In the 1800’s, women were considered a prize to be won, an object to show off to society. They were raised to be respectable women whose purpose was to marry into a higher social class in order to provide for their family. These women were stuck in a social system which seemed impossible to escape. Henrik Ibsen, a Norwegian playwright, saw these barriers and wrote one of the most controversial plays of his time, “A Dolls House”. In his play, Ibsen argues the importance of opposite sex equality in marriage by using his character, Nora Helmer, to bring to light how degrading the roles of women were in the 1800’s.
In the beginning of the play it is evident; Nora is inferior to her husband, Tovald Helmer, in their marriage. Nora, like many women in the late 1800’s and early 1900’s, was taught that as a wife, she must be, “subordinate and submissive, and to act on the desires of man.” (Kiebuzinska) In the Helmer household, the reader is presented with a clear example of these acts of submission. Helmer sets the rule that Nora is not to eat macaroons inside or outside of the house. Nora seemingly accepts his rule when she replies with an obedient, I “would never dream of going against your (his) wishes.”(Ibsen 884) However, the reader is able to note that this decree does not set well with Nora. She understands the rule is only in place for the purpose of keeping her teeth pretty and insuring she meets the social expectations placed upon her. By eating a whole bag of macaroons, against her husband's wishes, Nora’s deep desire to construct her own life choices is present, no matter how small they might be. Ibsen uses this example of Nora to portray the control women wanted to have over their own lives and the changes they wanted to...
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... of equality in marriage. When Nora began to understand Helmer didn’t love her, he loved the idea of her as a pretty woman he was married to, Nora realizes how degrading her role as a woman in the household was. She saw the freedom of Mrs. Linde to be able to obtain a job in her husband’s bank, and the freedom of being a single woman to think, act, and do what she wanted to do, not what her Father wanted her to do, or her husband. Nora realized her identity was solely in her Father, and in Helmer, and the unhealthiness of this reality. Nora wanted to be treated as a human being and not as an object. To be accepted as such would be the struggle of women in the 1800’s and early 1900’s. Nora thought in leaving Helmer she was leaving the problem of feeling like an object all together. Little did she realize she was going to have to face the other Helmers in society.
In the play A Doll’s House, Nora Helmer is the major character as well as a symbol of the majority of house wives in the middle class of the nineteenth century. Also, Nora’s husband, Torvald Helmer, is another symbol represents the majority of men at the time. Through their marriage and relationship, we can clearly see the recreation of the realistic role and characteristic of the suffering women in the nineteenth century.
Mrs. Linde had to leave her loving fiancé behind in order to enter into a loveless marriage with a wealthier man that is no deceased all because she had to take care of her sickly bedridden mother and her younger brothers. Then, despite being wealthy the business fell apart after Mr Linde passed, which left Mrs. Linde to pick up the pieces, and get by day to day with any sort of odd job she could find (192). All though the heart of the play itself is for women’s rights and the fight for equality, because if women taking out loans was not illegal none of this would have happened. It still displays the fight for equality in an unbalanced way, because all though Nora and Mrs. Linde are forced to work, they are both in completely different situations, and Nora may even have more ground to stand on compared to Mrs. Linde. These “minor” characters have an effect on feminism because despite the desire for equality, they are stuck in the caste pf the middle class, so they do not necessarily have the choice to embrace themselves and truly do what they desired. Which, for Mrs. Linde was to marry her former
The novel takes place during the victorian era, a period in history where women lacked suffrage aswell as many virtues of men. Nora is presented as a naive and immature wife, which in turn makes her a perfect protaganist as she is constantly chastised because of her nature. Through a road of self-doubt and confusion, Nora’s realization and ultimate growth occurs shortly after her confession of forgery. Upon witnessing Torvald’s reaction, Nora quickly realizes that Torvald is simply in love with the idea of being in love, thus rejecting the moral system of the time to amount on a journey of self-discovery.
Nora’s childlike character is made apparent from the very beginning of the play through her own nature, as well as her actions. When Nora “puts the bag of macaroons into her pocket and wipes her mouth” (928), she acts
Nora Helmer, a beautiful woman that has dedicated the past years to be the perfect house wife and admirable woman to society. Her life has been filled with good clothes, enough to live with and the good reputation that goes along with being married to a prospective bank manager. Nora’s early years belong next to her father and the pampering and dependency began, she was then passed down to her current husband, Torvald. In the play we are introduced to Kristine, an old friend of Noras and a character that allows us to witness the way Nora speaks about her marriage life and it ultimately shows the dependency of Nora to Torvald. Nora greets Kristine and goes to talk all wonders about her family. Kristine announces that she has neither children nor husband and this to Nora is unbelieva...
Today women are being mistreated for just the gender roles and stereotypes that revolve in the human society. Depending on the time period and culture, women are expected to act in a certain way. Throughout history, many relationships can be found in different cultures regarding the way women were treated. In Ibsen’s A Doll’s house, Nora reflects the responsibilities and roles of Norwegian women during the late 1870s. Torvald, Nora’s husband, also shows the way men treated women and what roles they played in a marriage. Here, women are portrayed as dependent on men, they don’t have much freedom, and they are not allowed to have opinions. Women are taught to rely on men and be acquiescent to their husbands. Many stereotypes and gender roles found in A Doll’s House can also be observed in
Nora Helmer is the main character in the play “A Doll’s House” by Henrik Ibsen. This play takes place around the 1870’s in Christmas time. Nora and her husband Torvald Helmer appear to be the average and ideal marriage of the 19th century, a middle class with three children; everything seems to be perfect until the character of Nora Helmer changes completely. In the play “A Doll’s House” a modern drama by Henrik Ibsen, he uses the character of Nora Helmer to demonstrate the role of women, the gender stereotypes and the dependency on their spouses in the last century.
Henrik Ibsen’s play, A Doll’s House, presents the main character, Nora Helmer, as a complex individual that goes on a bumpy journey to self-realization and complete transformation. Nora is a woman that is confused about her sense of self and worth that is caused by society’s sexist standards, although she willingly abides to them anyway. Society and the people within Nora 's life essentially influence her submissive character role, but the only thing that is truly stopping Nora’s road to personal freedom, is Nora herself. At the start of the play, Nora is represented as a toy doll possession, belonging to her husband, Torvald Helmer, before she finally reveals her transformation into an independently thinking, self-realized woman towards the end.
Before, Nora had become objectified to a doll, but after she perceives herself as a human being, even exclaiming “I believe that before all else I am a reasonable human being” (Ibsen p. 78). Nora sees the way Torvald did not treat her as equal and now desires to be treated as such. Not only that but Nora’s stirrings of emotion caused her to discover that since Torvald was just like her father, she had no room to mature and become an independent woman. Ibsen explains “[if] I am to understand myself and everything about me. It is for that reason that I cannot remain with you any longer” (Ibsen p. 77). Staying with Torvald would serve no purpose to her character, so those desires became the foundation for Nora to go out and find out who she was as a human being. Nora ultimately squelches the female role within media that woman should be submissive to men by dismissing Torvald’s excuse “Are they not your duties to your husband and your children?” with a counter “Duties to myself” (Ibsen p. 78). Above all else, Nora is allowed to make her own decisions in life rather than stay chained to a man with the intent of objectifying and using her. With this feminist-like mindset, Nora estranged her family because she no longer wanted to be considered an object and to search for herself out in the
This inequality is shown in the play when Nora claims that she has only been Torvald Helmer’s “doll wife” (67) and that she has not been allowed to do anything with her life. Women are regarded as delicate, and are expected to maintain the household, which translates into the idea that men are more powerful, as they are the head of the household. When Nora threatens to leave the house in Act 3, Helmer responds with “Before all else you are a wife and a mother” (68). His statement shows his expectation of women, that they should stay at home and care for their children. This expectation is found throughout patriarchal societies in the form of gender roles, strengthening the idea that Helmer is a patriarchal figure. Torvald Helmer objectifies women, and thereby portrays his inherent patriarchal values, becoming a synecdoche for
Nora engages in a mutually dependent game with Torvald in that she gains power in the relationship by being perceived as weak, yet paradoxically she has no real power or independence because she is a slave to the social construction of her gender. Her epiphany at the end at the play realises her and her marriage as a product of society, Nora comes to understand that she has been living with a constr...
“Henrik Ibsen born 1828, was Norway’s foremost dramatist” (Kirszner, Mandell 1137). According to the textbook, Henrik Ibsen wrote the play, “A Doll House,” in 1879, and this play “marks the beginning of Ibsen’s successful realist period where he explored the lives of small-town people” (Kirszner, Mandell 1137). According to the textbook, the play is based on facts in which a woman borrowed money to help her husband. The authorities discover her fraud, and when her husband finds out about her duplicity, he demands a divorce. The play symbolizes gender inequality all the while using an underlying feminist theme to describe the growth of Nora Helmer throughout these three acts. Henrik Ibsen uses the characters in his play to illustrate how men and the law treated the women of Norway in the 1800’s. The textbook describes how “women in the nineteenth century were treated by law as no better than children”(Kirszner and Mandell 1137). The play,“A Doll House” illuminates the cause of gender inequality by exposing
In "A Doll's House", Ibsen portrays the bleak picture of a role held by women of all economic classes that is sacrificial. The female characters in the play back-up Nora's assertion that even though men are unable to sacrifice their integrity, "hundreds of thousands of woman have." Mrs. Linde found it necessary to abandon Krogstad, her true but poor love, and marry a richer man in order to support her mother and two brothers. The nanny has to abandon her children to support herself by working for Nora. Though Nora is economically advantaged, in comparison to the other female characters, she leads a hard life because society dictates that Torvald be the marriages dominant member. Torvald condescends Nora and inadvertently forces Nora to hide the loan from him. Nora knows that Torvald could never accept the idea that his wife, or any other woman, could aid in saving his life.
Ibsen felt that, rather than the supremacy of men, husband and wife should live as equals and be free to become their own human beings. For example, Templeton uses an article from 1898 about Ibsen’s response to his plays at a Women’s Rights League convention. “Ibsen was inspired to write A Doll’s House by the terrible events in the life of Laura Petersen Kieler, a long life friend of Ibsen” (Templeton 21). This proves his view came from inspiration from men’s actions and not from a female’s. Henrik Ibsen viewed the life of Laura Petersen Kieler as tragic from action’s of men due to the men she surrounds herself with. The men in her life caused the feminist movement represented in “A Doll’s House” as they did not treat the women as they treated them as their equals and oppressed their women and pushed their views aside. Ibsen’s male character, Hemler saw the concept of marriage as something that should be fair, when he opening to Nora, Hemler said "Well, we will share it, Nora, as man and wife should. That is how it shall be.”, and Nora still doesn’t want that and chooses not to be with him. (Ibsen 15) Nora is not a feminist; Hemler agreed with the same stance of the feminist movement and quietly does more than Nora. Hemler, is the true hero for the feminist movement in this play and not
Next is the criticism of the role of the women in society. It was basically a time where the woman could not do anything for herself. An example of this from the book is the loan that Nora took out to save Torvolds life. Nora could not take out the loan herself due to the fact that she was a women and only men could take out loans, a women could only take out a loan if they had the consent of a husband or a father. Due to the fact that she was doing this for Torvold she went ahead and forged the documents knowing that it was wrong and could end up getting her into trouble. This was a total mockery on society due to fact that even though Nora was doing this to save the life of her husband she not only was not aloud to do it but then Torvold found out he was not happy she saved his life but mad about what it could do to him. Therefore showing the very weak role of women in society by saying that Torvold would have rather died then have a women save him.