A Justification of Nora's Departure in A Doll's House
Playwright Henrik Ibsen is seen by many to be the father of modern prose drama. Certainly, it can be seen where this unofficial title comes from in reading A Doll's Houseùa play, which, published in 1879, champions women's rights to an extent that exists long before its time.
Much has been said about the play on the issue of women's rights. This is another argument to add to that discourse. Nora was absolutely justified in leaving her husband and children.
First, understand that this has not always been a popular argument. In fact, there are those in the discursive community that would argue that Nora was not right in leaving her husband and children. It is after all, a woman's responsibility to maintain her home and he family no matter what the cost. To leave, these conservatives would argue, is a blatant display of selfish feminism. Tung explains that "Henrik Ibsen's A Doll's House was perhaps the most widely known foreign play in pre-1949 China," and that "Nora, the play's heroine, was a model of women's struggle for emancipation," (298). Unfortunately, She explains that in performances of the play in Communist China, the woman was not allowed to leave the family.
àhow is the play's conflict between a woman (wife) and a man (husband) to be resolved in accordance with the Party's direction? For Ibsen's Nora, the conflict is uncompromisable: her conscience alone dictates her choice. In the Chinese plays, however, the gender conflict is smoothed away by the intervention of a third party who is always wiser and, often, of a higher social and political status. This third party offers illuminating advice to bridge the differences between husband and wife (302).
This resolution however, obviously leaves out the very essence of the playùthat is, the realization of a woman that she doesn't deserve to be treated like a mere "doll", or a plaything. In Ibsen's Women, ...