Nora's Rebellion Against society
Uploaded by amany kamal on May 26, 2006
[size=18:97082c6a39][i:97082c6a39][color=green:97082c6a39]Throughout history, almost all women have been treated unjustly in terms of their own rights. Even the layman can tell that women have been portrayed as 'week ', 'helpless', and 'un thoughtful'' by reading literature or even observing women's life in previous eras. However, in 1879, Henrik Ibsen took the first step in attempting to change that negative icon about women and alter it into positive one in readers' minds. The role Nora plays in his masterpiece A Doll's House is a perfect example about this revolution against the society that imposes on women substandard roles, ignoring her own character and identity.
The following paper will attempt to shed light on this issue: Nora's rebellion against her society with attempting to answer a number of questions such as: What are the various stereotypical images about women that exist in A Doll's House? Why did Nora rebel against her society in the first place? Was her society really unfair towards her?
Society norms and standards of Norway at the period of the nineteenth century had its own impact on men's and women's life, particularly on married couple’s lives. Such norms give men the whole right to behave as being the superior and women as being the inferior. In A Doll's House, this was pretty clear through the character of Trovald Helmer, Nora's husband, who used to deal with her as if she is one of his belongings. David Thomas goes so far as to say “Trovald unthinkingly lives out his role as the authoritarian husband, as men were far more likely to be dominated by the social prejudices of their day''
Thus, it is clear that such society set up certain roles for men and women. Ibsen highlights this claim by giving Trovald the dominant role over Nora which is sometimes almost comic in its intensity. For instance, in act I, she eats the Macaroons secretly, simply because Trovald, her husband, forbids her to eat such candy, claiming that it hurts her teeth.
What are the various stereotypical images A Doll's House reflect about women?
In the nineteenth century, a woman was expected to be a conventional subservient house wife, the play portrays Nora as this right from the very beginning until her awakening. For instance, in the first scene, we see her coming back from shopping and she was eating some candy. However, she was eating it secretly, she was afraid that her husband...