who considers his self-interest to be more important than anything. This character's personality is shaped by traditions and he is largely unable to understand concepts that…...
mlaBibliography:
Harold Bloom, ed., Henrik Ibsen (Philadelphia: Chelsea House, 1999)
Ibsen, Henrik, A Doll's House: Easyread Super Large 24pt Edition, (ReadHowYouWant.com, 2008)
Johnston, Ian, "On Ibsen's A Doll House"
113).
Through all these events, Torvald demonstrates that he does not see Nora clearly. He is blind to her strengths and exaggerates her weaknesses, and sees her only as someone to entertain and enhance his image in the eyes of others.
HOW NORA RELATES to TORVAL
While clearly Torvald sees Nora as an entertaining child who must be guided, Nora's conversations with her friend Mrs. Linde show that to some extent, Torvald is right. Mrs. Linde visits Nora while she is in some distress. Her husband has died and she desperately needs a job. As Nora talks to her, she says whatever pops into her head first without considering how it will affect Mrs. Linde. She comments that Mrs. Linde is not as attractive as she once was. Even though she knows Mrs. Linde has no income, she boasts that with Torvald's promotion they will have "pots and pots of money." Right…...
mlaDowns, p. 113)
Drake, David B. "Ibsen's a Doll House." The Explicator, Vol. 53, 1994
Hartman, Dorothy. "Women's Roles in the Late 19th Century," in Life in the 1880's. Accessed via the Internet 6/19/05. http://www.connerprairie.org/historyonline/1880wom.html
I. Introduction
II. Discrimination Faced by Characters
1. In A Dolls House, gender presentation is portrayed as a socially constructed performance that restricts individuals from expressing their true identities.
2. The character of Nora challenges traditional gender norms by defying societal expectations of women as submissive and dependent on men for validation and identity.
3. Torvald Helmers portrayal as a domineering and controlling husband demonstrates the toxic effects of gender roles on personal relationships and individual freedom.
4. The societal pressures placed on Nora to conform to gender roles lead to her ultimate realization of the need for independence and self-discovery, breaking free from the constraints of....
1. Nora's transformation from a "doll's wife" to a self-sufficient individual subverts traditional gender roles by defying societal expectations of women as passive and subordinate.
2. The play challenges societal norms by depicting Nora as a complex character who defies traditional gender roles and seeks personal fulfillment outside of marriage and domesticity.
3. The contrast between Nora's submissive behavior at the beginning of the play and her assertive actions at the end highlights the transformative power of self-awareness and the rejection of societal constructs.
4. The play explores the intersection of gender and class, demonstrating how societal expectations and economic....
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