Female Oppression In A Dolls House

Research papers on the theme of female oppression in Henrik Ibsen's play A Doll's House examine the character of Nora and how she exhibits female oppression. Paper Masters can explicate Nora's oppression for you in a custom research project.

For scholars of modern theater or the literary arts, Henrik Ibsen's A Doll's House represents an important juncture in the changing dramatic sensibility that would play a significant role in twentieth-century works. Ibsen rejected the mannered, trifling productions that typified most nineteenth-century European drama, and opted instead to explore important social issues of the day through sparse, increasingly realistic plays. Often, the approaches that Ibsen took to his chosen subject matter were the cause for considerable controversy. Possible controversial themes from Ibsen's work include:

• Nora's abandonment of her children in A Doll's House
• Is Nora deserving of the victim role of oppression?
• Ibsen's rejection of oppression in Nora

Social Options in A Doll's House

This was particularly true in the case of Ibsen's 1879 A Doll's House, in which Ibsen portrays with unflinching candor the paucity of autonomy and freedom available to most women during that era. In the play, Ibsen uses dialog and dramatic scenarios to demonstrate the few social options available to Nora Helman, as well as the way that inscribed social roles serve to limit and impede the personal and emotional development of women.

Ibsen's Intent

For over a century, the debate surrounding Ibsen's intent in creating A Doll's House has raged on. Feminists have claimed the text as a strikingly realistic document of the strictures placed upon women in society, while opponents of this view have noted that Ibsen himself denied any overt ideological or political alliance with early feminism. However, regardless of the controversy over Ibsen's intent in writing the play, it stands as an innovation in its frank depiction of the inherent misogyny of nineteenth-century European society. Even if Ibsen did not faithfully reproduce the problems in Nora's marriage with a specific political agenda in mind, the play itself is a moving, incontrovertible testament to the historical legacy of the oppression of women. In depicting a female character who, at the end of the play, seems to reject the age-old measures of a woman's worth, namely, motherhood and marriage, Ibsen created an extraordinarily innovation in theatrical techniques and stylistics.