In The Doll House Isben presents every possible aspect of a housewives life. In doing so his novel takes on an element of female empowerment as it demonstrates the countless unexpected hardships that three different one-time housewives and must encounter as they each struggle create an identity and respectable life for themselves and the many people who rely on them. Through the characters Nora, Mrs. Linde, the nanny Isben characterizes three distinctly different socio-economic situation in which women of the time period each encountered equal but distinct difficulties in providing for themselves and those that they found a maternal obligation to support. Mrs. Linde’s sacrifice of her own happiness in order to fulfill her obligation is an example of the often contradicting forces that call upon women to attempt the impossible. For Mrs. Linde her decision to care for her dieing mother and younger brothers demonstrates a problem that characterizes the strife of a middle class women who finds that herself effectively out of luck and left with the responsibilities of a man without the status or legal equality of a man burdened with the same responsibilities. This is a situation that Nora also faces in a different respect when she is forced to take a loan to save Torvald’s life but society once again interferes, deeming her far inferior to men thus not allowing her to take a loan without her husband’s approval.
The way that Isben outlines and portrays the lives of these women gives me the impression that he likely sympathized with the unfair predicaments that women of his time period found themselves subject to. This plight is only further emphasized by Nora’s final decision to leave her husband as she comes to terms with the reality of her inferiority even in the eyes of someone she believed to be her greatest admirer, Torvald. With this eventual realization Isben shows that even the most well off, Nora finds herself in the same dark place that Mrs. Linde and the Nanny characterized earlier.
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1 comment:
Elliot,
Great job on your blog. I especially liked how you dicussed the sacrifices that each of the women have to make in order to live out their lives and how that exemplifies some of the hardships that women may have had to deal with at that time. Furthermore, I thought it was really interesting how you provided insight to Ibsen's possible opinion on this subject and how his writing of the book could have portrayed his social views. Once again, Good job.
Zach
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