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Imagine you were watching Henrik Ibsen’s new play “A Doll’s House” in Europe in the late nineteenth century. How would you feel if for the first time you saw the idea of a woman leaving her husband in an anti feminist society? Anti-feminism was an issue that plagued many females until the twenty-first century. The rise of various women’s rights movements in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries began from the idea that men were perceived as superior to women. In the late nineteenth century, Henrik Ibsen wrote a play called “A Doll’s House” that caught people’s attention because his play featured a woman named Nora who physically and emotionally broke free from her husband. The main question that arose from this play is whether Nora is displaying feministic or humanistic traits by leaving her husband Torvald. By noting the differences between feminism and humanism and looking at the information provided from scholarly sources who are educated on the historical, socialistic, and individualistic context behind the persona of feminism, the conclusion can be made that Ibsen’s “A Doll’s House” was written along the lines of feminism rather than humanism.

The theme of a wife leaving her marriage and children to better herself was unheard of during the late nineteenth century causing the audience to become angry with Ibsen. The audiences that first saw the “The Doll House” were distraught by the feministic symbolism of the play, forcing Ibsen to have to tell the public that this was not a feminist movement. Despite what Ibsen said to the public, there have been many arguments about whether this play coincided within the norms of feminism or humanism.

Humanism and feminism both result in a greater purpose, but derive from different me...

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... account the historical prominence that is important in noting the difference between feministic and humanistic traits in this play. Because it is difficult to key in on the time period this play was written, important factors that distinguish between feminist traits and humanist traits, and an overall understanding of the history of Ibsen himself, it is hard to connect how this play portrays feminism. By looking at the underlying meaning to the context in the play an act towards women’s rights is straightforward to the reader. We can infer this through an understanding of the difference of the definitions between humanism and feminism, a look at Ibsen’s personal life, and a conduction of a comprehensive analysis of why the feministic approach to A Doll’s House rules out any Humanistic theories through a look at the historical context when Ibsen wrote this play.