A Doll's House
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The play A Doll’s House created a social uproar upon its initial release because as much as it is a piece of dramatic theater it is also social critique. The issues the play criticized were largely the prevailing conventions of the era regarding the role of woman, including her roles as daughter, wife and mother/homemaker. A Doll’s House is the story of Nora Helmer, a woman who has been spoiled, sheltered and petted her whole life, much like a doll. She is treated like a virtual idiot by her father and when she marries her husband, he immediately treats her in a similar manner. Nora is filled with character qualities that cannot be contained by the artificial boundaries imposed upon her by the men in her life and society’s expectations for women during the era. Nora herself retained illusions about her husband as well. She did love him dutifully at one point and even committed forgery in order to save his life. However, even though Nora repaid the money when her husband discovers her act, his reaction hits Nora like a thunderbolt of recognition—she realizes that in the eight years they have been married her husband has never viewed her as a human being. He has seen her much more so as a doll, something that is a possession that exists only to be sheltered and petted. In order to make a statement about her own identity, Nora leaves her husband in order to find her true self. When she slammed the door on Torvald, she was slamming the
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ctorian doll’s house that Nora slams the door shut on forever at play’s end. However, we are presented with the “perfect” household throughout the play and this is symbolized in the setting. It is symbolic because it is an environment Nora must keep clean and she does this literally but also figuratively by trying to keep the lives of the occupants within neat and tidy also. However, her joining in the losing battle of keeping appearances up is also symbolic of her inability to be her true self. She hides secrets as much as those around her impose her role on her. She has bought into her role in other words, but, since it is a false role and one imposed by others she will eventually find the courage to break out of it as she slams the door on false appearances also. Gosse’s critique brings this point to light as he comments on the fact that by the end of the play Nora will emerge as the woman she really is, once the masks of Victorian norms are ripped off, “At last, in an extraordinary scene, she declares that she can no longer live in her doll’s house; husband and wife sit down at opposite ends of a table and argue out the situation…Nora dashes out into the city, into the night; while the curtain falls as the front door ba
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Some common words found in the essay are:
Social Dramas, Dolls House, Dr Rank, Nora Helmer, Cycle Ibsens, Torvalds Victorian, Nora Victorian, Ibsen Meyer, August Strindberg, dolls house, fuller understanding, Jersey Prentice-Hall, symbolism ibsen, henrik ibsen, ibsens social dramas, plays cycle, understanding meaning, setting symbolic, true self, slams door, social dramas, ibsen dolls house, fuller understanding meaning,
Approximate Word count = 1437
Approximate Pages = 6 (250 words per page)
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