On Ibsens A Dolls House :: A Dolls House

On Ibsens A Dolls accommodateThis is the text of a lecture delivered, in part, in disinterested Studies 310 at Malaspina University-College, Nanaimo, BC, Canada. References to Ibsens text are to the translation by James McFarlane and Jens Arup (Oxford OUP, 1981). This text is in the public domain, released July 2000For comments or questions, please contact Ian JohnstonThose of you who put one over comely read A Dolls House for the first time will, I suspect, have little trouble forming an initial sense of what it is close, and, if past experience is whatsoever guide, many of you will quickly reach a consensus that the major gorge of this play has something to do with gender relations in modern gild and offers us, in the actions of the heroine, a vision of the need for a new-found immunity for women (or a woman) amid a suffocating society governed wholly by unsympathetic and insensible men.I say this because there is no doubt that A Dolls House has long been seen as a landma rk in our centurys most important social struggle, the fight against the dehumanizing oppression of women, particularly in the middle-class family. Noras nett exit away from all her traditional social obligations is the most renowned dramatic statement in fictional depictions of this struggle, and it helped to turn Ibsen (with or without his consent) into an applauded or vilified champion of womens honests and this play into a vital statement which feminists have repeatedly invoked to further their cause. So in reading responses to and interpretations of this play, one frequently comes across statements like the following Patriarchys socialization of women into servicing creatures is the major accusation in Noras painful account to Torvald of how first her father, and then he, used her for their amusement. . . how she had no right to think for herself, merely the duty to accept their opinions. Excluded from meaning anything, Nora has never been subject, only object. (Te mpleton 142).Furthermore, if we go to see a production of this play (at least among English-speaking theatre companies), the chances are we will see something based more or less on this interpretative line heroic Nora fighting for her freedom against oppressive males and winning out in the end by her gay final departure. The sympathies will almost certainly be distributed so that our patrol wagon are with Nora, however much we might carry some reservations about her leaving her children.