“Every secret of a writer’s soul, every experience of his life, every quality of his mind, is written large in his works” (Virginia Woolf). For Henrik Ibsen, his experience derives from his late nineteenth-century Norwegian society. During this time, women were beginning to make strides, however, they really only developed the basic recognition of being an individual. While some societal advances occurred, they applied mostly to single women, leaving a large majority of married women as servile possessions. This progress marked the increase of interest in the feminist movement. Because of its gaining popularity, women's rights, and in general gender roles, were noticed as a large portion of the issues of society. Consequently, by critiquing gender roles, one finds the faults in society as a whole. In his play, “A Doll’s …show more content…
Within the first few pages of the play, Nora’s husband, Torvald, refers to her as a “little lark” (Ibsen 6). Torvald refers to Nora as multiple names including "my little lark," "my little squirrel," "my little spendthrift," and "little featherhead" (Snodgrass 1). Majority of these nicknames dehumanize Nora, describing her as an animal, “a bird in a cage” (Als 2). By stripping her of her identity as a human being, Torvald is claiming Nora as his pet, a creature unable to speak its mind so its owner decides everything for him or her. Often before each of these nicknames, Torvald uses the possessive “my”, to establish even further that he has both ownership and control of Nora, his so-called wife. The play repeats both “my” and the nicknames multiple times in order to bring attention to society’s unjust point of view. Torvald seems to share society’s view of women as less than human. At the end of the play, Nora leaves both Torvald and this viewpoint behind. Ibsen thereby demonstrates that this perspective is wrong and should be left in the