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A Doll's House Gender Roles

1160 Words5 Pages

“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

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Even Torvald’s statement to Nora that “there’s no one who gives up honor for love,” (Ibsen 113) before Nora acknowledges that women do that every day, shows that there are certain generalizations Torvald has learned from society. Torvald could never imagine himself sacrificing his honor because he was taught that as a man, he is supposed to be strong, courageous, and dominant. He does not know why he would have to sacrifice anything in the first place, as he is so used to automatically being in control. This is the mentality that society engraved into its individuals. In reality, Torvald

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However, it not just about the women’s rights: it more about human rights, which are highlighted by the life of each character in the play. Torvald is stuck in the norms framed by the society and so he tries to follow them at each and every step, even beyond his life and wife and he has concern about his status and reputation in society. Nora is also stuck along with him, which finally ends their relationship. Mrs. Linde dedicated her life to her family’s needs and married to a person and lived a loveless life. She became a widow and started working to fulfill her needs.

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A Doll's House Gender Roles

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Women in Norway during the nineteenth century were expected to fulfill a certain role-the domestic housewife. These domestic duties placed on women brought along a powerful feminist movement that produced the independent woman. In A Doll’s House, by Henrik Ibsen he compares two different types of women placed in nineteenth century Norway with allusions to typical economic situations and cultural roles in order to compare and contrast the domestic housewife and the independent woman. In order to understand the women in A Doll’s House it is vital to understand the typical Norwegian woman.

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For instance, it is quite clear that Ibsen's decision to talk about the topic of money in this play is influenced by the societal norms or cultural expectations at the time where the society in Norway at around the nineteenth century had changed significantly in terms of its socio-economic ideologies and people had become obsessed with money where they would always take care of their financial health by trying to avoid debt by all means. This explains why the opening discussion in this play is about the topic of money and the story ends up with a divorce which has been occasioned by borrowed money by a wife in order to save her husband’s life. However, the most important aspect of the play is how Ibsen has demonstrated that women are willing to reject social conventions in order to safeguard their interest as was witnessed with Nora and Ms. Linde who are two women who have gone against social expectations in order to care for their families. For this reasons, Ibsen play is influenced by the social and cultural norms of the time where he seeks to show that a time had come to reject some of the conservative social conventions that

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He rather expects her to be more compliant, loyal and wants her to follow the social and moral rules strictly, like he does. Torvald’s assertion that Nora’s lack of understanding of money matters is the result of her gender (“Nora, my Nora, that is just like a woman”) reveals his prejudiced viewpoint on gender roles. Torvald believes a wife’s role is to beautify the home, not only through proper management of domestic life but also through proper behavior and appearance. He quickly makes it known that appearances are very important to him, and that Nora is like an ornament or trophy that serves to beautify his home and his reputation. He tells Nora that he loves her so much that he has wished in the past that Nora’s life were threatened so that he could risk everything to save her.

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Throughout A Doll’s House, Henrick Ibsen gives emphasis to male-controlled symbolism in order to emphasize the standard family structure of the late nineteenth-century. Torvald, the central male character, perfectly depicts the typical male dominance through his actions of control and dominance in the relationship with Nora Helmer. The names he gives her throughout the play: skylark, little squirrel, little spendthrift, etc. shows his looking down to Nora. He gives her no respect and like all typical marriages in nineteenth-century Denmark, he gives Nora no means to have any control in the marriage. The title A Doll’s House in itself generates the whole definition of the play, giving symbolism to Nora and how she is “trapped” in her own home and being ordered by Torvald in everything she says and does.

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828 Words | 4 Pages

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1287 Words | 6 Pages

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