Love and Marriage Illustrated in Raisin in the Sun, A Doll's House and Is Love an Art

Nora and Torvald have been married for a long time and they do their best to make sure they are happy. Nora loves Torvald very much and would do anything to

The change on the contemporary wedding, from what the society has been seeing in the 21st century, is phenomenal. People approach marriage very differently nowadays. Individuals still look for their “would-be” spouses. However, it's not for love or companionship purposes but convenience. In fact, Dr. Strohschein is quoted saying in the talk show says that marriage evolved to a "capstone" to an individual’s life and no longer a cornerstone of life as it used to be (Woodford, Luke, Grogan-Kaylor, Fredriksen-Goldsen, & Gutierrez, 2012). This paper explores Strohschein’s views in the light of sociological concepts and theoretical paradigm.

Marriage today has become somewhat of a common goal for people all around the world and the same can be said for the 1300s. In both time periods two people would come together and be united, usually by the church. However, though modern marriage is not entirely different from the Middle Ages, it has definitely had a huge makeover. Marriage has changed a lot in the past seven-hundred years—and in some interesting ways. Today people marry for widely different reasons, have very different roles and expectations that come along with engagement, and it is more acceptable for gay people to marry.

Nora is treated like a child by Torvald, but she is accustomed to it and believes he loves her dearly. However, an important component of a successful and true marriage is trust, which is lacking in the Helmers’ marriage. Nora keeps a secret from Torvald while he is reluctant to trust her with money, let alone his reputation (Ibsen 2, 3, 13). When Torvald discovers that Nora has kept a secret from him, he is furious and takes away her right to raise the children without a second thought (Ibsen 83). However, while Torvald was throwing a fit, Nora comprehends that he has never loved her and that she was forcing herself to believe she loved him (Ibsen 87). Like Nora, Edna knew that she and her husband, Leonce, never loved each other; she thought he was her ticket out of her old life while he thought of her as his possession (Chopin 8, 29). Both Edna and Nora were raised to be obedient wives, but Edna, after her awakening, felt like marriage was “one of the most lamentable spectacles on earth” and did not try to save her marriage (Chopin 100). Love was sometimes not a factor that determined marriage; money and image was usually more preferred.

In A Doll's house, there are many characters with a wide variety of different personalities and objectives. Even though there are many similarities between characters, there are just as many differences. Out of all the characters Torvald and Nora are the ones with the biggest differences in personality and opinions. Even though they are married and most of the time seem to have the perfect home life, it becomes easier to deduce throughout the drama that they are two completely different people that want different things out of their lives. Some main differences that Nora and Torvald have are the way that they perceive their self-image, what they want out of life, and the actions that they will take to overcome problems. (1)

In the beginning of the book one could tell that Nora has a frivolous personality and likes to have fun and that Torvald takes everything very seriously and doesn't want to do anything that would be a “waste” of his time. Since the two have bipolar personalities, it is quite obvious that they do not have a typical nor traditional marriage. Because of Nora’s youthful personality it makes it harder on Torvald to treat her as an equal. “You always find some new way of wheedling money out of me, and, as soon as you have got it, it seems to melt in your hands ‘Torvald’” (Ibsen 14). In that line spoken by Torvald it is taken notice how he feels about Nora and that he only trusts her with the little and simple tasks.

Torvald’s wife Nora is the center of several of the traits that classify him as a morally ambiguous character. Nora is more like a possession to Torvald than a soul mate or wife. She is like a doll to him, something that he can control and shape into what he wants. Nora is treated like a child and as if she can not function a second without him to be there to tell her what to do. Her dependency on him is extremely important to him because that is

Had Torvald not been so restrictive toward his wife she more than likely would not have left the house at the end. Also had Torvald not try to enforce his gender role ideology upon Nora and allowed her to have more rights she would not have developed the mental instabilities that she did. In a way Torvald was somewhat of a hypocrite throughout the play as he tasked his wife to be the housewife with no freedoms but does something progressive when he gives Linde a job at the bank and fires a man to open up the position. That goes to show that even Torvald wasn’t fully dedicated to his Masculine Identity rather he used it whenever convenient to him. The fact that Nora was also a compulsive liar cannot be overlooked. It would go further to factor in why she left him as it happens to people who develop that symptom through the restrictiveness of their family

Torvald and Nora have distinct differences in personality inside and outside their home. To the public, Torvald seems to be a strong, family man with good morals. In his home life, though, he needs to feel power over Nora at all times.

Firstly, Nora has made the wise and right decision for leaving Torvald because Torvald gives her a hard time throughout the eight years that they have been living together. When Torvald says “...And as for you and me, it must appear as if everything between us were just

Beginning at the level of courtship, every step in the process of married life was strictly regimented and dictated by both tradition and law. Courtship was “highly controlled, almost ritualized, collective and highly public,” consisting of systematic meeting times and central parental involvement to select spouses. Worth within these was placed on forming unions with well respected families who would be of economic benefit, disregarding the concerns of a daughter altogether. In sequence with the courting process, there appeared an “increase in nuptiality and a lowering of the age at first marriage” that meant marriages happened at younger ages. Younger women were sought for marriage and couples married earlier altogether in order to achieve the goal of having a large family and developing an economic and social foundation for life. The standard

The key to a happy marriage is communication. If there is no communication, then there's no happiness or love. Torvald and Nora haven’t sat down and had a real conversation over the past 8 years, according to Nora. That’s when she finally realizes she’s made a mistake. Nora has been living a lie and she braces herself and breaks it to Torvald. Nora says “I have waited so patiently for eight years; for goodness knows, I knew very well those wonderful things don’t happen every day. Then this horrible misfortune came upon me, and then I felt quite certain that the wonderful thing was going to happen at last. When Krogstad’s letter was lying out there, never for a moment did I imagine that you would consent this man’s conditions? I was

In Henrik Ibsen’s A Doll’s House play things was not what it seemed. It also teaches us a lesson on the consequences of having a marriage lacking trust and poor communication. The marriage of Torvald and Nora seemed normal like any other marriage in that time period. Torvald was the bread winner Nora was a house wife and she took care of their two children. Nora thought that the only thing she was missing to be the happiest person on earth was money, and all her problems were going to disappear. Since her husband was going to start a new job she believed that soon her dream was going to come true. All Nora wanted was to have a good life with her family, but what she did not know was that her secret was going to destroy her marriage with

Nora is treated like “[Helmer’s] doll-wife…” (Ibsen 76) because she has become accustomed to being controlled by the men in her life. She tells her husband that throughout her marriage, she was unable to express her own thoughts and opinions and “so [she] got the same tastes as [Helmer]” (Ibsen 76). In this statement, Nora is describing an archetypical conflict of Innate Wisdom vs. Educated Stupidity because while she argues about the necessity of learning who she is and being equal to her husband, he use invalid arguments based on societies expectations. Furthermore, Nora has had an epiphany in which she realizes that her marriage is not

Over the years men build themselves up to last in the real world of work or family related ways. In order to survive they have practiced different skills from childhood to adulthood in order to amount to a certain maturity level. The first step is the power of knowledge men are permitted to learn which a woman is not. As Nora learns about the struggles of life through hiding her secret from her husband her ignorance lessens. The development Nora is encountering shows how much of a man she is becoming in the relationship. Her maturity level is shown by how she handled the situation when Torvald forgave her after he has just proven how little he cared for her compared to how highly he cares the way others perceive him. She feels that doesn’t anyone “…think that we have a right to be happy simply, naturally” (Fauset 83)? However Torvald only considers his reputation as a highly respected man. Finally, Nora sees the clear lining between the difference of love and reality. For example, when children are first born they are classified into colors; boys are blue and girls are pink. At a young age boys think of the color pink as a girly color and will not wear it because they are a boy not a girl; and vice versa with girls. As kids grow older they understand there are more colors to the world than just blue and pink that can be their signature color. Before, children insisted on wearing certain colors because of the ignorance they