The plays of Henrik Ibsen
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The plays of Henrik Ibsen have a strong social content, indicating the views of the playwright on some matters, and more directly showing the way different social issues were developing in the society of his time and the way those issues were in turn shaping that society. He wrote about women's rights, the plight of "whistleblowers," the meaning of social responsibility, the effects of corruption. Ibsen's views and his challenging dramatic methods made him something of a social outcast even as he was becoming one of the world's major playwrights, a voice that would speak to subsequent generations perhaps even more strongly than he did to his own. In A Doll's House, Ibsen challenges some of the essential tenets his society believed necessary to bind itself together, and he questions the degree of sacrifice women were expected to make to serve as wives to men who see them as property, more servants than equals, and more pampered than empowered. The slamming of the door at the end of the play thus signaled a sort of social revolution, with this one small action heralding a massive change to come. In A Doll's House, Ibsen challenges the assumptions about the place of women in society. Harold Clurman notes, If A Doll's House is read without preconceptions the implication is clear that men cannot be "free" (or authentic) persons unless women are equally free (Clurman 109). Whicher traces this to tensions within Ibsen himself over his observations of society and further emp
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anged, and at the end of the play Nora stands as an example to other women. She may be a victim of her society, but she is a victim who now knows she can fight back and change her situation.
David Thomas notes that A Doll's House is the first of a series of plays by Ibsen concerning the structure of the family and the tensions of modern family life:
The families involved live isolated from the world around them because of their desire for the 'privilege' of privacy. Marriages are entered into for reasons of property of status. Once married, the women find they have a clearly defined and essentially subordinate role in relation to their men, whose property they legally and socially become. The common assumption of the men is that women are incapable of thinking logically and analytically. . . on the other hand, the men lack the intuitive insight of their woman and therefore tend to show an almost total disregard, with few exceptions, for the emotional needs and expectations of their partners (Thomas 72).
This is the general critical view of A Doll's House and of the relationship between Nora and Torvald Helmer.
Specifically, Ibsen criticizes the view expressed by Torvald in the play that women should sacrifice themselves
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Approximate Word count = 1398
Approximate Pages = 6 (250 words per page)
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