`A Doll`s House` by Henrik Ibsen

Attitudes towards Women : A Study of Ibsen 's The Doll 's House

Written in the form of classical tragedy , Henrik Ibsen 's , A Doll 's House is a plaintive tale of a woman in the process of finding herself . In its own time , the play was almost revolutionary , as far as depicting the situation of woman in the contemporary society was concerned and rocked the European stage with its explicitly feminist message . The protagonist , Nora 's rejection of home and hearth , rejection of her identity as a wife or a mother scandalized the

contemporary audience . By far , this feminist aspect is the play 's most enduring theme . Ibsen noted "A woman cannot be herself in contemporary society , it is an exclusively male society with laws drafted by men , and with counsel and judges who judge feminine conduct from the male point of view (Joan 25 ) In fact , each and every other motif and theme in the play only serves to either underscore or bring out different facets of the feminist discourse that the author has explored in his work

Coinciding with the first phase of the Feminist movement in Europe and America , Ibsen 's play shows womankind as subjugated and subordinated under the men who rule the society . This does not mean however that women has no active role to play in the society , but rather that they are denied all recognition or credit for the role they play . In the patriarchal system , it is somehow taken for granted that women should sacrifice themselves at the altar of survival if the need so arises , but such sacrifices are a matter of shame and should not ever be brought out in the open . In fact there is an inherent duplicity in the social attitude towards women . This theme of women as the sacrificial goat is developed from the very beginning of the play through the two other woman characters in the tale , Mrs . Linde and Nanny , both of whom acts as foils to the protagonist Nora , making her sufferings and misery , the universal lot of womankind rather than something private and domestic

As Nora points out in her final confrontation with Torvald , that though men find it beneath themselves to sacrifice their own integrity for their loved ones , hundreds and thousands of women have . As the story of Mrs . Linde is revealed , we find that she too had sacrificed her love for Krogstad , who at that point being poor was not in a position to support her family . She instead married a rich suitor who provided for her two brothers and ailing mother . Nanny too , the caretaker of Nora 's children , although belonging to a different social class altogether had undergone such a process of self-sacrifice for survival . She had had to leaver her own children and find job as caretaker of Nora 's children

All these set the stage for the revelation of Nora 's sacrifice of her integrity in the past to save her ailing husband Torvald . But the...