Role of Women in a Doll's House

1904 Words8 Pages
Ibsen, in the play A Doll’s House, makes several impressions about the perceptions of society and how women roles are defined at that time. From the play one can view what Ibsen believed about the roles of gender and pertaining equality between males and females. This is actually a play where one can observe how the gender status was at the time and Ibsen’s belief about this matter. Ibsen displayed the role of women very clearly in this play. As the play commences, Nora’s behavior is like that of most women of the time: she gave in to anything her husband said and took in all orders issued to her by the husband. In the beginning she was the ideal woman and wife according to the society and the husband. Her husband would insult her many times and even accused her of having too much sweets and gaining weight. In general we see the role of Nora being completely the opposite of Torvald. In A Doll’s House, Ibsen paints a bleak picture of the sacrificial role held by women of different economic standards in his society. In general, the play’s female characters demonstrate Nora’s assertion that even though men refuse to sacrifice their integrity. In order to support her mother and two brothers, Mrs. Linde found it necessary to abandon Krogstad, her true but penniless love, and marry a richer man. These are some of the sacrifices that women have to undergo. The nanny had to abandon her own child to support herself by working as Nora’s children caretaker. As she tells Nora, the nanny considers herself fortunate to have found the job, since she was a poor girl who had been led astray. Ibsen’s concerns about the position of women in society are illuminated in A Doll’s House. He believed that women had a right to develop their own individuality, but in reality, their role was consistently self-sacrificial. Women were not considered as equal with men, either in relation to
Open Document