Society as a gilded cage refers to people living a life with boundaries. The people living this type of life don’t live life to its full potential because they feel as though there are limits to what they can do. Two examples of individuals living this type of life would be Tom from a “Glass Menagerie” and Nora from “Doll House”. Both these individuals had the opportunity to live a free life but felt as though they had limits causing them to live a restrained life. Although both individuals seemed to be complete opposites they shared similar characteristics. Tom from “Glass Menagerie” was from a dysfunctional family. He comes from a family where the father just disappeared from one day to the next leaving Tom to support his family. His sister …show more content…
Do to all these factors she feels a sense of selflessness. The mother is completely dependent upon Tom. She relies on Tom to pay the bills, put food on the table, and even relies on him to find his sister a gentlemen caller. Tom cares for his mother and sister but at times one can tell that Tom is tired of having to support them. “Amanda:... But I won 't allow such filth brought into my house! No, no, no, no, no! Tom: House, house! Who pays rent on it, who makes a slave of himself to- (p.1169). Tom implies that he is a slave working himself to death just to support his sister, mother, and to pay rent on a house that isn 't even his. Tom hated his job and would write poetry when ever work was slow. Tom felt trapped because he felt as though his life only revolved around supporting his mother, sister, and working a job …show more content…
Nora was wife of Helmer and a mother of 3 children. They lived in a house where their nurse Anne-Marie took care of the children and Helene which was their maid took care of the house work. Nora was a stay at home mother and would occasionally take on little jobs in order to make ends meet. Nora has lived her whole life as a puppet. Her life has always been controlled by someone else; first by her father and then by her husband Helmer. “Her whole life is a construct of societal norms and the expectations of others” (Wiseman). “Nora’s father would force his beliefs on her and she would comply with them lest she upset him; she would bury her personal belief under Papa’s. According to Nora, Torvald was guilty of the same things” (Wiseman). Nora has always lived her life according to the beliefs of someone else. She didn 't know how to live life any other way because this is how she was raised. She felts trapped in the life she lived because she knew no other way of living besides her current lifestyle. Due to Nora being controlled her whole life she seemed childish and lacked knowledge of the world outside her house. At the end of the story Helmer decides to show his true colors once his future was threatened. This made Nora realize that she does not love her husband nor does he love her, and decides that is not the life she wants to live. “Helmer: You talk like a child. You don 't know anything of the world you live
Oscar Wilde once said, “Everything in the world is about sex except sex. Sex is about power.” The content of this quote embodies A Doll’s House and The Glass Menagerie because of the sexual control in both the plays. A Doll’s House by Henrik Ibsen and The Glass Menagerie by Tennessee William, the characters, although from different time periods, face the hardships of sexual control through the men they admire. Nora is written as the naive protagonist of A Doll’s House, who embodies the themes of the novella as she matures throughout the play. Nora learns that her husband, Torvald, uses her as a doll for his own pleasure and does not truly care for her. In The Glass Menagerie, Laura, the main character, is also
While as a whole Tom’s character may seem quite static, events and actions throughout the story add to and amalgamate Tom’s character. Early on in the novel, Tom’s careless attitude towards his relationships with others begins to emerge. This is first shown when Jordan Baker says, “Tom’s got some woman in New York.” The fact that Tom has a mistress shows that he is an atrocious husband towards Daisy. He shows little care and compassion for his wife and his daughter.
One reason Tom is unadmirable is because of the way he treats his wife Daisy. He is unfaithful and he is also hypocritical. As Tom cheats on Daisy with Myrtle, Daisy has an affair with Jay Gatsby. When this affair is revealed to Tom, he becomes outraged despite that fact that he
The “Glass Menagerie” by Tennessee Williams shows a family facing economic and social hardships due to the father abandoning them. The father’s absence forces the rest of the family to fill roles that they wouldn’t be obliged to face if the father remained. The mother, Amanda, is a strong single mother who pushes her kids to be economically self-sustaining individuals. Amanda tries to impose her desires for her kids in a very direct and controlling manner which causes them to dislike her initiatives. The son, Tom, is the breadwinner for the family, however is dissatisfied with his situation due to his increased responsibilities. The daughter, Laura, is handicapped and dropped out of business school. Each member of the family is limited by their ability to grow out of their negative habits, however, it is likely that these habits or characteristics came from the family situation and the roles that each member was forced to fill.
Tom clearly does not believe that staying at home with his mother and sister is worth the unhappiness he feels. A common issue that arises in The Glass Menagerie is Tom’s nightly trips to the movies. When asked about his frequent trips to the movies, Tom describes that “adventure is something I [he]” doesn’t “have much of at work.” (4.Tom) Living vicariously through the movies he sees, remains one of Tom’s only true sources of happiness.
Nora is a character that was controlled by her father and had no say in the things her father to her to do. Afterwards she was married to Torvald who was soon to be a manager in a bank. Also, Nora had three children that are being raised by Anne a maid who used to take care of Nora when she was a child. Nora borrowed a lot of money from Krogstad because Torvald was really sick and the doctors prescribed him to be in a warmer weather, but at that time the family did not have a lot of money to go on a trip to a warmer climate. Therefore, Nora forced her father’s signature after his death and signed instead of him just to save her husband’s life from dying.
The enforcement of specific gender roles by societal standards in 19th century married life proved to be suffocating. Women were objects to perform those duties for which their gender was thought to have been created: to remain complacent, readily accept any chore and complete it “gracefully” (Ibsen 213). Contrarily, men were the absolute monarchs over their respective homes and all that dwelled within. In Henrik Ibsen’s play, A Doll’s House, Nora is subjected to moral degradation through her familial role, the consistent patronization of her husband and her own assumed subordinance. Ibsen belittles the role of the housewife through means of stage direction, diminutive pet names and through Nora’s interaction with her morally ultimate husband, Torvald. Nora parades the façade of being naïve and frivolous, deteriorating her character from being a seemingly ignorant child-wife to a desperate woman in order to preserve her illusion of the security of home and ironically her own sanity. A Doll’s House ‘s depiction of the entrapment of the average 19th century housewife and the societal pressures placed upon her displays a woman’s gradual descent into madness. Ibsen illustrates this descent through Torvald’s progressive infantilization of Nora and the pressure on Nora to adhere to societal norms. Nora is a woman pressured by 19th century societal standards and their oppressive nature result in the gradual degradation of her character that destroys all semblances of family and identity.Nora’s role in her family is initially portrayed as being background, often “laughing quietly and happily to herself” (Ibsen 148) because of her isolation in not only space, but also person. Ibsen’s character rarely ventures from the main set of the drawi...
Nora Helmer was a delicate character and she relied on Torvald for her identity. This dependence that she had kept her from having her own personality. Yet when it is discovered that Nora only plays the part of the good typical housewife who stays at home to please her husband, it is then understandable that she is living not for herself but to please others. From early childhood Nora has always held the opinions of either her father or Torvald, hoping to please them. This mentality makes her act infantile, showing that she has no ambitions of her own. Because she had been pampered all of her life, first by her father and now by Torvald, Nora would only have to make a cute animal sound to get what she wanted from Torvald, “If your little squirrel were to ask you for something very, very, prettily” (Ibsen 34) she said.
In The Glass Menagerie by Tennessee Williams, the theme of abandonment is salient to the play. Throughout most of the play, Tom contemplates whether he should stay with his family doing something he hates or leave them and follow his dream. His yen to be happy controls his decision in the end. Through Tom's actions, thoughts, and the negative imagery of his father, Williams proves that abandonment is a viable solution in the escaping challenges and reality, if it is tenable.
A Doll’s House, written by Henrik Ibsen, is an intriguing story of a marriage that falls apart as the wife, Nora Helmer, realizes she has been living as simply a doll in her husband’s doll house. As the story begins, we learn of Nora’s secret, a loan in which she has committed forgery in order to obtain. The loan was used for a trip that the Helmer’s took when Torvald grew ill. Krogstad, the man in which Nora has borrowed the money from, blackmails Nora in hopes that her husband, Torvald, will let him keep his job. As the story develops, Nora’s anxiety grows as her husband grows closer to learning about what she has done.
In A Doll’s House, Nora Helmer returns home on Christmas Eve with a Christmas tree that must be hidden from the children until it is trimmed. Indeed, hiding is a major theme in this play. Later in the first act, Nora plays hide-and-seek with her children, and she hides the macaroons that her husband, Torvald, has forbidden her to eat. A more dangerous secret is the fact that, years earlier, she had borrowed a large amount of money to pay for the sojourn in Italy that enabled Torvald to recover from a serious illness. She had borrowed the money illegally from a usurer named Krogstad, and she has secretly been repaying the loan out of the small sums that she is able to earn by copying documents or to save from her household budget.
Nora is a dynamic character. When the play begins Nora is viewed and presented as a playful and carefree person. She seems to be more intent on shopping for frivolous things. But, as time goes on it becomes apparent that Nora actually has a certain amount of seriousness in her decisions and actions in dealing with the debt she incurred to save Torvald’s life. Nora’s openness in her friendship with Dr. Rank changes after he professes his affections toward her. Her restraint in dealing with him shows that Nora is a mature and intelligent woman. Nora shows courage, not seen previously, by manipulating her way around Krogstad and his threats to reveal her secret. After feeling betrayed by Torvald, Nora reveals that she is leaving him. Having
A Doll House was one of Henrik Ibsen's most controversial plays. He wrote this realistic play in 1879. Ibsen's writing style of realism was clearly shown in this play. This play was controversial at the time it was written, shocking conservative readers. But, at the same time, the play served as a rallying point for supporters of a drama with different ideas.
Nora Helmer was a delicate character that had been pampered all of her life, by her father, and by Torvald. She really didn't have a care in the world. She didn't even have to care for the children; the maid would usually take care of that. In every sense of the word, she was your typical housewife. Nora never left the house, mostly because her husband was afraid of the way people would talk. It really wasn't her fault she was the way she was; it was mostly Torvald's for spoiling her. Nora relies on Torvald for everything, from movements to thoughts, much like a puppet that is dependent on its puppet master for all of its actions. Her carefree spirit and somewhat childish manners are shown throughout the play with statements such as, "Is that my little lark twittering out there?" (1). "Is it my little squirrel bustling about?" (2). A lark is a happy, carefree bird, and a squirrel is quite the opposite. If you are to squirrel away something, you were hiding or storing it, kind of like what Nora was doing with her bag of macaroons. It seems childish that Nora must hide things such as macaroons from her husband, but if she didn't and he found out, she would be deceiving him and going against his wishes which would be socially wrong.
...dlike mentality and needs to grow before she can raise her own children. Her defiance of Torvald, when he refuses to let her leave, reflects her epiphany that she isn't obligated to let Torvald dictate her actions. The height of Nora's realization comes when she tells Torvald that her duty to herself is as strong as her duty as a wife and mother. She now sees that she is a human being before she is a wife and mother and she owes herself to explore her personality, ambitions, and beliefs.