The Doll's House
A contributing factor to the story "The Doll's House" by Katherine
Mansfield is the characterization of Kezia as she travels in her
innocence through the symbolic world of experience. Kezia is
essential to the plot because she represents a taboo, offering
opposition to common ways of thinking. Through the portrayal of
Kezia, as she interacts as the symbolic eccentric, Mansfield
emphasizes the powers and blind justification of conformity within
a society.
The story commences with the arrival of the doll's house sent to
the Burnell children. The Burnells take a great liking to this
new acquisition. As the two older children admire the red carpet,
red plush chairs, and gold frames of this highly ornamented house,
Kezia, the youngest of the girls, takes an interest in the rather
simple lamp. In fact, "what she liked more than anything, what she
liked frightfully, was the lamp." This infatuation symbolizes her
impeccability in comparison to the others as she is drawn to the
unadorned lamp. Kezia proceeds to find fault with the state and
proportions of the doll's house and perfection with the lamp in
its simplicity. As others take interests in the gaudy nature of
the house, Kezia rebels: "But the lamp was perfect. It seemed to
smile at Kezia, to say `I live here.' The lamp was so real."
Conflict intensifies as Kezia remains the odd ball. The
appreciation of the lamp is a metaphor for the actions to come.
Kezia likes the lamp because she does not know any better. Thus,
she decides to befriend the Kelveys because she doesn't see
anything wrong in doing so. The Kelveys are a family that are
shunned because of their economic status. Throughout the town,
"Many of the children, including the Burnnels, were not allowed
even to speak to them." Without a second thought, school children
and their families followed in the consuming tradition of looking
down upon these unprivileged people. Kezia offers offset to this
common path of thinking and questions such a blind following. She
asks her mother, "Can't I ask the Kelveys just once?" To which,
the response is, "Run away, Kezia; you know quite well why not."
Mansfield successfully expresses the enveloping and controlling
nature of conformity through the juxtaposition of Kezia's
innocence to the prejudiced views of those who live in the world
of experience. While others remain to push Kezia's nonconformist
When the narrator first compares her Barbies, she thinks that she needs perfect and new Barbies to fit in with everybody else. The narrator does understand that her family does not have money, but she simply works around it. Although, she wants more Barbies it was unlikely for them to get them. The narrator says, “Because we don’t have money for a stupid-looking boy doll when we’d both rather ask for a new Barbie outfit next christmas. (14-15)” The narrator has to make do with what she has. She can not have a boy Barbie because it is not in her parents budget. This affects her and it makes her lose confidence in herself because she does not have what everybody else has. After the narrator receives her partially messed up Barbies, she says, “And if the prettiest doll, Barbie’s MOD’ern cousin Francie with real eyelashes, eyelash brush included, has a left that that’s melted a little-so? If you dress her in her new ‘Prom Pinks’ outfit, satin splendor with matching coat, gold belt, clutch, and hair bow included, so long as you don’t lift her dress, right?-who’s to know. (16)” Even though the Barbie has a melted left foot, the narrator moves past this. She will just cover it up with a dress. The narrator wanted new and perfect Barbie’s in the beginning, but she realized that these Barbie’s are not everything and she can make them her own. She is not defined by her Barbies. Sandra Cisneros used symbolism and characterization to describe how the narrator had a hard time coming into her own identity and finding
The Kelvey family’s low income and less fortunate lives made them experience different treatments from many people. For example, “Even the teacher had a special voice for them, and a special smile for the other children when Lil Kelvey came up to her desk with a bunch of dreadfully common-looking flowers.” In their lives, people treated the Kelveys differently from others just because of their financial situation. This helps further make it evident that many different things factor into the experience of being an outsider. For the Kelveys, it was social status and how they were seen because of their lifestyle. As seen from the 3 different texts, the universal feeling of being an outsider stands as something to be learned from. Although everyone may be an outsider in the regards of someone else, it is not hard to treat a fellow human as if they were not an outsider. Anyone can be an outsider, but everyone can be an insider if enough effort is
Artificial Intelligence is very similar to Mary Shelly’s Frankenstein in that the underlying themes, questions asked, and moral issues raised are the same.
Women in the 19th century were not treated much better than property. A woman had absolutely no rights. She was not her own person, she was the person that everybody else expected her to be. Women did not have any power over the man in a public or private setting They were treated as property and were supposed to do as the man said. Also, women were not allowed to have jobs, and expected to keep to the house and raise the children. While today it is harder to comprehend the treatment of women in the 19th century Henrik Ibsen does an amazing job portraying this in his drama, A Doll House, with one of the main characters Nora.
Feminism is the advocacy of women’s right and is on the grounds of political, social, and economic equality to men. Centuries ago, women did not share the same equality as men. Men and women’s gender roles were practiced with greater acceptance than by today’s standards. More-over, gender roles among women decades ago, were wrapped within the limits of their political, economic, and social rights and freedoms. The man’s role was to work and to make important final decisions for the family. Were-as, the wives were to stay home with the kids and obey her husband. Feminism changed all those aspects in the world for men and women to be treated to have the same rights. “A Doll’s House” is a profound play to make direct connection on why feminism started. The main character in the play Nora is wife and a mother that struggling to gain equality in her life. In
In the 1800’s, women were considered a prize to be won, an object to show off to society. They were raised to be respectable women whose purpose was to marry into a higher social class in order to provide for their family. These women were stuck in a social system which seemed impossible to escape. Henrik Ibsen, a Norwegian playwright, saw these barriers and wrote one of the most controversial plays of his time, “A Dolls House”. In his play, Ibsen argues the importance of opposite sex equality in marriage by using his character, Nora Helmer, to bring to light how degrading the roles of women were in the 1800’s.
A human being is a man, woman, or child of the species Homo sapiens, distinguished from other animals by superior mental development, power of articulate speech, and upright stance. Although this is the general definition, there are multitudes of personalized meanings to the phrase “human being”. In Henrik Ibsen’s A Doll’s House, there are two characters who have extremely differing definitions to what a human being is, and they are very prevalent throughout the book’s entirety. These two characters are Torvald and Nora, a married couple who live in Norway in 1879 and live out societal norms of the time, with the man of the house providing for his family and his wife providing a high image. Nora decides to borrow money from her husband’s co-worker, Krogstad, to purchase a vacation to extend her husband’s lifespan without informing him, and this initiates many predicaments because at the time, woman did nothing substantial without the approval of her husband. Their actions in the play demonstrate their personal definitions to “human being”, even if they cause much distress.
No matter where you look, whether it’s the media, kids toys, fashion, or personal care products, gender roles are somehow affecting the world we live in; both directly and indirectly. For almost all of human history women have had their obedient role to play and men have the dominant one. Products for females are dressed in pinks and flowers while those for males are constructed of blue, green, and various metallic hues. Of course, gender roles always come back to the people themselves; they affect our attitude, relationships, and most situations and environments in our everyday lives. Some believe that gender roles, the stereotypical way a female or male behaves, are what are best for both society and all individuals. But as most feminists
Happiness through Self-Realization In Ibsen’s play A Doll’s House, we encounter the young and beautiful Nora on Christmas Eve. Nora Helmer is a playful and affectionate young woman full of life and zeal. As the play progresses, we learn that Nora is not just a “silly girl” (Ibsen) as Torvald refers to her. She learns of the business world related to debt that she acquired by taking out a loan in order to save her beloved Torvald's life.
SparkNotes Editors. “SparkNote on A Doll’s House”. SparkNotes LLC. 2002. SparkNotes.com. 20 Mar 2011. http://Sparknotes.com/lit/dollhouse/themes.html.
A Doll House showed how women were treated unfairly and unequally. Nora, Anne Marie, and Ms. Linde were examples of women in the world during that time period. Nora was an example of what became the start of the women’s liberation period. Henrik Ibsen showed a lot of modern realism by bringing out the struggles of women using these three characters. Life in the Victorian Era was very difficult for women.
A Doll’s House illustrates two types of women. Christine is without a husband and independent at the start of the play whereas Nora is married to Torvald and dependent on him and his position at the bank. Both begin at different ends of the spectrum. In the course of the play their paths cross and by the end of the play each woman is where the other started. It appears that a woman has two choices in society; to be married and dependent on a man or unmarried and struggle in the world because she does not have a man.
Those of you who have just read A Doll's House for the first time will, I suspect, have little trouble forming an initial sense of what it is about, and, if past experience is any guide, many of you will quickly reach a consensus that the major thrust of this play has something to do with gender relations in modern society and offers us, in the actions of the heroine, a vision of the need for a new-found freedom for women (or a woman) amid a suffocating society governed wholly by unsympathetic and insensitive men.
The Doll’s House is a modern short story because it uses subtle characterization rather than a face paced plot. In the story she described two sets of sisters and in detail how they act towards each other. For instance “The Kelvey’s never failed to understand each other.” Mansfield describes another set of sisters in the short story as well, the three Burnell sisters. The eldest sister in the Burnell family was bossy and rude. Over the entire story you draw the conclusion from reading in between the lines that Mansfield brings more attention to the two sets of sister relationships rather than the plot.
“A Doll House” by Ibsen exposes one of the main trials facing Nora and women of today that a lot of men tend to underestimate women. They assume that