Realism in Uncle Vanya and A Doll's House
A play serves as the author's tool for critiquing society. One rarely encounters the ability to transcend accepted social beliefs. These plays reflect controversial issues that the audience can relate to because they interact in the same situations every day. As late nineteenth century playwrights point out the flaws of mankind they also provide an answer to the controversy. Unknowingly the hero or heroine solves the problem at the end of the play and indirectly sends a message to the audience on how to solve their own problem.
Henrik Ibsen and Anton Chekov both provide unique analysis on issues their culture never thought as wrong. In the play A Doll's House Ibsen tackles women's rights as a matter of importance being neglected. In his play he acknowledges the fact that in nineteenth century European life the role of the women was to stay home, raise the children, and attend to her husband. Chekov illustrates the role of a dysfunctional family and how its members are effected. Both of the aforementioned problems are solved through the playwrights' recommendations and the actions of the characters. In the plays A Doll's House and Uncle Vanya the authors use realism to present a problem and solution to controversial societal issues.
While both plays mainly concentrate on the negative aspects of culture, there are positive facets explored by the playwrights. In A Doll's House Henrik Ibsen focuses on the lack of power and authority given to women, but through Nora we also see the strength and willpower masked by her husband Torvald. To save her husband's life Nora secretly forges her father's signature and receives a loan to finance a trip to the sea. Nora's ...
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.... Chekhov short plays London:Oxford UP,1969
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Ibsen, Henrik. A Doll House (1879). Trans. Rolf Fjelde. Rpt. in Michael Meyer, ed. The Bedford Introduction to Literature. 5th edition. Boston & New York: Bedford/St. Martin's Press, 1999. 1564-1612.
Jackson, Robert Louis. Chekhov : a collection of critical essays. Englewood Cliffs, N. J. : Prentice, 1976
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Templeton, Joan. "The Doll House Backlash: Criticism, Feminism, and Ibsen." PMLA (January 1989): 28-40.
To sum up, I do not believe that past events and attitudes have a very
your life too, and in the end it will only be the mourning that you
Ibsen, Henrik. A Doll's House. Ed. Stanley Appelbaum. New York : Dover Publications, INC. , 1879.
Henrik Ibsen paints a sad picture of the sacrificial role of women throughout all social economical classes in his play “A Doll House”. The story is set in the late 19th century and all minor female characters had to overcome adversity to the expense of love, family and self-realization, in order to lead a comfortable life. While the main female protagonist Nora struggles with her increasingly troubled marriage, she soon realizes, she needs to change her life to be happy as the play climaxes. Her journey to self-discovery is achieved by the threat of her past crime and her oppressing husband, Torvald and the society he represents. The minor female characters exemplifying Nora’s ultimate sacrifice.
...ant these inanities of life are to Chekhov's play is the action of the play. Nothing that happens on stage changes the situation of the characters in it one bit. None of the really important events occur on stage. The selling of the orchard, the chopping down of the orchard; all of it happens offstage.
Cheever, John, ”The Swimmer”, Literature: An Introduction to Fiction, Poetry, and Drama. Ed. X. J. Kennedy and Dana Gioia. 12th ed. San Francisco: Longman, 2013.250-257
Henrik Ibsen’s A Doll’s House is a three-act play significant for its attitude toward marriage norms. In the drama, Ibsen explores idealism between the wife Nora and her husband Helmer. Nora’s and Helmer’s idealism forces the pair to see themselves and each other starring in various idealist scenarios of female sacrifice and heroic male rescue. As a play, the scenes are act out on stage. The staging of a house reveals the dramaturgical aspects and dynamics of the play. The presence of the house is significant to the depiction of women on stage. The action of the play traces Nora’s relationship to the house. Ibsen’s play focuses on the aspect of the expected idealism of the wife and husband, and how the domestic abode can hinder freedom.
The Art of the Chekhovian Language escapes from the personal intentions. Reality is neither embellished nor blackened, altered or "signified" through a restrictive conceptual vision.
One of the first major incidents in young Chekhov’s life was in 1875, when his father’s business failed and his father was threatened to be jailed because of his unsettled debt. So his father and his two older brothers went to Moscow to find work while he stayed with his younger siblings and his mother at their home. It so happens that a local family friend, a beaurocrat, turned out to not be such a friend, and took their house from the Chekhovs. To Anton Chekhov, that was a theme that c...
Zubarev, Vera. A System Approach to Literature: Mythopoetics of Chekhov¡¦s Four Major Plays. Westport: Greenwood Press, 1997.
The literary work, A Doll’s House, was written by Henrik Ibsen and has been a historical work of literature since the late 1800’s. There are many themes through out the story that impose the different ideals of the 1870’s. Many of the characters reflect the time period through the positions they hold, the activities they do, as well as how they behave and act. Torvald Helmer and his wife Nora traditionally represent the upper-middle class in the way they present themselves, what types of activities they engage in, as well as what they do as an everyday task.
Chekhov, Anton. The Cherry Orchard. Four Plays. Trans. David Magarshack. New York: Hill & Wang, 1969.
Ibsen writes his play A Doll House to explain the life of a housewife and her struggles with her own actions. Ibsen examines the emptiness in the lives of Nora and Torvald as they lived a dream in a Doll House. Both awaken and realize this emptiness and so now Torvald struggles to make amends as he hopes to get Nora back possibly and then to restore a new happiness in their lives. Ibsen examines this conflict as a rock that breaks the image of this perfect life and reveals all the imperfections in the lives of those around.
“A Doll’s House” is a play written by a Norwegian playwright, Henrik Ibsen. The play was published in 1879, and is a literary piece that triggered almost vigorous reactions from the audience. Moreover, the play was considered Ibsen’s masterpiece and he was determined to provoke a reaction from the public. His intention was to bring awareness to the problem of gender roles in the 19th century society: the role of women who were used as decorations of the household. The title this play, “A Doll’s House”, foreshadows the play’s protagonist, Nora Helmer, and her role in the household. The title of the play suggests that Nora is a doll in her own home.
Ibsen, Henrik. "A Doll House." Ibsen : Four Major Plays - Volume 1. Trans. Rolf Fjelde. New York: Signet Classics, 1992. 43-114. Print.