The Role Of Women In A Doll's House

The old and new attitudes toward sexuality and the proper behavior of women is very apparent in the play called A Doll House. The play shows how each woman has sacrificed who they were for the men and the other people in their lives. The play also shows how men see women in general. Several characters give up who they thought they were meant to be, because of the social aspect in their lives. Society has always placed a burden on women as who they are supposed to be as wives, mothers, and as adult women. Women were seen as the inferior sex in the past and in the present. Things have changed over the years as women earn more and more freedom and rights that men have had for a very long time. The sacrifices that are made in this play speak to how things work for women in society. Women give up their right to happiness because they feel obligated to change who they are to help someone else.
The men in this play see women as possessions to own. Nora points out that women aren’t supposed to do things to save the lives of the men that they care for. Nora says, “A daughter hasn’t the right to protect her dying father from anxiety and care? A wife hasn’t a right to save her husband’s life?”

There may have been less conflict between husbands and wives because women weren’t supposed to want anything different. I think another strength of the past attitude was the fact that women may have felt at peace with their roles because they didn’t know anything else. The strength of the new attitude versus the old attitude is the fact that women aren’t always forced into roles that they don’t want. Women don’t feel as though they have to marry for their family. Women also have more rights now than they did back then. Women can take out loans and don’t feel as though they have to hide their success. Women also don’t have to feel as though they have to pretend to be