Dramatists Criticism of Society
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Dramatists often criticize society through the characters and situations they depict on stage. When the playwrights do so, they may approach the subject by looking through the world in which they live to what they believe the world should be. They may be writing at a turning point, an era in which social change is in the offing but which is being resisted by the dominant order. They may merely be commenting on aspects of the human condition, which persist into their age and which they see as detrimental to society. Whatever their particular situation may be, playwrights criticize society by having characters who represent some social class or ideological position and by using symbolism as well as direct statement to make the audience see something they believe to be wrong. The characters are shaped by the society in which they live and then behave in certain ways because of the conflict that develops between their psychology and their personality on the one hand and the demands and strictures of the society in which they live on the other. The same is true of novelists and fiction writers. The process can be seen with reference to several women coincidentally named Nora, three in plays by J.M. Synge, George Bernard Shaw, and Sean O'Casey, and a real-life Nora who served as model for the character of Gretta Conroy in James Joyce's "The Dead." All might be compared to the prototypical middle-class woman emerging from her cocoon, Nora in A Doll's House by Henrik Ibsen.
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r. Ireland has had a history of being antagonistic to those who would become its greatest literary artists. In his play, it is Nora Burke who faces a problem imposed by the combination of a husband and social pressures, but in her case, she has married an older man she does not love because society has pressured her into it. She is discontented in a way that Ibsen's Nora was not, and the reason for her discontent differ from those of O'Casey's Nora. Critic Donna Gerstenberger says of this Nora that "she has become a creature of unfulfilled potentiality, a person who, by her dissatisfaction, questions the standards of a society that would say that a sound house, a marriage, and a source of income are enough for humankind" (Gerstenberger 28). Ibsen's Nora comes to ask some of the same questions, but she might have been content with this litany of possessions if her husband had not failed her in her hour of need. Synge's Nora has awakened to the reality of her world and to the inadequacies of her society simply because of the nature of her marriage and her own ability to see the world around her.
This Nora is not afraid to express herself and to tell the world what she really wants:
It's in a lonely place you do have to
. . .
Some common words found in the essay are:
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Approximate Word count = 2292
Approximate Pages = 9 (250 words per page)
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