A Doll's House Injustice

In A Doll’s House, by Henrik Ibsen, is a play about the personal revolution of a Norwegian housewife. Nora appears to be happy with mindlessly obeying her husband, until it is discovered that she has a secret debt that she has hidden from him. Krogstad, Nora’s loaner, threatens to reveal the debt to her husband. When it is inadvertently revealed, Nora realizes the lack of depth of her husband’s feelings for her and leaves their established household and family to find her own personal identity. The theme of A Doll’s House is that societal norms restrict personal freedom.

Act I of the play begins on Christmas Eve. Nora enters the living room of the Helmer household, which also serves as the setting for the entire play. Upon Nora’s arrival, Torvald comes out of his study to greet her but ends up lecturing her about spending too much money on the Christmas gifts. During this initial conversation, and throughout the rest of the play, Torvald refers to Nora as a lark, a squirrel, a spendthrift, and a featherhead. These pet names are the first examples of Nora’s childish treatment by Torvald. At the end of Torvald’s lecture, we are made aware of his most important rule, “No debt, no borrowing”. When asked what she would like for Christmas, Nora asks Torvald for money. Torvald lectures Nora about her spending habits again but brushes it off as one of the traits she inherited from her

INTRO: It is well-known that throughout history women and men have not always been treated as equals; it was not until the early twentieth century that women could vote in most countries. In the Victorian era, when A Doll’s House took place, women held a less than equitable sociopolitical and domestic standing. Socially, marriage and motherhood where no longer just emotional fulfillment for a woman; they had now become a responsibility and a full-time job that hardly allowed for leisure or external work. Since a woman’s life was centered on domesticity she had even fewer political rights outside the house than she did inside. A woman was not to vote, she could not form contracts without consent from a man, she was not deemed as a person under the law and she had no self-governance. THESIS: In Henrik Ibsen’s play, A Doll’s House, the effect of the symbolism of Nora and Torvald’s marriage is vital on the development of the theme of gender inequality during the Victorian era.

Ibsen’s ‘A Doll’s House’ is a play that speaks greatly to the societal roles that were expected for each gender during this time. These societal roles damaged many people because of the huge pressures that came along with the expectations of being a man or a woman. These pressures are clearly highlighted in Ibsen’s play.

Throughout A Doll’s House, the use of symbolism is present. Through Torvald’s actions, the reader develops a clear understanding of Nora and Torvald’s relationship and thus developing the role of women theme. Firstly, Torvald treats Nora as if she is a child, but Nora doesn’t act upon this until the end of the play. This symbolic action could be due to the constant reminder of Nora’s secret bank loan, which affects her attitude and interaction with her husband, along with the constant inequalities present between herself and Torvald. Secondly, although not typically considered as imagery, stage directions are very helpful to the reader as they provide visual information that the reader can use to help create the setting and act out interactions in their mind. And lastly, without prior knowledge of the play, the title seems nonsensical, but as the story unfolds, the title becomes clearly connected to the plot and the theme of the story through the use of symbolism.

Explore the presentation of Nora Helmer as a deceitful female character in “A doll’s house.” Compare and contrast your findings with the way Wilde presents his female protagonist Mrs. Arbuthnot in “A woman of no importance.”

The representation of deception and social oppression through the use of symbols in Henrik Ibsen’s A Doll’s House

Commonly, we see female characters in literature completely at the discipline of their male counterparts. However, some females challenge the notion that subservience to the patriarchy is absolutely ‘necessary’. A Doll’s House by Henrik Ibsen and Thomas Hardy’s Far from the Madding Crowd both create interesting female characters in Nora Helmer and Bathsheba Everdene respectively. Whether these women are truly either independent or dependent, is ambiguous in their pieces of literature.

Poverty embarrasses people. Not just those who experience it, but those who witness it too. In both of these stories, poverty and bullying are huge themes and really affect the lives of the characters. Poverty means far more than not having enough to eat. It means that people have limited choices to change their lives, such as where they live, what they can do in their spare time, or the jobs they can find. These children cannot control their family’s income, but they still get bullied because of it. Poverty makes these children a major target for the bullies and they really have to show how strong they can be to overcome it.

Ibsen’s “A Dolls House” is a story about a wife who forges her father's signature to obtain a loan that can save her authoritative husband from a life-threatening illness. Unfortunately, her husband’s co-worker Krogstad discovers the forged document and threatens to reveal her which would bring shame upon both Nora and her husband. Krogstad’s motivation to blackmail Nora begins when he finds out Mrs. Linde is now an employee at the bank. Believing Mrs. Linde was hired to replace him, Krogstad need’s Nora to influence her husband to retain his position.

Within the soul of every human lies an enigmatic truth, and no matter how innocent it may seem or how well the notion might have been, there is a reason it is being hidden. In Henry Ibsen’s, A Doll’s House, the main character, Nora Helmer, keeps a secret crime from her husband, Torvald Helmer, that can not only ruin her life, but his as well. Despite having good intentions for her actions, this secret tortures her throughout the entirety of the play, and once revealed, changed Nora’s overall character from a sweet, fun-loving child, into a mature, hardened woman, as well as changing the entire tone of the play from being merry and joyful, into dark and stressful, yet bittersweet.

This paper discusses the notion that truly moral people are not only those who follow rules, laws and norms, these society norms and laws are very flexible and change with time. Such people do whatever they wish to do without the fear of being criticized. The essay is based on "The Doll House" play by Henrik Ibsen. However, other similar stories that support thesis statement include; "The story of an Hour" by Kate Chopin and "The Stranger" by Albert Camus.

Henrik Ibsen wrote the play A Doll’s House in 1879. In the play Ibsen describes how the society trapped women in marriages and how they carry no value to the family. Just like Stasz Clarice writes “Society, particularly through social class, structures men and women alike to be insensitive and inhumane.” Nora Helmer is apparently happily married to Torvald, he is a lawyer who is about to be promoted to a management position. They have three small children. Early in their marriage Torvald became seriously ill, and the doctors advised a stay in a more southerly climate. Nora had to get hold of the money for the journey in secrecy and so borrowed it from Krogstad, a lawyer who had been a coworker of Torvald. As security for the loan she forged her dying father’s signature. Ever since then she has saved some of the housekeeping money in order to pay back the loan with interest, and she has taken on small jobs to earn some money herself. When the play opens, an old friend of Nora’s, Mrs. Linde, has arrived in town to look for work, and Nora sees to it that Torvald gives her a post at the bank. But this means that Krogstad is dismissed from his post at the bank, and in desperation he goes to Nora and threatens to tell Torvald about the loan and the forgery unless he is allowed to keep his post. Nora considers asking Dr. Rank, an old friend of the family, for the money, but when he declares his love for her, she finds it impossible

In a short story by Katherine Mansfield called “The Doll’s House,” there is a social barrier between a family with less that is struggling to make ends meet and a flourishing family, that appears to not have any difficulties getting through life. The Kelvey family, whose hard-working mother makes the best of life that she can by crafting clothing from materials she can salvage from the wealthy clients’ houses she cleans. The Burnell family, who is getting through life with ease because of their position in the wealthy class, is the complete opposite in lifestyles. The short story “The Doll’s House” suggests society is unfair to the people with less and that possessions play a part in the deciding factor whether people will be your friend, but it only takes one person to break from the social expectations.

A Doll’s House was published in Norway in 1879 by Henrik Isben. He is known as the father of Modern Theatre. He is also referred as the father of realism. The play is very interesting because of the funny dialogue, the unique characters, and Ibsen 's view of the place of ladies in the public eye. The main characters of the play is Nora Helmer and her husband Torvald Helmer. Imagine what it would be like to live in a doll 's home? It 's a house in which you are controlled and have no energy to settle on any solid choice; It 's a house in which you are a play thing for another person 's amusement. This sounds a ton like an awful marriage, so it 's a house in which your husband holds the satchel strings, in a manner of speaking, and abandons you with no influence over your family 's accounts. In fact, your husband keeps you on a tightrope. Such is the perceived life of Nora Helmer.