A Doll's House
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A Doll’s House by Henrik Ibsen is perhaps one of the most hotly debated plays to come out of the 19th century. The 19th century continued the process of the demystification that began with the Enlightenment. Because of the discoveries of the Enlightenment, humans could no longer be sure about their place in the universe. This, of course, had an impact on the theater. The movement toward realism, which, like the 19th century in general, was an attempt to become more scientific. Ibsen is considered by many as the father of realism, and one of the plays that belong to Ibsen’s realism period is A Doll’s House. But the play would come to be noted for more reasons than its style. The play would be remembered for its social impact as well as its artistic achievement: “Even Strindberg ...admitted...that, thanks to A Doll’s House, ‘marriage was revealed as being a far from a divine institution, people stopped regarding it as an automatic provider of absolute bliss, and divorce between incompatible parties came at last to be accepted as conceivably justifiable’” (Meyer 454-455). Therefore we can see that Ibsen’s realism contributed to the demystification of Western civilization.Indeed, the final scene produced the door slam heard around the world and the play is still the object of debate today. But Ibsen was not interested in becoming a spokesman for feminism. He just wanted to create a great play that dealt with the liberat
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he lives of Nora, Torvald, the children and the audience: “[From below is heard the reverberation of a heavy door closing]” (Ibsen 282). Today it is hard to appreciate how extremely dangerous Nora’s decision to leave her husband was at the time. Though it is implicit in the play, one may fail to realize how marginalized women were in society (legally as well as socially), especially a woman that did not have a husband: “She was putting herself outside society, inviting insult, destitution and loneliness. She went out into a very dark night” (Bradbrook 87). Ibsen carefully chose the word “reverberation” to go beyond dramatic effect. Reverberation is not only the sound created by the slam of the door but is the word the reader sees in the last sentence of the play. It may also be seen a symbol for the social reaction to the play and even of the 100 years of critical reaction afterward that continues to this day. But also, as pointed out by feminist critics, the stage direction symbolizes the newfound strength of Nora as she marches out into a world she doesn’t know: “The poetry of Nora’s leave-taking lies in the hint of strength and the certainty of struggle as she shuts the door on the doll house to enter the night of t
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Some common words found in the essay are:
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Approximate Word count = 2752
Approximate Pages = 11 (250 words per page)
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