A Doll House by Henrik Ibsen - Essay Example

Analysis of the Doll House Introduction Henrik Ibsen has written a fabulous play “A Doll House” raising the problems of the woman, and revealing the role of women in a society of that time. The aim of this paper is to explore how individuals come to understand themselves and their place in the world by analyzing one character from Henrik Ibsen’s A Doll House. The analysis will be focused on Nora, the main hero of the play. The paper will attempt to explore the various pressures, influences, and/or stereotypes that shape or attempt to shape a character’s life, perspective, and actions, and also consider if and how the character responds to these factors. Brief overview of the character, Nora Helmer The main hero of the Ibsen’s play, Nora - the wife of Torvald Helmer is portrayed as a playful, naïve young women, who lives in her small secure world and who has never faced the “tough” reality of life. She lives with a man whom she sincerely loves, with whom she is bringing up three lovely children. At the beginning of the play, Noras husband greets her cheerfully but then reprimands her for spending too much money on Christmas gifts. The talk between them reveals that they could not afford good life for a long time and fortunately Torvald has recently acquired a promotion at the bank. The family hopes that this career promotion will help them to gain a more comfortable lifestyle. This news is perceived extremely positively by Nora, as now she believes that all burdens and problems will disappear and she and her family will enjoy life at full extent. At first glance she is very happy with this life, as some other women of her age (like her friend of childhood, Mrs. Linde) have more difficult and uneasy life. The family, friends, husband and the whole society perceives Nora as a continuation of her husband, the person who doesn’t have other responsibilities and liabilities, except keeping herself in good shape and in good humor. Nora plays the role of good wife of that period extremely well. The fact that she was not allowed to eat sweets, is one of the greatest illustrations of the order existing in a man-dominated family. To understand better the expectations of a modern woman of that time it might be useful to refer to the work of Susan Power “The Ugly-Girl Papers; Or, Hints For The Toilet” and published in 1874. The content of the work is focused mainly on beauty and diet issues, thus focusing on the appearance and appearance-related aspects. Some of the topics are: Womans Business to be Beautiful; Lettuce as a Cosmetic; How to Brush the Hair; How to Acquire Sloping Shoulders; Lustrous Faces, etc. (Power, n.p.). To illustrate and better understand the lifestyle of a married woman living in the late 1890s’ it might be also useful to refer to the book written by Catherine Beecher in 1845 under the title ‘A treatise on domestic economy, for the use of young ladies at home and at school’. Many citations of this book can be given here in order to illustrate the situation of that times. For example, “In early life, they (young girls) go through a course of school training which results in great debility of constitution, while, at the same time, their physical and domestic education is almost wholly neglected. Thus they enter on their most arduous and sacred duties so inexperienced and uninformed, and with so little muscular and nervous strength, that probably there is not one chance in ten, that young women of the present day, will pass through the first years of married life without such prostration of health and spirits as makes life a burden to themselves” (Beecher, 5). This book perfectly illustrates the focus and role of women in the society. Having read the excerpts of the book titled as “Hunger the Natural as to Quantity of Food” or A Morbid Appetite, how caused, or “Effects of too much Food in the Stomach” (Beecher, 68), the relationship to Nora’s passion to sweets and restrictive, even monitoring behavior of her husband is more understandable. Nora is pampered and patronized; her doll-like behavior is exciting for her husband. Torvald as well as Nora’s father have treated her as a doll, whose main role was to admire and entertain. Actually, she plays this role absolutely naturally, and doesn’t seem to have any personal discomfort at the beginning of the play. However, some discomfort is revealed when Mrs. Linde visits Nora, they have a discussion, and Mrs. Linde argued that Nora has never know hard life and work, suggesting that life was very easy for this girl. The fact that Nora shared with Mrs. Linde her secret of saving her husband and taking a debt without his approval illustrates that Nora strives for recognition her as a personality, as a woman, who has work hard in this life and has made something worth for her family. Actually, Nora’s act of taking a debt without notice of her husband and her father characterizes her as quite risky and desperate women, which is contrasting with the images of “good wife” widely recognized in the society of the 19th century. The fact that this woman has played the role of a girl, of a doll and in parallel worked hard to repay the debt without complaining to anybody makes her even more sophisticated in the eyes of the readers. The full revelation of Nora’s character or personality comes up when she realizes who is who, seeing the reaction of Tovald on her fraud for the sake of him. Instead of support and claims to take the hit for Nora’s fraud, Tovald calls Nora a liar and claims that she doesn’t deserve a right to bring up their children. He refers to her father and her bad upbringing, followed with other insults. Torvald’s reaction to the letter and disclosure of Nora’s secret serves as trigger mechanism of Nora’s true personality. She explains to Torvald that he has never perceived her as an adult, as a full-right family member and supports this by arguing that they never had serious conversations before where they could discuss their problems. For eight years Nora believed that Torvald really loved her, and not just loved the state of his feelings of being with her. Obviously, if this was true, she would be happy to continue the role of naïve and silly girl. However, this image is replaced by a self-confident and wise woman who behaves with extreme dignity. She understands that her self-sacrifice to her husband is nothing, and he cannot be her husband any more. Even though Nora acts as an adult with developed values and beliefs, she still is unsure in her as mother. She believes that she might not give much to her children as she has to find out first who she is. For the whole life she lived as she was expected to, by her father, by her husband, by society. This woman openly and loudly protests against the social norms and religious preaches. Finally, Nora claims that she is not just a wife and a mother, she is a human being and it is her sacred duty to try and become a personality. Now she feels a necessity to dig deeper in her soul and investigate who she really is. Nora’s behavior could be interpreted as a quest for self-actualization based on the Maslow’s pyramid of human needs. Maslow sees that there is a hierarchy of the human needs, one of which is a need for self-actualization or self-realization. Maslow (130) also calls this stage as self-knowledge, self-perception, and even, self-love. A person becomes free o all the unconscious compulsion (Maslow, 130). This stage is on the top of the pyramid as first the person has to fulfill some basic needs such as safety needs, hunger needs, physical comfort needs, etc. Seems that Nora has had all of the basic needs, but she refuses from it and therefore, her self-actualization process might take more time than expected as first she needs to arrange some shelter and food. Once she will satisfy these needs, she will be able to fulfill her potential as a human being and achieve personal growth. Based on Karpel’s approach (1), Nora has made an attempt to undergoing the process of individuation, whereas she “becomes increasingly differentiated from a past or present relational context”. She is not able to build relationships based on differentiation and refuses to take a responsibility for her children, delegating this right to her husband (Karpel, 2). By giving back the ring to her husband, and leaving home Nora is making an attempt to eliminate the poles of “I” and “We”. There is no compromise at this stage, as Nora want to isolate herself from Torvald and her children (Karpel, 2). Nora breaks the dilemma of “I” and “We”, and sets her husband at a distance (Karpel, 2). It is obvious that as the play ends, Nora development as a human is at the immaturate stage, which is characterized by minimal individuation. Nora in this case is viewed as stronger partner as it is she who makes a decision of divorce and who actually releases herself from the dependency on her husband (Karpel, 2). Understanding her power, she cannot stay with a man who is not ready to sacrifice his reputation for the sake of her. While on the one hand she understands that 8 years of marriage were wasted years of her life, she clearly understands that no more time can be wasted. Nora is a perfect character in the play, which faces the bitter truth as it is and reacts on this truth by a desire to understand herself and to find her place in this world. She is eager to understand her potential and capabilities by isolating herself from her family, her house, everything she has. By doing so she demonstrates the power of character as she overcomes social barriers, stereotypes, and other various pressures. Whether she is capable to do so or whether she will decide to come back to her husband and children is unknown as her self-actualization need might be in her family. Nobody knows for sure. Work Cited Beecher, Catharine Esther. A Treatise On Domestic Economy. New York: Harper & Brothers, 1858. Print. Ibsen Henrik. A Dolls House. Studio City, Calif: Players Press, 2013. Print. Karpel, M. "Individuation: From Fusion to Dialogue." Family process 15 (1) (1976): 65-82. Maslow (1954). Self-Actualization and Beyond. 1965. Retrieved from http://eric.ed.gov/?id=ED012056 Power, Susan C. Dunning. The Ugly-Girl Papers; Or, Hints For The Toilet. New York: Harper & Bros, 1874. Available at: http://archive.org/stream/uglygirlpapersor00powerich/uglygirlpapersor00powerich_djvu.txt Read More