A dolls house and School for wives comparison

Men:
• Both have the money and control over how it is spent
• Are worried about their status in the community- their reputation is very important to them
• Treat women like dolls-are playthings, decorative, add to the house with their beauty and charm.
• Both patronize the women –use diminutives
• Make all the decisions financial and otherwise for the family.
• Males are dominant
• Both regard their wives as intellectually inferior, don’t want a wife who is independent and free thinking
• Needs of the male come first.
• Men pursue their own destiny.
Women:
• Men and women have same needs and wants, ambitions and desires but all she must wish to do and have must come through a single channel: the wedding ring: fame, power, wealth, home and happiness, reputation, ease and pleasure, food and shelter comes through marriage.
• Both are dependent on men for their material needs and social position
• Women are confined to the domestic / child-rearing role
• Both women are treated like children by their husbands
• Represented as childlike, vulnerable, in need of protection.
• Neither woman is respected for her intellect. Men have no interest or desire for their wives to be independent thinkers
• Women in general have to sacrifice their own needs in both plays.
• Both women are represented as illogical, emotional spendthrifts who will fritter away the man’s money.
• Both women are clearly intelligent
• Both women have to behave deviously in order to overcome their situations of relative powerlessness.

A more nuanced reading of ADH might look at the relationship between the women, how Christine is an alternative version of woman who is active in the world. However, she can only be that way through hard struggle and having had a husband, and being eager to have one again. She is a model of the possibilities to Nora, and a support (when women are often complicit in the patriarchy and force other women to adhere to it). The other representation of