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Ibsen & Glaspell

In both Ibsen’s A Doll House and Susan Glaspell’s Trifles we see women who exist in an oppressive male patriarchy. In both of these dramas we also see that the assumptions made by men contribute to the conflict in each. Torvald’s attitude towards Nora, that she is basically a possession he owns that is incapable of a role outside the boundaries of wife and mother, is similar to the attitudes of the men in Trifles, that women basically are incapable of handling anything more than trifling matters of home and hearth.

In A Doll’s House we see women in the Victorian era who are unable to be themselves in society because it is an exclusively male society with laws made by men who view women from a male perspective. Nora is the doll to which the title of the play refers. On the surface her household seems like the perfect Victorian household. The setting is symbolic because it is not only the realm that Nora must keep clean and tidy, but it is also a mask for the secrets she holds. The setting is also symbolic of Torvald, who may be considered the quintessential Victorian male. He is a practical man who furnishes his house “tastefully but not expensively” (Ibsen 1185). Torvald also has a study in this setting, a private room just for him. Of course, Nora doesn’t have a similar room because she is kept in the main room “with china figures and other small art objects” (Ibsen 1185). Nora is like a toy or a doll, one of Torvald’s possessions. Part of the conflict in the play is engendered over Nora’s secrets, because she is driven to such fear and anxiety over Torvald’s reaction. Nora tries to keep her real feelings repressed, and her activities at Christmas are designed as a smokescreen to keep her Victorian home clean and tidy morally speaking. As she says “Candles here—and flowers here. That terrible creature! Talk, talk,

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Ibsen & Glaspell. (1969, December 31). In LotsofEssays.com. Retrieved 17:30, March 28, 2024, from https://www.lotsofessays.com/viewpaper/1685692.html