A Doll's House Research Paper

Who's Needs Should Be Met?

"Putting yourself first doesn’t mean you don’t care about others, It means you're smart enough to know you can't help others if you don’t help yourself first" During a certain era, it was selfish to put yourself and your needs before other's needs. Many thought that putting everyone in front was humble and that is what they should strive to do. For example, if a mother was unhappy in a marriage and wanted to leave, the people in her community would frown upon her because, saying she was being selfish. Many saying she should stay in the marriage for her children's sake, completely disregarding how it affects the mother. That is exactly what happened in A Doll House by Henrik Ibsen. A Doll House is primarily about

She says she is very content and loves her life. However, it is later revealed that it was all a façade and she was very unhappy living a lie, saying that she felt like her and her family were living in a dollhouse and her husband was the one playing with their lives . Michael C. Wiseman, author of Nora as a Doll in Henrik Ibsen's A Doll's House, goes into more detail about the doll house metaphor. "In her dream world, Nora takes a back-seat approach to life and becomes like an object, reacting to other’s expectations rather than advancing herself. As a result of her passivity, Torvald is very possessive of, frequently adding the “my” modifier to all the pet names he calls her. In the original Riksmål2 (Boel), there are many monetary idioms, lost in translation, that advance the concept of Nora’s objectness (Wiseman)." For years, Nora stuck to the idea of "the perfect marriage". She was the perfect housewife, Torvald, her husband, was the worker, the one earning the income to support his family. She was so used to being manipulated into a mold that she accepted it and believed that she was content. He acceptance of the manipulations leads her husband to also believe that she was happy, and in turn pleasing

However, those who argue that are incorrect. Nora leaving was not selfish since she was not being herself while living there. Her family knew her as her persona of Nora Helmer, wife of Torvald Helmer. That Nora was not her, but in fact a lie. The Nora they knew, and the actual Nora were two different people. Had Nora stayed, she would have lived an unhappy and unsatisfying life. She decided to leave for her own benefit and possibly helping her family in the long run by being her true self and