A Doll's House Patriarchy Essay

Nora is the protagonist in “A Doll’s House”, and the audience has a constant view of how the patriarchy impacts her throughout the play, as she is on almost always during the play. The impact the patriarchy has on Nora progresses more and more until it is clear that Nora is deeply unsatisfied with life and that she cannot bare her married life anymore. She even considers suicide, shown by the lines “Never, never. Oh, the freezing black water! The depths—down— Oh, I wish it were over” . This alone shows the watcher of the play the desperation that Nora feels, and sheds light onto the context of the play, set in the 19th century. Women were forbidden to borrow money without a signature of a husband or father, and a forged signature by a women
would bring great shame upon the family, as well as the potential ruin of a reputation. The phrase reveals that for Nora, there would no greater shame than to have her husband know she borrowed money from a bank, even though it was to save his life. This to modern audiences seems ridiculous, and many would think the natural reaction from Torvald would be gratitude, thus showing the historical differences. In contrast to Nora, who seems to be a perfect model of a wife and mother, Christine is introduced.
Christine is an old friend of Nora, widowed and penniless. She is an example of what Nora could be like without marriage and its security. They are two obvious example, perhaps by deliberate by Ibsen, of how their lives have been so influenced by the patriarchy and the male control figures they have had. The desperate reaction from Nora of her ‘shameful’ situation draws similarities to the impact of the patriarchy on the major female characters in ‘Hamlet’. For example, Ophelia is shown to be an obedient and loyal daughter, yet she is only seen as valuable in terms of her family’s honour and is used as a ‘pawn’ in Hamlets game of madness. When her father is killed, Ophelia is driven mad. Is this because the control figures in her life have gone and she is afraid of the unknown? In the article by Carol Thomas Neely, “’Documents in Madness’: Reading Madness and Gender in Shakespeare’s Tragedies and Early Modern Culture”, Ophelia’s madness is quoted as it being “her liberation from silence, obedience, and constraint or her absolute victimization by patriarchal oppression”. This is an interesting view on how the sudden loss of both her guardian, Polonius, has affected
her. Although Ophelia is freed from her life of obedience and constraint, she is distraught and ultimately driven mad. On the other hand, Nora’s ‘liberation’ has quite the opposite effect on her; she is relieved and ready to start afresh with her life. Her emancipation from her family role leaves her, as well as the audience satisfied. Ophelia’s fate, however, leaves the audience pitying her deeply, as it becomes clearer that she had only lived her life by her brother and fathers wishes. It shows the audience just how invisibly damaged Ophelia was by the control, and how the sudden loss of the patriarchy in her life was even more damaging than being oppressed by it.