This was my first assignment when I returned to Onondaga Community College for the 1st time in 6 years.
ENG104: 23 March 2016
A Doll’s House: Literary Theories
As the father of modern prose drama, Henrik Ibsen premiered his renowned masterpiece, A Doll’s House, in 1879. Prose poetry is most similar to informal speech without any rhythmical arrangement of words like traditional poetry. Henrik Ibsen created this play using prose in theater that established realism, showing how it was to live in the 19thcentury. The writer exhibits his apprehension for human rights, exclusively women’s rights during that time.
From a psychological viewpoint analyzing one of the main character’s in the play, Nora, helps us to better analyze the work itself and not how we feel about it rather just how it is as a whole. Nora is viewed as an attractive woman, however with many unattractive personas seen throughout the story. Nora is shown to be vain, dishonest, manipulative, and shallow. Nora comes off in a very conceited and prideful manner when she talks about her husband having a new job to her longtime friend, Christine Linde. “Christine! It will be splendid to have heaps of money and not need to have any anxiety, won’t it?” (Ibsen6) Of course anyone would be excited for their husband’s job promotion, but when Nora is talking to her friend, Christine, she comes off as very insensitive to her friend’s feelings because Christine just got done explaining how things aren’t going nearly as well for her.
Being dishonest to anyone is a sin. In the catholic church, when you lie to someone you are breaking one of God’s commandments. This part is a very controversial topic in the play, however in general no one should be lied to, whether or not she either had good intentions or bad intentions. Nora not only lies to her husband, she sneaks behind his back and borrows money from Krogstadt, a man that works with Nora’s husband. She continues to lie some more by signing the agreement between the two of them with a forged signature pretending it was her father who really signed it. Those two actions in themselves are intentionally and morally wrong whether she had any good intention behind it. By Nora continuing to try throughout the play to hide the truth, shows how she is not an honest person or one that can be trusted.
A manipulative person always gets their way. Nora’s husband, Thorvald, is very manipulative towards Nora when he treats her like his little squirrel and dangles money in her face to make her act the way he wants her to. “When did my squirrel come home?” (Ibsen1) Nora has learned from Thorvald or is manipulative herself when she uses her looks and acts like the squirrel and plays along with her husband almost like she is encouraging his behavior to control her as long as she gets what she wants. She is shallow because she seems to only care about material things. She goes shopping for unnecessary things often even when there is little money and her husband doesn’t want her to spend it. “You can’t deny it, my dear, little Nora. (Puts his arm round her waist.) It’s a sweet little spendthrift, but she uses up a deal of money. One would hardly believe how expensive such little persons are!” (Ibsen2) Also she never spent much time giving any attention to her children which is really what matters in life, not shallow material objects or perfecting her looks.
Role of any female in the 1900’s was underneath her husband’s rule. Women had fewer rights and career opportunities than men did at that time. To sum it up, women were a man’s property. The only profession for a well-educated woman was a governess or teacher in a private girl’s school. In particular, a Swedish woman was emotionally detached from their children and could care less especially about their daughters. As a Swedish female who was growing up back in the 19thcentury, she lost not only her youth but her authority. The social class that Nora and her husband belonged to were called the Petit Bouyeonsie. The word Bouyeonsie means literally small and it is a social class of peasantry and small-scale merchants who were considered high middle class.
In 2016, modern day society is much different than during Ibsen’s time when the historical and social context cannot be compared. Using Marxist theory, after realizing Nora’s historical place, we see that maybe her actions could be perceived in a completely different way by a reader in today’s society. There is a controversy amongst readers when Nora borrows money behind her husband’s back and keeps it a secret from him because most women in society today would say that it is noble and courageous of Nora to do that for her husband in order to help him recover from his illness. Also, Nora leaves her family because she does not want to be like a doll anymore similar to every other woman back in that time. Nora becomes a model to those women back in the 19thcentury by fighting for her right as an individual.
When we use Literary theories in our writing it helps us to better explain or argue our interpretations of the writer’s piece. In A Doll’s House, Henrik Ibsen gives us an insight to that time in history when society was much different from what it is like today. Writing about Nora, a profound character in his play, opens a pathway of different viewpoints using Critical Theory.
Works Cited
A Doll’s House. Henrik Ibsen. Portable Legacies. 2nd ed. Boston, MA: 2009 Wadsworth, 2013. Print.
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