A Doll’s House by Henrik Ibsen
Dana Schrenker O’Connor April 20, 2010 A Doll’s House
A Doll’s House by Henrik Ibsen, is a play about a woman who realizes that she is worth more than she has been given credit. Her whole life she was treated like a little doll; too fragile to do anything serious, too frail to be troubled with real business. She was the wife, mother and homemaker. The only things she was perceived as capable of were running the home, raising the children and looking pretty. This was a common stereotype for women in the 1880’s. Women were treated as possessions, not people. Women had a specific role they had to fill. They had to look just so, act just so, raise the children in a certain way, and keep up the house in a perfect way. Many women tried to fill this position of the “perfect housewife”. They wore corsets that put about 22 pounds of pressure on their internal organs, which caused cracked ribs, displacement of the liver and uterine prolapsed and collapsed lungs, all just to look the way men wanted them to. Women balanced their ever so busy family lives as well as their social lives. They stayed home to take care of the house and the children. Nora does not follow these social rules that was unheard of during this time period. Marriage is a forever commitment between two individuals to love one another but marriages don 't always have the fairytale happy ending. In Henrik Ibsen 's play A Doll House, Nora and Torvald Helmer learn some things about their marriage that they have not realized until now. Nora Helmer discovers Torvald, herself, her marriage, as well as her own identity as a woman. Nora Helmer, the wife of Torvald Helmer, throughout the whole play has been keeping a secret from her husband. A few years back when Torvald became ill the doctor recommended that the whole family move south in order for Torvald to fully recover. Torvald would not pay the money for the family to move so instead, Nora borrowed the money from the bank,
A Doll’s House by Henrik Ibsen, is a play about a woman who realizes that she is worth more than she has been given credit. Her whole life she was treated like a little doll; too fragile to do anything serious, too frail to be troubled with real business. She was the wife, mother and homemaker. The only things she was perceived as capable of were running the home, raising the children and looking pretty. This was a common stereotype for women in the 1880’s. Women were treated as possessions, not people. Women had a specific role they had to fill. They had to look just so, act just so, raise the children in a certain way, and keep up the house in a perfect way. Many women tried to fill this position of the “perfect housewife”. They wore corsets that put about 22 pounds of pressure on their internal organs, which caused cracked ribs, displacement of the liver and uterine prolapsed and collapsed lungs, all just to look the way men wanted them to. Women balanced their ever so busy family lives as well as their social lives. They stayed home to take care of the house and the children. Nora does not follow these social rules that was unheard of during this time period. Marriage is a forever commitment between two individuals to love one another but marriages don 't always have the fairytale happy ending. In Henrik Ibsen 's play A Doll House, Nora and Torvald Helmer learn some things about their marriage that they have not realized until now. Nora Helmer discovers Torvald, herself, her marriage, as well as her own identity as a woman. Nora Helmer, the wife of Torvald Helmer, throughout the whole play has been keeping a secret from her husband. A few years back when Torvald became ill the doctor recommended that the whole family move south in order for Torvald to fully recover. Torvald would not pay the money for the family to move so instead, Nora borrowed the money from the bank,