Wait a second!
More handpicked essays just for you.
More handpicked essays just for you.
Don’t take our word for it - see why 10 million students trust us with their essay needs.
Recommended: A doll house analyse
In Henrik Ibesen's play A Doll House, Nora Helmer struggles with telling her husband, Torvald Helmer, the truth about a loan she receives for them to go to Italy when he was sick. Consequently, when Torvald learns of the news he instantly insults Nora and declares that she has "ruined [his] happiness" (Ibesen 93). However, when Torvald tries to dismiss his insults after receiving a note that her contract was revoked, she does not accept his apologizes and decides to leave Torvald and her children to "make sense of [her]self and everything around [her]" (Ibesen 100). Her selfish decision to leave makes her a bad wife and mother, but she there are a few more characteristics that makes her a bad wife. The characteristics that Nora shows in the story are her dishonest, her individualism, and the unfortunate failings of the father figures during in her life.
In the story, Nora is in a troubling situation because she borrows money from Krogstad, Torvald's employee at the bank, to pay for a trip to Italy so that Torvald could recover from an illness and is now being blackmailed by Krogstad because Torvald wants to fire him. Not only does borrow the loan, which something her husband is fully against, she lies to Torvald saying that she receives the money from her father. The borrowing of the money without her husband's approval, and her lie saying that it is from her father are two dishonest acts on Nora's part, acts that a wife should not do. In a review produced by Fabienne Oguer, he calls this situation a "Trust Game" (Oguer 85). Both characters, Torvald and Nora, hypothetically play a game in which one may has to trust the other. In the beginning of the story, Torvald is forced with the decision to either trust Nora and marry he...
... middle of paper ...
...terrible decision to leave Torvald, trapped within his doll house.
Works Cited
Drake, David B. "Ibsen's A Doll House." The Explicator 53.1 (1994): 32-34. Research Library, ProQuest. Web. 2 Dec. 2011.
Ibesen, Henrik. A Doll's House: A New Version by Frank McGuinness. New York: Faber and Faber,1997. Print.
Oguer, F. "Ibsen's "A Doll's House" As a Psychological Trust Game with Guilt and Reciprocity." Review of European Studies 2.1 (2010): 84-90. Research Library, ProQuest. Web. 2 Dec. 2011.
Rosefeldt, Paul . "Ibsen's A Doll's House." The Explicator 61.2 (2003): 84-85. Research Library, ProQuest. Web. 1 Dec. 2011.
Yuehua, G. "Gender Struggle Over Ideological Power In Ibsen's A Doll's House/LA LUTTE DES SEXES SUR LE POUVOIR IDEOLOGIQUE DANS MAISON DE POUPEE D'IBSEN." Canadian Social Science 5.1 (2009): 79-87. Research Library, ProQuest. Web. 1 Dec. 2011.
Ibsen, Henrik. A Doll's House. Literature and the Writing Process. Elizabeth Mahan, Susan X Day, and Robert Funk. 6th ed. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice, 2002. 916-966.
Ibsen, Henrik. A Doll's House. Literature and Ourselves. 2nd Ed. Ed. by Gloria Henderson, Bill Day, and Sandra Waller. New York: Longman, 1997
Ibsen, Henrik. The Project Gutenberg EBook of a Doll's House. [EBook #2542]. The Project Gutenberg, 13 Dec. 2008. Web. 14 Mar. 2011. .
Davies, H. Neville. 1982. "Not just a bang and a whimper: the inconclusiveness of Ibsen's A Doll's House." Critical Quarterly 24:33-34.
Rogers, Katharine M. (1985): ‘‘A Doll House in a Course on Women in Literature,’’ in Approaches to Teaching Ibsen’s A Doll House, Shafer, Yvonne (ed.). New York: Modern Language Association, p.82.
In the play " A Doll's House", written by Henrik Ibsen, Nora, the main character of the play, decides to abandon her husband, her home and her children in order to find herself. She finally realizes she has to leave when confronted with a problem in her relationship with her husband, who keeps treating her like a doll, reflecting the childish treatment she always received from her father before. She finds the strength to leave with her childhood friend Kristine, who has led a hard life, and has the wisdom to guide and support her. Nora leaves the role of the doll child and doll wife she played her whole life, and becomes an independent self-thinking adult, when she realizes that the world is different than she always thought it was, and that she herself is not who she thinks she is.
Ibsen, Henrik. A Doll House. The Bedford Introduction to Literature: Reading, Thinking, Writing. 5th ed. Ed. Michael Meyer. Boston: Bedford/St. Martin's, 1999. 1564-1612.
Templeton, Joan. "The Doll House Backlash: Criticism, Feminism, and Ibsen." PMLA 104.1 (1989): 28-40. JSTOR. Web. 30 Mar. 2014. .
Ibsen, Henrik. “A Doll’s House.” Literature for Composition. Ed. Sylvan Barnet, William Burto, and William E. Cain. 9th Ed. New York: Longman, 2010. 792-841. Print.
Ibsen, Henrik. A Doll House. Lives Through Literature: A Thematic Anthology. Ed. Helane Levine Keating et al. 2nd ed. New Jersey: Prentice Hall, 1995. 782-838.
Ibsen, Henrik. A Doll's House. Trans. William Archer. Boston: Walter H. Baker & Co., 1890. Gleeditions. Web. 12 April 2014
Henrik Ibsen’s, A Doll’s House, took a very different outlook on society in not showing
Nora is the beloved, adored wife of Torvald Helmer. He is well respected, and has just received a promotion to the bank manager. Torvald also obtains high moral standards but he is very controlling and materialistic. During the first scene the couple is discussing the issue of borrowing money. Torvald says to Nora "…you know what I think about that. No debts! Never borrow! Something of freedom’s lost-and something of beauty, too- from a home that’s founded on borrowings and debt. We’ve made a brave stand up to now, the two of us, and we’ll go right on like that the little way we have to."
Ibsen, Henrik. A Doll's House. In Four Major Plays. Trans. James McFarlane and Jens Arup. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1981.
Although Ibsen portrays A Doll House as a Realistic play due to the societal problems, which include women, illnesses, and laws; he attempts to address society and cause change within the Norwegian society without openly talking about these issues. The actions of characters, such as Nora, represent the fact that an individual can make progress in societal reform. Therefore, Ibsen’s identification and attempt to change society symbolizes a Realistic desire of finding solutions to problems. The ultimate goal of Realism is to better everyday life for the majority of people, while trying to deepen the understanding of society’s problems.