She did what she was supposed to do. When Torvald calls Nora "hypocrite, a liar . . . A criminal" (Ibsen 190), he is overstepping his bounds, even as a husband. The words sting and it is as if they open Nora's eyes to the truth. He could not see the love behind her act and his hypocrisy is apparent at this point in the play. She is a victim of the social mores of her time and without the incident with the money, Nora might have never opened her eyes. Unlike Nora, Julie's awakening leaves her feeling hopeless. Julie's eyes are open to a mountain of regret and remorse for her actions. She feels no sense of identity, so she cannot defend herself even in her own mind. In short, there is no place for Julie in this world. She admits she is the one who "has to bear the guilt -- suffer the consequences" (Strindberg 276). Nora and Julie are victims of the society in which they live. Rules, expectations, and manners get in the way of women becoming all they could in the nineteenth century and these women demonstrate the consequences of independence. Both women face difficult truths about life. In a Doll's House, Nora's revelation is mind blowing and cannot be overlooked like Torvald's flippant remarks about her intelligence. Torvald's reaction forces her to realize she does not him or herself. When she stops to think about things, she understands that nothing is clear and nothing is as she thought. She tells her husband, "I must stand quite alone if I am to understand myself and everything about me. It is for that reason I cannot remain with you any longer" (Ibsen 196). She accepts responsibility and is astute enough to realize he is at fault as well. She says,...
She feels she can "no longer content myself with what most people say or with what is found in books. I must think things over for myself and get to understand them" (197). In Miss Julie, Julie does not experience a single moment of clarity like Nora, but she does come to realize certain truths by the end of the play. Julie, like Nora, has lived most of her life living by standards others have laid before her. She cannot accept the roles society mandates for women. She hates men but she also hates women and this divided identity will never truly allow her to be comfortable in her own skin. She admits to Jean that she has "no self of my own. I don't have a single thought I didn't get from my father, not an emotion I didn't get from my mother" (Strindberg 276). Her choice, while desperate, seems to be only way out.
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
As Beauvoir said, these plays tend to deal with restoring a sense of value and choice to a world that has been largely stripped of these features by modern critical, literary, and dramatic trends. Character is created with a greater sense of agency in these plays, and identity -- especially feminine identity -- ironically emerges as more of an actively created and self-determined construct through its interactions within and
Iceman Cometh is a brilliant play by Eugene O'Neill that experiments with the painful side of emotional life. It's all about the different dreams that people aspire to achieve. They live with the hope of one-day achieving them and this is what make their days go by. The characters in this play are all broken-hearted souls who live with their never-ending aspirations of having a better tomorrow. About the Playwright
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