A Doll's House Gender Roles Essay

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Recommended: Gender roles in society throughout history

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 …show more content…

In American society, boys are the ones that are meant to do well, get the higher education and then pursue a good career. T-shirts play a big role in convincing and persuading children to believe that when they grow up, boys are going to finance the family while the girls are going to be at home, taking care of their children and doing house work. The printing across a girl’s shirt, “Training to be Batman’s Wife,” is clearly an example of setting the expectations for girls on what they are going to be when they grow up: “The expectation is not just that she will be a wife, but that she will be somebody important’s wife, and her identity will be defined by his importance” said Lisa Wade, associate professor of sociology (Samakow). This shirt also gives the understanding to boys that they should be the “Batmans,” meaning heroes, and that girls are nothing but wives, which the men will have all the power over. The woman in this case should be obedient to their

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