Theme Of Identity And Feminism In A Doll's House

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Henrik Ibsen’s A Doll’s House is a 1878 play that explores the confining nature of social roles and expectations. The story follows Nora and her family as they attempt to navigate conflict, debt and familial life around the holiday season. One of the most notable moments in the play is the final scene, in which Nora tells her husband Torvald that she is leaving him in order to gain her freedom and create an identity for herself outside of her family obligations. The play ends as Nora makes her decision to leave, and slams the door behind her. Often regarded as “the door slam heard around the world”, Nora’s choice to leave her family can be regarded as a symbolic representation of women’s choice to leave behind the oppressive gender roles which prevent them from creating their own individual identity. On the other hand, Nora could be seen to abandon her family and run away from her problems. For both past and current audiences, the significance of the door slam in entirely subjective, as for each individual audience member it could create a wildly different emotional response. Throughout his play, Ibsen uses character to create a performance that his
The themes of identity and autonomy are universal and still applicable to today’s society, as there is currently another push to remove gender roles and the traditional interpretations of what people ‘should’ do. Many individuals wish to create a society that is more accepting of independent, autonomous women. Nora’s character shift from being a “little doll” (225), to a “human being” (228), represents not only a newfound independence, but a shift away from the traditional interpretation of ‘femininity’ which oppressively binds many women. No longer acting as a one-dimensional archetype, Nora indicates that women are real people with a complex range of emotions, values and

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