A Comparison Of Two Ibsen Works

Henrik Ibsen's works Dollhouse and An Enemy of the People can be shown to have both been written by Ibsen not only through characteristic technique such as blocking and character exposition, but also the similarity in the decay of the social persona of characters from the norm and the main character's heightening stalwart. The later of that statement proves the works to be Ibsen's writing more effectively because such a commonality is a more direct link between works than such subtlies as character exposition.

Yet why does one care if they can prove if a work is by Henrik Ibsen or not? It is simply so that one can better analyze his writing. If the similarities between dramas by Ibsen can be proven, then it is legitimate to say that one could not only explore why those threads are common between the works, but also to discover other play writes that were influenced by Ibsen and picked up this commonality and implemented it similarly in their own works. This is adequate reason to examine what makes an Ibsen drama unique, or at least similar to his other works, and to expound upon such.

Throughout both plays, each main character exhibits a decay from the norm in their social persona. In Dollhouse, Nora who at first seems a silly, childish woman, is revealed to be intelligent and motivated though the play, and, by the play's conclusion, can be seen to be a strong-willed, independent thinker. She develops an awareness for the truth about her life as Torvald's devotion to an image at the expense of the creation of true happiness becomes more and more evident to her. When Nora calls him petty and swears about the house, and when Krogstad calls him by his first name it angers Torvald notably, and this anger at what he sees to be insubordination and improper etiquette heightens her awareness of the falsities being put in place by Mr. Helmer. When it is revealed to Torvald that their life-saving trip to Italy was funded by his wife borrowing money underneath his very nose and across his authority, he becomes very angry, as he very well should if everything is to abide by the social standard of the time By the end of the play, we see that Torvald's obsession with controlling his home's appearance and his repeated suppression and denial of reality have harmed his family and his happiness irreparably and escalates Nora's need for rebellion, which inevitably results in her walking out on her husband and children to find her own independence at the conclusion of the play.