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Theme Of Marriage In A Doll's House

Satisfactory Essays

Marriage is tough. Nora and Torvald Helmer prove that in Henrik Ibsen’s classic play “A Doll House”. Not only does the main character’s marriage fail because of secrets, but because of the reasoning behind having those secrets. The late 1800’s when the play was published saw more than it’s fair share of sexism but the twist comes with Nora leaving Torvald at the end of the play, which at the time was unheard of. More often than not this play leaves the reader siding with Nora and for a good reason as well since her intentions throughout were only to help her husband and share an equal marriage, Torvald not so much. Though gender inequality is seen greatly throughout this play, the theme is also very strong through “Trifles” by Susan …show more content…

sets a laudable example for Nora” (69). This instance serves to prove the contrasting couples are put there to demonstrate how an equal relationship differs from a one sided one.

Following the comparison of the two main couples in “A Doll House”, it becomes more clear that gender plays a great role in works written in the late 1800’s/early 1900’s. Ibsen shows this advertently with the dissolution of Nora’s marriage through his play while Glaspell isn’t shy about it and makes her whole play, “Trifles” surrounding a husband's death due to his wife being fed up with the consistent treatment. Even though the two plays are forty years apart, the same inequalities exist but are dealt with differently and possibly harsher than others- Nora left Torvald over his disrespect but left him living. As the main plot in Ibsen’s play is surrounded by Nora trying to only to help her husband, the view of Torvald being a stereotypical male figure is expunged after he gets ill and “it is she (Nora) who has acquired the money to save his life, Torvald, and not Nora, is really the ‘wife in the family’” (Templeton 30). Glaspell uses stereotypes to her advantage as well, showing the women in the story stumbling upon the truth of the murder while the men fumble around as to why a women would possibly want to murder her husband. The central idea of

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