A Doll's House exposes the restricted role of women during the time of its writing and the problems that arise from a drastic imbalance of power between men and women. Throughout the play, Nora is treated like a child by the other characters.
A Doll's House is a play by the Norwegian playwright Henrik Ibsen. This play exposes the character or the role of a woman to take care of her husband and her children and she should always be dependent on her husband whereas the husband will be independent by himself.
A Doll's House is an important work in the field of feminist criticism. Most of the Feminist critics have observed Ibsen as a revolutionary thinker, social realist and repressed and oppressed women of the nineteenth century Norway and Europe. The play describes woman's right and individual freedom.
The critics also felt that this behavior set a dangerous example for women of the time by teaching that, “marriage must be wholly cancelled, and all the relations it has brought with it must be broken through, if ever the ground is to be cleared for anything better in the future…
A Doll's House is a spotlight on the society when people are under the pressure of public opinion about masculine society. This play discusses social problems in general, and individuals' in particular, women are considered as victims and society as a victimizer.
Nora Helmer in A Doll's House by Henrik Ibsen is living in a society that idolizes men while objectifying women, classifying them as lesser individuals. Nora, having grown up in this society has developed a mask, hiding who she truly is: a self-reliant woman.
More specifically, its subject is of women's status in the society and their treatment by men, the lack of true love and respect for a wife by a husband, and the lack of justice and dignity in the treatment of women in the society itself. A Doll's House is a blooming field for feminist criticism.
Henrik Ibsen's renowned play, A Doll's House, is widely recognized as a feminist work. The play delves into the seemingly perfect life of the Helmers, Nora and Torvald. Nora is beautiful, charming, and sweet, and Torvald is a successful and wealthy banker.
A Doll's House questions the traditional roles of men and women in 19th-century marriage. To many 19th-century Europeans, this was scandalous. The covenant of marriage was considered holy, and to portray it as Ibsen did was controversial.
The end of A Doll's House created enormous controversy in Ibsen's time. Many of the middle-class theater-goers were scandalized that a woman might leave her husband and, more importantly, her children.
Feminist criticism, or gender studies, focuses on the role of women (or gender) in a literary text. According to feminist criticism, patriarchy, in its masculine-focused structure, socially dictates the norms for both men and women.
The main difference between feminist and gender criticism is that feminist criticism is the literary analysis that involves a feminist viewpoint whereas gender criticism is a form of literary criticism that involves both feminist and masculinist approaches as well as queer theories.
Feminist literary criticism looks at literature assuming its production from a male-dominated perspective. It re-examines canonical works to show how gender stereotypes are involved in their functioning. It examines (and often rediscovers) works by women for a possible alternative voice.
An example of Torvald's misogyny is that he treats Nora like a child, or a pet, instead of a wife with equal value and opinions as his. He says to Nora “playtime shall be over, and lesson-time shall begin,” when she presents to him the problems with their marriage (Ibsen 56).
The thesis of this essay is that women, just like men, should be given their due right irrespective of their gender. This will be done by looking at the characters Nora and Mrs. Linde.
In A Doll's House, Ibsen represents a patriarchal system when Nora was child. She became her father doll's child who played with him in his house. that their home just like playroom of her. position is equals as men.
The main message of A Doll's House seems to be that a true (read: good) marriage is a joining of equals. The play centers on the dissolution of a marriage that doesn't meet these standards.
Major conflict Nora's struggle with Krogstad, who threatens to tell her husband about her past crime, incites Nora's journey of self-discovery and provides much of the play's dramatic suspense.
The Constrictive Nature of Gender Roles
In A Doll's House, Ibsen portrays a stereotypically gendered household with Torvald and Nora Helmer and then shows how characters—both male and female—suffer because of the roles society expects them to play.
So she leaves her “happy home” for uncertainty as well as she leaves the community of her own people. Actually, Nora is the representative of the pioneering female world who tried to change the male-dominated social systems and to change their discriminatory outlook to the womanhood.
Nora, the central female character, acts as the harbinger of feminism here. She is seen in the play as a rebellious female for establishing her own recognition as a human being. She discovers herself as a locked bird in both her father's house and husband's as well.
Nora rebels against social expectations, first by breaking the law, and later by taking the drastic step of abandoning her husband and children. During the time in which the play took place society frowned upon women asserting themselves.
This play, as one of the prominent plays of modern literature, aims to tackle the issue of feminism by depicting a new type of woman who casts her footprint to be free rather than to be a doll. She, at the end of the play, sets herself free from these chains of the society and becomes self-dependent.
They had to look the part and act the part. Their children had to be raised by the standards of society and their house had to be kept perfect. They had to be the perfect housewife, as well as “”taking care”” of their kids pleasing their husbands as well as keeping a balanced social life.
A Doll's House, written by Henrik Ibsen in 1879, is a play that follows the marriage of a woman named Nora and her husband Torvald. It is set around Christmas time in “a comfortable room, furnished inexpensively, but with taste.” (p147) One of the central themes in the play is Nora's journey of self discovery.