a doll's house argumentative essay

A Doll's House Argumentative Essay

Henrik Ibsen's Norwegian play A Doll’s House illustrates the story of Nora Helmer, a quintessential nineteenth century housewife, as she keeps the secret of her debt while balancing the care of her banker husband, Torvald Helmer, and household. When the play was first performed, it was controversial because in the end, Nora leaves her family once she realizes Torvald would not have stepped up and defended her in spite of her debt. The play caused such controversy that an alternative ending to the play was made, in which, Nora sees her children and realizes she can not leave them behind. Nora was not justified in leaving because her children did not deserve to be left with Torvald. Nora was being abused awfully, which in today’s Western society …show more content…

She clearly lived in a different society than today’s, in one scene, Nora said "Still it was tremendous fun sitting there working and earning money. It was almost like being a man" (1) Working and earning money was almost exclusive to men. Christine did find work as a woman and widower, but, in the end, she wanted someone to help care for her, “Two on the same piece of wreckage would stand a better chance than each on their own” and did not want to be alone “I want to be a mother to someone, and your children need a mother. We two need each other. Nils, I have faith in your real character-- I can dare anything together with you” (). After years alone, Christine realized that there is much more to life than working for oneself, “There is not the least pleasure in working for one’s self. Ils, give me someone and something to work for” (). Nora would have made this same realization when she did not have her children to look forward to seeing everyday. Nora’s relationship with her children, as previously compared to A Thousand Splendid Suns’ Mariam and Laila’s relationship with Laila’s children, was not close, but she did love her children despite their relationship being closer to one of a friend, “Come in! Come in! (Stops and kisses them.) Oh, you sweet blessings! Look at them Christine! Aren’t they

A Doll's House Analytical Essay

Nora on the surface seems to be the epitome of a 19th-century wife, but the audience quickly realizes that she defies gender expectations with the forged loan and eventually with her separation from Helmer. Helmer not only fits perfectly into his masculine role but blindly

A Doll House And Trifles Comparison Essay

However both woman had endured abuse and are victims of a male dominated society. Nora the wife of a banker and a mother of three children seem to have it all. Her family lives in a fancy well-furnished home and they seems to well of financially, and her husband loved her very much. However the reader soon find out that he is an egotistical controlling man that sees Nora as an absent minds child.

Argumentative Essay On A Doll's House

Most critics around the world believe the play led to increase awareness on the need for women’s rights in all continents, on the other hand some critics opine that the play depicted women as inferior creatures and dolls who have no personality of their own. Nora Helmer the main character strives to achieve the perfect concepts of life set by the society and her husband. Nora is trapped in her home where her Torvald has built a wonderful life for his ‘doll wife’. Nora’s transformation comes when she discovers the role in doll house imposed on her by the society and her husband and she is desperate to free herself in order to discover her identity.

What Is A Literary Argument For A Doll's House

This brings in to question whether or not it is acceptable for a woman to simply walk away from a marriage, involving three children, and not attempt to work things out. Nora realizes she and the life she has been living has been a complete construct of the way society expects her to be. Nora is Torvald’s doll and her life has not amounted to anything more than making sure he and the world around her is happy. The result of the inequalities she is faced with results in Nora being completely unhappy. Torvald fails to recognize everything that Nora does to ensure his happiness.

Analysis Of A Doll's House By Henrik Ibsen

Nora takes pride in thinking of herself as the perfect housewife and mother. She, just as every other wife, plays often with her children and attends formal parties on her husband’s arm. She is told

Social Expectations In A Doll's House

Her existential choice seems to be forced upon her by society, but in adopting her husband‘s and society’s language, so often used to contain in control women, she now speaks of her duties towards herself, even sacred ones. In a radical refusal to stick to inherited notions of women’s role in family and society, Nora rejects the other identities available to her, both as a doll and as self-sacrificing wife and mother, and of her husband’s pet names for

Struggle For Self-Identity And Respect In The 1800's

Nora in essence was a young, strong and maturing women that who was going to get in conflict with social norms for her

A Doll's House Compare And Contrast Essay

Kristine explains that she has “No one to work for, and yet obliged to be always on the lookout for chances.” ( Act I, pg. 762) While this is negative, Kristine wouldn’t have these worries if she were dependent on someone else. Nora wishes that she be free of her husband and children, as she perceives them to restrict her from being able to grow as a person.

Injustice In A Doll's House

First, Nora is treated like a child by her husband Torvald. Torvald had nicknames for Nora like squirrel or skylark that was often accompanied by demenors like sweet or little. At the end of the play, Nora tells her husband that he treated her like a weak, fragile doll just like her father. Nora’s feelings about Torvald’s attitude is evident in the quote from Nora and Torvald’s conversation ”I was your little songbird just as before- your doll whom henceforth you would take particular care to protect from the world because she was so weak and fragile. ”(Pg.

A Doll's House Psychoanalytic Analysis

Play is understood by many to embody the epitome of the 19th century middle class.

She does everything that is required from her by society, but under protest. Her conscience is against the gender role she has been put into. Nora longs for meaning and fulfillment for her life, a common sentiment at the

How Does Nora Change Throughout The Play

To the opposite, Nora is revealed as a resourceful person who deeply

Theme Of Appearance In A Doll's House

Initially, Nora appears to be a dependent, naïve girl, yet as the play unfolds, we see her as strong, independent woman, willing to make sacrifices for those who she cares about as well as herself. Henrik Ibsen uses symbolism in order to portray Nora’s sovereignty from the strict social guidelines of morality and appearances in 19th century Norway. The Helmer household is portrayed as the ideal and typical family in 19th century Norway. The Helmer’s home represents the standard middle class home, which is described in the stage directions as a “comfortable and tastefully, but not expensively furnished home.”

A Doll's House Character Analysis

Henrik Ibsen’s A Doll’s House is a play set in 19th century Norway, when women’s rights were restricted and social appearance was more important than equality and true identity. In A Doll’s House, Nora represents 19th century women entrapped by society to fulfill wifely and motherly obligations, unable to articulate or express their own feelings and desires. Ibsen uses Nora’s characterization, developed through her interactions with others as well as her personal deliberations and independent actions, language and structure in order to portray Nora’s movement from dependence to independence, gaining sovereignty from the control of her selfish husband, deceitful marriage and the strict social guidelines of morality in 19th century Norway. Initially, Nora appears to be a dependent, naïve, and childlike character; yet, as the play unfolds, she appears to be a strong, independent woman who is willing to make sacrifices for those she cares about as well as herself.

Quiet By Ibsen Literary Analysis

She was keen to become a mother but failed; still she did not leave her husband in his old age as she understood the responsibilities of a wife. She decided to go away with the tramp only when Dan compelled her to do so because of his own doubts. She understood the value of family-system and the safety a woman feels in her house, but was unhappy because she could not have any kids with Dan. 42 Nora, also rejects Michael and

More about A Doll's House Argumentative Essay

Related topics.

• Henrik Ibsen
• A Doll's House
• James Joyce

A Summary and Analysis of Henrik Ibsen’s A Doll’s House

By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University)

A Doll’s House is one of the most important plays in all modern drama. Written by the Norwegian playwright Henrik Ibsen in 1879, the play is well-known for its shocking ending, which attracted both criticism and admiration from audiences when it premiered.

Before we offer an analysis of A Doll’s House , it might be worth recapping the ‘story’ of the play, which had its roots in real-life events involving a friend of Ibsen’s.

A Doll’s House : summary

The play opens on Christmas Eve. Nora Helmer has returned home from doing the Christmas shopping. Her husband, a bank manager named Torvald, asks her how much she has spent. Nora confides to her friend Mrs Linde that, shortly after she and Torvald married, he fell ill and she secretly borrowed some money to pay for his treatment. Mrs Linde is looking for work from Nora’s husband.

She is still paying that money back (by setting aside a little from her housekeeping money on a regular basis) to the man she borrowed it from, Krogstad – a man who, it just so happens, works for Nora’s husband … who is about to sack Krogstad for forging another person’s signature.

But Krogstad knows Nora’s secret, that she forged her father’s signature, and he tells her in no uncertain terms that, if she lets her husband sack him, Krogstad will make sure her husband knows her secret.

But Torvald refuses to grant Nora’s request when she beseeches him to go easy on Krogstad and give him another chance. It looks as though all is over for Nora and her husband will soon know what she did.

The next day – Christmas Day – Nora is waiting for the letter from Krogstad to arrive, and for her secret to be revealed. She entreats her husband to be lenient towards Krogstad, but again, Torvald refuses, sending the maid off with the letter for Krogstad which informs him that he has been dismissed from Torvald’s employment.

Doctor Rank, who is dying of an incurable disease, arrives as Nora is getting ready for a fancy-dress party. Nora asks him if he will help her, and he vows to do so, but before she can say any more, Krogstad appears with his letter for Torvald. Now he’s been sacked, he is clearly going to go through with his threat and tell his former employer the truth about what Helmer’s wife did.

When Mrs Linde – who was romantically involved with Krogstad – arrives, she tries to appeal to Krogstad’s better nature, but he refuses to withdraw the letter. Then Torvald arrives, and Nora dances for him to delay her husband from reading Krogstad’s letter.

The next act takes place the following day: Boxing Day. The Helmers are at their fancy-dress party. Meanwhile, we learn that Mrs Linde broke it off with Krogstad because he had no money, and she needed cash to pay for her mother’s medical treatment. Torvald has offered Mrs Linde Krogstad’s old job, but she says that she really wants him – money or no money – and the two of them are reconciled.

When Nora returns with Torvald from the party, Mrs Linde, who had prevented Krogstad from having a change of heart and retrieving his letter, tells Nora that she should tell her husband everything. Nora refuses, and Torvald reads the letter from Krogstad anyway.

Nora is distraught, and sure enough, Torvald blames her – until another letter from Krogstad arrives, cancelling Nora’s debt to him, whereupon Torvald forgives her completely.

But Nora has realised something about her marriage to Torvald, and, changing out of her fancy-dress outfit, she announces that she is leaving him. She takes his ring and gives him hers, before going to the door and leaving her husband – slamming the door behind her.

A Doll’s House : analysis

A Doll’s House is one of the most important plays in all of modern theatre. It arguably represents the beginning of modern theatre itself. First performed in 1879, it was a watershed moment in naturalist drama, especially thanks to its dramatic final scene. In what has become probably the most famous statement made about the play, James Huneker observed: ‘That slammed door reverberated across the roof of the world.’

Why? It’s not hard to see why, in fact. And the answer lies in the conventional domestic scenarios that were often the subject of European plays of the period when Ibsen was writing. Indeed, these scenarios are well-known to anyone who’s read Ibsen’s play, because A Doll’s House is itself a classic example of this kind of conventional play.

Yes: the shocking power of Ibsen’s play lies not in the main part of the play itself but in its very final scene, which undoes and subverts everything that has gone before.

This conventional play, the plot of which A Doll’s House follows with consummate skill on Ibsen’s part, is a French tradition known as the ‘ well-made play ’.

Well-made plays have a tight plot, and usually begin with a secret kept from one or more characters in the play (regarding A Doll’s House : check), a back-story which is gradually revealed during the course of the play (check), and a dramatic resolution, which might either involve reconciliation when the secret is revealed, or, in the case of tragedies, the death of one or more of the characters.

Ibsen flirts with both kinds of endings, the comic and the tragic, at the end of A Doll’s House : when Nora knows her secret’s out, she contemplates taking her own life. But when Torvald forgives her following the arrival of Krogstad’s second letter, it looks as though a tragic ending has been averted and we have a comic one in its place.

Just as the plot of the play largely follows these conventions, so Ibsen is careful to portray both Torvald Helmer and his wife Nora as a conventional middle-class married couple. Nora’s behaviour at the end of the play signals an awakening within her, but this is all the more momentous, and surprising, because she is hardly what we would now call a radical feminist.

Similarly, her husband is not nasty to her: he doesn’t mistreat her, or beat her, or put her down, even if he patronises her as his ‘doll’ or ‘bird’ and encourages her to behave like a silly little creature for him. But Nora encourages him to carry on doing so.

They are both caught up in bourgeois ideology: financial security is paramount (as symbolised by Torvald’s job at the bank); the wife is there to give birth to her husband’s children and to dote on him a little, dancing for him and indulging in his occasional whims.

A Doll’s House takes such a powerful torch to all this because it lights a small match underneath it, not because it douses everything in petrol and sets off a firebomb.

And it’s worth noting that, whilst Ibsen was a champion of women’s rights and saw them as their husbands’ intellectual equal, A Doll’s House does not tell us whether we should support or condemn Nora’s decision to walk out on her husband. She has, after all, left her three blameless children without a mother, at least until she returns – if she ever does return. Is she selfish?

Of course, that is something that the play doesn’t answer for us. Ibsen himself later said that he was not ‘tendentious’ in anything he wrote: like a good dramatist, he explores themes which perhaps audiences and readers hadn’t been encouraged to explore before, but he refuses to bang what we would now call the ‘feminist’ drum and turn his play into a piece of political protest.

2 thoughts on “A Summary and Analysis of Henrik Ibsen’s A Doll’s House”

This powerful play foretold the 1960’s monumental epic of Betty Friedan’s The Feminine Mystique, A similar awakening for middle class women, of their unnamed discontent within a marriage. Both paved the the way to the Feminist Movement of the 1970’s where with increased consciousness of economic inequities, women rebelled, just as Nora had done. Homage is owing to both Ibsen in his era and Friedan in hers. Today there are increasing numbers of women serving as Presidents of their nations and in the USA a female Vice-President recently elected to that prestigious office.

I remember reading the play while being a college student. It seemed so sad but at the same time so close to real life. Maybe our lives are quite sad after all.

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