How Relevant Is a Dolls House Today - Essay Example

The creativity of Ibsen connects centuries in the literal sense of the word. It originated at the end of the pre-revolutionary 18th century, in Schiller’s fight against tyranny and Rousseau’s appeal to nature and ordinary people. And the drama of mature, late Ibsen, with all its deep connection to contemporary life, outlined the essential features of 20th-century art - its experimentalism, multi-layered plots and social agenda.

Many dramas of Ibsen were given a hostile reception and criticized for many decades later, not only in Norway but all over Europe. Ibsen’s works were too provocative for that era. In Ghosts, he dared to discuss openly the problems of a bad disease, heredity, adultery, incest, and free-thinking; evened fallen women to fallen men. In A Doll’s House, he encroached on the sacred - questioned the institution of marriage and sexual equality. He opposed the social order, unwritten laws of the sanctimonious society, which is decorous only seemingly. Ibsen was accused of immorality, of encouraging women to leave families. However, his dramas show how shallow is the morality and how false the accusations are. The basic conflict of his works is truly immortal - a clash of personality, striving for freedom and society that imposes morals and laws. Therefore, his characters face the choice and have to decide what a true moral law is.

He meditated deeply over the institution of marriage in many novels, trying to find the answer why in the society of that time marriage based on love and understanding, but not legitimized by church or state, was not accepted by society and was, for some reason, more sinful than a legal marriage built on lies. Ibsen revealed a deep disparity between respectable appearance and inner depravity of the depicted reality, and protested against the system of public institutions, requiring maximal emancipation.  Ibsen wrote about deep moral decay in A Doll’s House, where the society of that time was depicted as a giant leper colony.

Promoting the role of consciousness in behavior of his characters, Ibsen forms action in his plays as an inevitable process, determined, as a natural result, by certain prerequisites. Therefore, he strongly rejects any kind of wrenches in the plot, any direct interventions of fortune into the final determination of his characters’ fate. Resolution in A Doll’s House should come as a necessary result of the collision of opposing forces, appearing from their genuine, deep character. Comprehension of the inner core of the family life of Helmer, very happy at first glance, but based on lies and selfishness, is the analysis that has no limitations in time and is quite universal. Herewith Ibsen reveals the true nature of Helmer himself, who appears to be an ego tripper and coward, and his wife, Nora, who at first appears as a light-hearted and completely satisfied with her fate creature but in fact turns out to be a strong person, able to sacrifice, who wishes to think independently.

A doll becomes a strong-willed woman. The playfully considers the circumstances of modern life that prohibit the development of individuality, prevent a person from disclosing his ego. At first, it seems, we see the house full of happiness, but this illusion dispels under the pressure of difficult life circumstances. The situation in which the heroine turned out to be is tragic, but the real tragedy is her life. And when she realized that, she decided to leave home. She decided to run away from the puppet world. Torvald still expects his wife to return, but Nora needed the miracle of miracles to make a real marriage out of a primitive cohabitation. Ibsen was among the first to show not only a tragedy in life but the tragedy of the whole life, showing man his true face.