A Doll's House Gender Roles Essay

Gender roles exist in all cultures, serving to define who we are and what we should become throughout our lives. This characteristic of different roles for different genders restricts the basic human right to self-fulfillment. Henrik Ibsen’s A Doll’s House brings these issues into light, forcing the reader to question the restrictions and stereotypes that were forced upon men and women in their culture. While much progress has been made, these issues still plague our culture and have been very difficult to even approach, let alone implement solutions. A Doll’s House is very relevant to members of today’s culture. Ibsen wrote A Doll’s House in 1879, while living in Sorrento, Italy. For women living in the United States, this is a decade after the creation of the National Woman's Suffrage Association by Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Stanton. In most developed nations, the rights of women were just beginning to become a publicly recognized political and social issue. The play wouldn’t be performed in America until 1883.

(Krutch 9) Marriage was seen as the primary goal and life of women, and the idea of a woman deserting it to seek her own sense of fulfillment was appalling to many. Women were indoctrinated into a life of servitude to the home, and held there by responsibilities to their children, societal chastising, and religious obligations. To reject the desire to conform to the expectations of getting married and having children was seen as a failure and looked down upon. Many nations had not yet recognized a woman’s right to vote, including the United