Ibsen's Nora
Although it is difficult to know exactly how audiences watching Henrik Ibsen's A Doll's House felt about the content of the play when it was first performed, it is difficult for us reading or watching it in the 21st century to see it as anything but a strongly feminist statement.
What is especially striking about the powerful feminism of the play - other than the year in which it was written - is the fact that Ibsen himself always claimed to be resolutely apolitical. And yet for a man who claimed in no way to be either a feminist or more generally an advocate for social change, his exploration of the ways in which women were continually infantilized by society in fact seems highly political to us, and in fact is one of the reasons that the play remains so compelling to us more than a century after it was written.
We can fully appreciate the way in which Ibsen's heroine, Nora, is a character trapped by the circumstance of her past who refuses to remain trapped. Ibsen's has at its core a defense of the human spirit and of the limitlessness of human courage (Shaw 40). It is clear when reading his play that, malgre-lui, he had become a force for social change and for the rights of women not only in his homeland but throughout the world.
Ibsen's series of so-called "social plays," of which A Doll House is a prominent member, are unmistakably his most famous and argue fervently against the social ills and lopsided relationships of modern civilization. Much debate has centered around A Doll House and exactly which segment of society Ibsen is attempting to emancipate in his tale of interrelated physical, social, and moral infirmity. Despite the playwright's insistence that A Doll House is less about feminist freedom and more about the individualism of all human beings, Ibsen's drama clearly supports women's rights, as evidenced by his own actions in the real world and the elements of male-female relationships within the play (http://www.owlnet.rice.edu).
We may see in the character of Nora a stand-in for Ibsen himself, for just as does Nora in the play, Ibsen too traveled a path from conservative views on the role of women to holding at least sympathetic views on the ways in which women were oppressed.
The 1879 play tells the story of Nora Helmer. She is sheltered and petted and expected to act like a sweet but unintelligent pet first by her father and then by her husband. Nora commits forgery to get money to save her husband's life and he discovers this fact after she has repaid the sum
His behavior towards her when he discovers what she has done - and it is important to remember that she has acted only out of concern for his welfare and has shown both courage and initiative in doing so - is patronizing and unkind. She acts entirely out of love for him, but his response to her actions make her realize that he has never actually seen her as a real human being on her own but rather as a pretty doll.
By the end of the play she was entirely transformed herself, and because of this Ibsen emerged as one of the great feminist artists. The irony that once again women were being spoken for by a man may or may not have been obvious.
Whether Ibsen himself ever intended to speak for women is not clear; he would probably have denied that this was his intent even as he always denied being a feminist.
Although he himself expressly denied being "a feminist," such scholars as Elinor Fuchs and Joan Templeton have convincingly shown that he was at the very least sympathetic to the beginnings of the women's movement, and was even actively involved in the push to redefine the role of women in society. Certainly the creator of such seminal feminist archetypes as Lona Hessell, Nora Helmer, Helena Alving and Ellida Wangel could not have been blind to the implications of the plays in which they appeared (http://nauvoo.byu.edu/TheArts/Theater/studypackets/lesson01/context.html).
Feminism and "A Doll's House" In the globe, feminism is a common practice in the social customs of both developed and developing nations. This is because, in both cases, there has been an apparent similar portrayal of women, who have gone through various phases of social levels compared to the consistent social dominance, which is evident in almost every society in the globe. Feminism seeks to know why women continue to
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