Verified Document

Ibsen's A Doll's House Henrik Ibsen's Play Thesis

Related Topics:

Ibsen's a Doll's House Henrik Ibsen's play A Doll's House dramatizes its heroine's dilemma by providing an example of what fate might possibly await her: the subplot involving Mrs. Linde is designed by Ibsen as a deliberate contrast and warning to Nora, the "little doll" of the play's title (Ibsen 84).. I hope by an examination of the different uses Ibsen makes of his counterplot to demonstrate that Ibsen intends the ultimate effect of A Doll's House upon the audience to be an open-ended one that is rife with competing possibilities. To some extent, Mrs. Linde's fate represents one available option for Nora among many. But in the end I think Ibsen makes Mrs. Linde more dynamic, by offering a new behavior in her final appearance which indicates a complication to her own motives.

The play introduces us to Nora as she presents a too-generous poirboire to a Porter...

From this we get Torvald's stern admonishment of Nora for her fiscal irresponsibility, delivered with full paternalistic condescension: "What are little people called that are always wasting money?" (Ibsen 8). It thus is only likely that the audience is intended to interpret Mrs. Linde's threadbare poverty after her husband's death as a grim warning to Nora: women must rely on men for financial security. The irony, of course, is that Mrs. Linde still feels confident enough to admonish Nora along the same lines that Torvald just did: "Nora, Nora, haven't you learnt sense yet? In our schooldays you were a great spendthrift" (Ibsen 12).
This accusation must particularly sting for Nora, because it leads her to confess her secret, the fact around which the entire plot of the play…

Cite this Document:
Copy Bibliography Citation

Related Documents

Doll's House Henrik Ibsen's Play a Doll's
Words: 3654 Length: 12 Document Type: Essay

Doll's House Henrik Ibsen's play A Doll's Housemade him the father of modern literature. His writing showed tragedy and drama in a new and rather modern way. Prior to an analysis of the story at hand, it is only relevant that the plot and main characters are discussed in detail. This story does not revolve around a whole bunch of characters and is based on only a few days. The story

Ibsen's Doll House Doll's House
Words: 1358 Length: 4 Document Type: Term Paper

Instead of needing his help and protection, Torvald finds out that it was only Nora's role playing and really she was capable of working and doing deceptive things. Torvald's response to the letter shows that he has very little self-awareness and really thought that the "role-plays" were reality. 5. Torvald believes that marriage and family are important, and that the man or husband is in control. Torvald thinks that men

Dolls House Doll's House Henrik
Words: 1534 Length: 5 Document Type: Term Paper

He feels that Nora's freedom is not a reality since she couldn't possibly just leave her house and establish her own identity without money. "Nora needs money -- to put it more elegantly, it is economics which matters in the end. Freedom is certainly not something that can be bought for money. But it can be lost through lack of money." (Found in Schwarez) In short, whatever were the reasons

Doll's House Henrik Ibsen the Title of
Words: 737 Length: 2 Document Type: Thesis

Doll's House (Henrik Ibsen) The title of Ibsen's masterpiece -- A Doll's House -- doesn't lack meaning or symbolism; that is to say that the house in which Nora, the protagonist, lives is a house, which, for all intents and purposes, is one that has been constructed for the sole purpose of keeping her a kept woman (i.e. A doll in a doll's house). Like a play thing, Nora makes

Henrik Ibsen's a Doll's House Henrik Ibsen's
Words: 1295 Length: 3 Document Type: Term Paper

Henrik Ibsen's a Doll's House Henrik Ibsen's characters are not the people they appear to be. On the surface and at the beginning of the play audiences see typical people, pursuing typical lives with typical problems. Not until the play progresses, and in retrospect, do audiences realize that society negatively or positively stimulates the characters motives and actions. This paper looks at three such characters in Henrik Ibsen's play A

Henrik Ibsen's a Doll's House
Words: 1632 Length: 4 Document Type: Research Paper

" Ibsen demanded justice and freedom for every human being and wrote a Doll House to inspire society to individualism and free them from suppression." (http://www.helium.com/items/1121047-henrik-ibsen-dolls-house). In the play, the family exists in the way society defines it -- a husband, a wife, children and a home; but in reality it is just a collection of strangers living in the same house. For Nora the crisis of blackmail and her husband

Sign Up for Unlimited Study Help

Our semester plans gives you unlimited, unrestricted access to our entire library of resources —writing tools, guides, example essays, tutorials, class notes, and more.

Get Started Now