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Gender Roles In A Doll's House By Ibsen

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Recommended: Character and characterisation in a dolls house

1). In the play, A Doll’s House, two types of conscience are displayed in the gender role of the marriage between Nora and Torvald. The wife, Nora, is dependent upon her husband, Torvald who is a proud independent man. He controls money as a form of power in their marriage and rewards her behaviors for submissiveness and domesticity. She plays the role that is expected from Torvald, like a doll to be flaunted in order to impress others. However, when Torvald becomes ill, Nora borrows money from Krogstad, she forges her fathers name on an IOU for a trip to Italy to save Torvald’s life. She earns money behind his back to pay back the debt. A role not tolerable by a women in Victorian society, but accepted by a man. Thus, displaying the gender biases in the society. Nonetheless, Nora’s lying and deceit about the money becomes the dilemma, she feels morally justified in her actions, but the law judges famine conduct from a masculine view, …show more content…

Supporting the theme that woman have a right to individual self-fulfillment during a time when women were oppressed and not allowed to conduct business without the authority of a father or husband. Consequently, Nora hides the loan and the forgery of her father to help save her husband’s life. Secretly, she pays off her loan because it is illegal for a woman to obtain it. However, the immoral act of lying and deceit leads Nora, Torvald and Dr. Rank to believe that the immorality would be passed onto her children like a disease. Therefore, Nora wants to leave her marriage to find her identity and leave her children to be raised by the nanny. This act provoked an outrage since women were considered a possession and could not divorce without the consent of the husband. Ibsen’s views differed from those of his time, he felt that marriage should be an equal partnership, each being free to become their own

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It portrayed how marriage and roles were defined during that time. One of the main characters in the story, Torvald Helmer, was married to Nora and they had small children. Torvald was viewed as a standup citizen who was about to get a promotion at the bank and get a substantial raise. He inquired about any money that Nora spent,

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558 Words | 3 Pages

In the plays Trifles and A Doll House the reader can see the portrayal of a male society and the way women are where dominated and abused by their husband in the nineteenth century. In A Doll House Nora’s Husband Treats her as if she is and absent minds doll wife that is incapable of thinking for herself. In Trifles Mrs. wright is a woman that have been oppressed and abuse by her husband for so many year that she need to escape one way or another. The woman in the play both took steps to gain there independence in society by any means

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1447 Words | 6 Pages

In short, the duplicity of Nora’s nature accounts for her morally ambiguous which serve as a major source of conflict to her relationship and the play 's plot as a hole. It is her ambiguity that keeps the reader from defining Nora and choosing a definitive side in the conflict. That is to say, that many readers find it hard to support Nora and her feministic rise above the societally accepted views of the time period when the question of her subsequent turn from family and her children also comes into view. She remains in the proverbial grey area, hidden from the clear cut values of black and white-- good and evil. Furthermore, Nora’s ambiguous nature drives the conflicts in the play, acting as the source of tension between her and her husband, Dr. Rank, and Krogstad as her decision to overlook the laws in an effort to save her husband prove a perilous decision in regards to her way of life.

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666 Words | 3 Pages

Nora is a married woman and has children to take care of. She really has little freedom because of the way Torvald treats her. She is not even I feel as if deep down she knows she is not free and wants something more in her life then to be a entertaining puppet for Torvald. She realizes at the end of the story that Torvald is not good to her because of the way he acted when she told him about forging the signature. When Torvald called her a criminal and other harsh words she realized that she had no true love from Torvald and wanted to be free from him.

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1409 Words | 6 Pages

A Doll’s house is a realistic three act play that focuses on the nineteenth century life in middle class Scandinavian household life, where the wife is expected to be inferior and passive whereas the husband is superior and paternally protective. It was written by Henrik Ibsen. The play criticised the marriage norms that existed in the 19th century. It aroused many controversies as it concludes with Nora, the main protagonists leaving her husband and children in order to discover her identity. It created a lot of controversies and was heavily criticised as it questioned the traditional roles of men and women among Europeans who believed that the covenant of marriage was holy.

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1418 Words | 6 Pages

In act one, the audience learns about the secret which Nora has been hiding from Torvald: that Nora has obtained a loan from Krogstad due to their financial situation and inability to pay for their trip to Italy to save Torvald’s life. When Krogstad

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1136 Words | 5 Pages

Nora’s defiance may have resulted in criticism from society, but Ibsen importantly commented on the terrible treatment of woman in relationships and the world. Ibsen created A Doll’s House in a time where women were treated unjustly and poorly. While the play might seem slightly irrelevant now, it still has a place in the world today. Women can borrow money and leave their husbands; however, society still puts tremendous pressure on women to fulfill sacred vows. The expectation to assure her husband’s happiness and to prioritize everyone else before herself is still an issue that many woman face today.

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Males are generally seen as being strong, stable, and logical, with high morals. Krogstad committed the crime of forgery some years earlier, which Torvald believes is morally wrong and believes Krogstad got himself out of the mess by "sharp practices" and must "lie and cheat and deceive on all sides"(Ibsen) and "has to wear a mask" (Ibsen) to hide his mistake. Torvalds reaction to Krogstad's forgery foreshadows the reaction to Nora's forgery, which is much more personal to him. When Krogstad and Mrs. Linde become involved the gender roles are reversed as she becomes the provider and breadwinner and he is now the "stay at home husband". This can be related to modern times as social reform in that respect has taken place and more and more women are seen in the workplace along with fathers and husbands staying home and helping in the household more

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1338 Words | 6 Pages

In the 19th century Victorian era, Ibsen delves into a society vastly different from the society we know today. He explores a society in which the men are in control, the men run businesses, the men control the money, while the women manage the home and children. Throughout the play, we see Torvald asserting that dominance over Nora, not only in spoken orders but also in how he speaks to her, “No borrowing, no debt. There can be no freedom or beauty about a home life that depends on borrowing and debt,” (Ibsen,1879). Frequently, Nora is referred to as "little songbird," "little squirrel," "little spendthrift," or "little Nora."

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1283 Words | 6 Pages

The reader becomes very aware of the situation Nora is faced with as Ibsen challenges us to think about the societal times women were a part of during the late 1800’s. As Unni Langas states in her article describing gender within the play, “..this drama is not so much about Nora’s struggle to find herself as a human being, as it is about her shocking experience of being treated as a woman..” (Langas, 2005). This gives the reader an insight into Nora Helmer’s character. She is evidently perceived as the Doll trapped in the Doll house, as she is viewed as an entertainer rather than her own person in the eyes of her husband and children.

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1287 Words | 6 Pages

This play, A Doll’s House by Henrik Ibsen, focuses on women, especially in marriage and motherhood. Torvald is a character, who describes inequality between men and women and the women’s role in the society in that era. He believes that it is an important and the only duty of a woman to be a good wife and mother. As an individual, a woman, could not conduct or run a business of her own, she needs to ask her father or husband and they were only considered to be father’s or husband’s property. Women were not allowed to vote and divorce if they were allowed they would carry a heavy social shame and it was only available when both partners agreed.

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759 Words | 4 Pages

During act III, Nora asked to speak to Torvald after her performance of the tarantella dance. The following conversation demonstrated her quest for autonomy and freedom, as well as Torvald’s inadequate responses to her arguments and demands; it also showed how deeply connected her unhappy situation is with society’s regulation of the relationship between the sexes. She asserts that she is “...first and foremost a human being”, and her strong conviction that her womanhood, and the expectations associated with it, are secondary, strengthens her resolve to make a radical choice: A break with both husband and, with necessity due to her legal position, her children (Ibsen, 184). During her conversation with Torvald, she proclaims, “I have other sacred duties... The duties to myself (Ibsen, 184).”

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1384 Words | 6 Pages

The play begins with Nora being portrayed as a self-indulgent and whimsical woman with childlike qualities. After the porter asks Nora for “a shilling”, (Ibsen, p.23) she tips him over-generously with a pound, directing him to “keep it,” (p.23) giving the audience the impression that Nora does not know the value of money, much like a child would not. Her immature extravagance is recognized through her desire to spend Torvald’s higher salary right away, even though it will not be received for another three months. His

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1496 Words | 6 Pages

Ibsen builds this suspense with her round characterization to shape the moral transition she is gradually making from subservience to individual freedom. Nora is pleasurably settled in a room “furnished comfortably and tastefully with little extravagance” at the beginning of the play. This simple space shapes a steady relationship between Nora and her husband Torvald. In addition to that fact, this little space reinforces the extended metaphor of the dollhouse throughout the book. Likewise, this toy house infers her restrained influence limited by this enclosed space.

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1750 Words | 7 Pages

In this connection, we can pertinently cite what Virginia Woolf in her work A Room of one’s Own asserts that,“Men have treated women as inferiors for many years. It is the men who define everything in the society (28)”. In this play, Ibsen shows inequality in Nora’s household, patriarchal system and Nora’s attitude to fight against

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