Gender Roles In A Doll's House Analysis

The first thing that the reader will notice regarding gender is the title of the play “A Doll’s House”. This reveals to the reader, Nora’s and possible Torvald’s status within the play. Nora is unable to be herself as she is not seen as an equal in her marriage. Instead, she is something to be admired and flaunted. This need for her to be something that Torvald can show off. Both Nora and Torvald are living lives based on illusion. Torvald has made Nora his perfect little doll so that he can look good. She thinks that he is a person with incredible strength, she becomes disillusioned with him at the end of the play when he exposes himself as just a man. This paper will look at the way that society’s expectations of gender roles are perceived

The reason that Nora had to do this was because “a wife cannot borrow without her husband’s consent” (Ibsen and Archer). During the time that the play was written women were seen as not being capable of having or obtaining money. Therefore, it was their husband’s job to provide for them. Women were also not able to take out loans without a man’s signature. In order to obtain a loan Nora forged her father’s signature. Nora also does not want Torvald to know about what she has done for him because he would seem weak for not being able to keep his wife in line, which she reveals when she says “how painful and humiliating it would be for Torvald, with his manly independence, to know that he owned me anything!” (Ibsen and Archer). The reason for this is that men are expected to be overtly masculine. This means that they not only act as the provider for the family, they are also the strict disciplinarian, and the person who makes all of the decisions within the household. So if it was discovered that he wife was the one who had actually procured the money for their move, it would emasculate him and ruin his reputation in the

Rank spoke to Nora about syphilis and how his father passed the disease down to him. Dr. Rank is currently dying from the disease. He told her how his spine is suffering from the actions of his father. However, contrary to the beliefs of some people, the syphilis that is killing Dr. Rank is not a gender issue. This is because Dr. Rank did not inherit the disease because he was male. He was afflicted with it, because his father did not take proper care of himself. In regards to Dr. Rank’s father the need to be overtly masculine and to prove one’s prowess with women may have contributed to him being infected with the disease. Nevertheless, his father’s ignorance and lack of care about his health or the well-being of those he was having sex is what caused Dr. Rank to be afflicted by the disease. Dr. Rank is surprised that Nora knows about the truffles and oysters because they are aphrodisiacs. Women are not supposed to know anything about sex. In fact, it was believed at this time that decent women did not enjoy sex. Any woman who did was labelled as having loose morals. Sex was to provide the man with pleasure and to