A Doll's House Gender Roles Essay

Playwright Henrik Ibsen is often thought of as the founder of realist drama and one of the plays that belong to Ibsen's realism period is A Doll's House, written in year 1879. This play is not only remembered because of the impact it had on the society in the Nineteenth century but also because of its artistic achievements. Isben depicts a female protagonist in his play, who initiates a rebellious movement by defying her husband and forsaking her "duty" as a wife and mother to seek out her individuality. During the time when this play was written, the Nineteenth century, a new literary style, Symbolism, was developed. It involves looking at insignificant things with a new eye in order to discover inexplicit ideas and concepts. Throughout the play, Ibsen uses distinctive objects and their relation with the characters to externalize the presence of falsehood in the society. Using symbolism, he creates a story in parallel, where unspoken matters such as the notion of male predominance and the theme of lies and deception are brought to the surface.

In the realistic play “A Doll’s House” by Henrick Ibsen’s the cultural conflicts of the nineteenth century are shocking and controversial. The play helps portray the struggles women and men were faced with during that century with their roles. Being a male during this period showed more importance than the female’s role would have been. In the end this theory proves women can be just as responsible as a man.

Ibsen utilizes the boundaries of the “inexpensively furnished” (147) room to create Nora’s symbolic cage displaying how she is physically unable to leave the confines of the room and the role in which every 19th century wife must play. In Act I, Nora plays her façade of the frivolous “funny little spendthrift” (150) in an effort to seem as defenseless as the woodland creatures Torvald finds so endearing and subsequently patronizing. Nora’s quarantine is enhanced as she is called a “squirrel…skylark, and little bird” (150) by Torvald, infantilizing her character and consequently solidifying her inability to escape the confines of her assumed womanly role. Nora readily assumes the position of a subordinate and feeble woman to protect the illusion she perceives as a complete home in addition to avoid “[being] completely alone” (154). This absolute isolation in adherence to the role in which she has been nurtured to conform to is slowly deteriorating her character, which is displayed in the increased sporadic nature of “poor little Nora’s” (152) actions and her lack of ability to focus as the play progresses. Nora’s childlike behaviors steadily become more obvious as her fixated birdcage becomes increasingly suffocating, the discomfort with her current isolation grows and as her mask of perfection slowly disintegrates.

In certain eras of time wives were the ones who stayed home and took care of cleaning, cooking, and the children. While the women stayed home the men went out and worked. The men were the ones one brought the money home to pay for the bills. A woman was not allowed to go to work and help their husbands. Also, divorce was not a common during this era.

Distribution of Power against Gender Throughout history, the distribution of power among different groups in society has affected the role that individuals can play in their personal development. Henrik Ibsen’s Four Major Plays shows the way women’s activities can be controlled by the interests and the views of women in the community. The distribution of power in these plays is based on the gender of the characters as the women have been left out in major decision making. In the first play, A Doll’s House, Nora’s activities are based on the views of her husband who does not think women can make decisions. She cannot borrow money to develop her husband's activities, but she cannot let him know of her activities without making him angry.

Ibsen uses stage directions on a visual and aural level within “A Doll’s House” to expose the marital discord between Nora and Torvald Helmer in a patriarchal society. This can be seen through Nora’s isolation within the relationship, the emotional and physical disconnection between the protagonists and the patronising nature of Torvald as he asserts his dominance.

Admitting that society has evolved over time and has a bad past on assigning gender roles, the play reflects gender roles because it shows us the old concepts of housewives, men bringing home the money, and men having control over their wives. In the play, “A Doll’s House”, by Henrik Ibsen, he expresses the gender roles that society looked at back then. From the variety of gender roles, I have selected what I believe are the main gender roles that are looked at: the idea of housewives, men bringing home the money, and having control over their wives. In my opinion, there are the gender roles that caught my eye while reading the play. As mentioned earlier, “A Doll’s House” reflects on the idea of a housewife.

The idea of gender and gender roles have evolved minimally from the time Henrick Ibsen “A Doll House,” was first published. In the late 1800s, just before the beginning of the first wave of feminism in the United States and Europe, women were looking for ways to gain independence from their “duty” to marry a man, have children, and live a life to home and yearned for the freedom to choose what kind of lives they wanted to live, what they wanted to do, etc. In the beginning of the play, the views of gender are fairly typical, though by the end of the play, the gender roles among the main characters change dramatically.

In the play A Doll’s House, the author,Henrik Ibsen, strove for the surge in feminine emancipation and the downfall of masculine egotism. The play explores women’s struggle to become independent. Nora wants to be more than just a housewife, but the sexist society in the play requires a married woman with children to be a housewife and nothing more. Nora is constantly talked down to by her husband Torvald and he confines her to the home. Nora tries to emancipate herself of Torvald’s oppression and the strict gender roles of society to achieve independence.

In the story “A Doll’s House” that was written by Henrick Ibsen, a lot of individuals that have read the play or watched it visually, might say that feminism isn’t a huge theme that takes place. But then again, is it? I actually think it is, because, throughout the whole entire play, we see a lot of instances where Nora’s husband Torvald treats her terribly and somewhat offends her for the simple fact that she is a woman. Torvald never addresses her by her actual name, except when he is scolding her. He also would call her his little skylark or his squirrel; names that you would give your child. Not only does he call her childish names, he also says that she is very fragile. Nevertheless, Nora could not do anything unless it is to Torvald’s approval or his standards. For example, we see this happen when they were going to the ball and, what she planned on wearing. Torvald not only makes Nora feel bad about herself, he also makes a lot of rude comments which

Gender roles in dramatic works have seen as polarizing and stereotypical since the beginning of dramatic theatre. During the Greek festival of Dionysia, Greek male actors would don masks and other adornments, portraying male and female characters in performances. The female characters were typically written as mothers or wives, exhibiting flaws that made them inferior to their male counterparts. Aristophanes broke this trend with his feminist driven comedy Lysistrata. The Greek playwright built complicated, female characters who actively mocked the stereotype of being doting wives and lovers. Additionally, male roles were always heroic or deviant, with no in between. The portrayal of men and women in dramatic works was one-dimensional with

Throughout much of English language literature, gender and sex are equated with specific human traits. Strength is male and weakness is female. Men are stable and women are capricious. Logic is masculine and imagination is feminine. Ibsen uses stereotypical gender attributes in his characterization of Nora and Torvald throughout A Doll House, and then abruptly reverses the stereotypes in the final moments of the play to show that inner strength and weakness are functions of being human, not functions of gender.

Henrik Ibsen explores the feminist movement of his time throughout A Doll's House. He shows the feminist movement in all acts by many of the characters. The feminist movement is the movement to have women and men treated equally across all aspects of life. A Doll's House follows Nora as she deals with the effect of a decision she made years ago about borrowing money. Nora must find a way to change the perceptions others have about her actions. Ibsen uses figures to make the audience understand their feelings of society. He also uses the opinions of the characters to connect to those of the audience. The aims of Ibsen are to make the audience understand how the movement has affected their own lives. The play also shows specific actions that

In the initial publication of A Doll’s House, in 1879 the author Henrik Ibsen cited cases of inequality and oppression in the modern family. It is a play that that gives a day to day brief of the lives and anxiety of oppressed women in Victory Norway. Feminism is a key theme in the play and Ibsen narrated the challenges and advantage of being born female in a society where they handle them like a doll. In the essay, we will be establishing the role of Nora in the play positive role model to the premise of feminism. These shall be done through a concrete argumentative narrative of both arguments and counter arguments on the premise.

The well-known play A Doll’s House was first published in 1879 and has elements and characters which support feminism, which in turn drew attention from the women’s rights movement. However, Ibsen (author of the Dolls House) states that he was not a feminist; rather, his play is about the human nature in general, and is not specifically about women’s rights.