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A Doll's House Gender Roles

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In the play, A Doll’s House I believe the setting of the play is impacted based on the Victorian Gender Roles developing the theme of the sacrificial role of women. Henrik Ibsen wrote the play based on a true story of Laura Peterson’s life where she experienced most of what Nora went through. The victorian gender roles impacted the life of women, where they were usually judged through the “male eyes”. Ibsen wanted to show the audience what was happening during that time and realize the harm they were doing to women. Some of the examples shown in the play is when Nora eats the macaroons, Nora gets dressed by Torvald, and when Nora finally speaks out how she feels towards the end.
In the beginning of the play, Nora hides the fact that she ate macaroons. Torvald asks her “Hasn’t Miss Sweet Tooth been breaking rules in town today?”(Ibsen 4) showing us the victorian gender roles of that time. Men controlled what women ate, did, dressed, and even their emotions. Torvald wanted to keep a good image of her by having her avoid sweets which would cause her to lose her “beauty”. Of course, Nora would lie that she ate macaroons to give him the feeling of his superiority. Nora …show more content…

Nora says “Look, here is the dress; Torvald had it made for me there” (Ibsen 31). Just like a doll, Nora allows Torvald to dress her up, sacrificing her role as a women and making her a doll. Torvald even says “you do as your husband wishes?... you will want to be trying on your dress, I expect.” (Ibsen 33). Because of the setting of that time, Torvald was the boss in all of Nora’s doing. He wasn’t ashamed to say that Nora does what he pleases, he basically told her “you will try on your dress”, not letting her pick out for herself. Even if Nora would to pick out a dress, she would have to ask herself “is this something Torvald would like?” showing us that even when he’s not there, he’s still the

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Nora is a character that will do everything that somebody tells her, she is kind of submissive regarding what Torvald says. She has to mention him at least once while she’s talking about anything, but she does have some petty forms of rebellion, like the macaroons. A larger way of her rebelling would be when she pays for the trip so that Torvald can get better. She is viewed as a child by Mrs. Linde, Christine, and is treated like one by Torvald and it seems almost like they look down on her because she is a woman and she is completely dependent on her husband. Her character, at this point, has no backbone; she is completely captivated by this life in which she perceives as

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The way that Nora responds to Torvald and his many rules show again Nora’s childish nature. This is evident in how Torvald controls Nora and does not want her to eat macaroons. After realizing that Nora had in fact had some, he questions her to which she responds “No; what makes you think that?” (Ibsen 1361). Nora hides the truth from Torvald as if he is her father and is unable to stand up to him because she fears what may happen to her even though they should be equals. Although it may be frowned upon for the wife to make such decisions in this period, Nora knows that this is no way to live, and instead of making that known she buries the idea.

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