As noted by Tolstoy in Anna Karenina, "All happy families are alike. Each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way." The dysfunctional family is a major theme in modern drama, but there are many different ways a family can be dysfunctional. The families in several modern drams show different aspects of being dysfunctional, and their unhappiness derives from different social, cultural, and family dynamics.
The problem in A Doll's House might be described more as a dysfunctional marriage than a dysfunctional family, for the children are not key to the problem between Nora and her husband, Torvald Helmer. The family in The Cherry Orchard is an extended family whose problems have caught up with its lifestyle. In both plays, economic issues are involved in family dissensions, but the plays differ in other ways. The character of Lyuboff Ranevskaya in The Cherry Orchard offers quite a contrast to Nora in A Doll's House. The Ibsen heroine is at heart an innocent who comes to see the falsity of the social setting in which she lives, while the older Russian woman has lived a less respectable life. Lyuboff is also a foolish woman who is easily gulled by people such as Boris Borisovich. She and her brother both look back now to a happier time, a time symbolized for them by the orchard. Nora, on the other hand, is a young woman forced to face the realities of life for the first time. She has also been foolish in allowing herself to become financially involved with Krogstad, but in the course of the play the audience sees her learn how much her life has been an illusion and how much she needs to take control of it herself. The past binds the family in The Cherry Orchard, while Nora escapes from tradition as it has damaged her family.
Power relations are often involved in the dynamics of the dysfunctional family. This is evident in A Doll's House as Helmer asserts his male prerogatives and tries to make his wife no more than an...