Blog 2, Question 4, A Doll House

Cherice Franklin


Henrik Ibsen’s play A Doll House focuses on fatherhood in which all of the male characters in the play are portrayed as absent and negligent fathers; some too busy with work, like Torvald Helmer, the main character’s wife and Dr. Rank’s father who because of his promiscuity caused his son to be born with tuberculosis of the spine. Because Ibsen’s play was written during the late 1800’s in an era of male dominance in which the men were the bread winners he does put emphasis on his descriptions of all of the male characters, such as with Anne Marie, the maid’s baby’s father who left her with a child; when she refers to him as a “slippery fish”, she says it as though it was an action that was regularly done and was unsurprising. The title of the play, A Doll House, sardonically is about a woman who is “playing house” and as acting like the trophy wife, however, throughout the play she is seen as the inferior without any genuine feelings, or aspirations and who is also dependent upon her husband who is a workaholic. Because there were hardly and descriptions of the women being proficient in their lives further justifies the inadequacy of women during the time the play was written.
Ibsen was wise to put more emphasis on the male characters in the play because it allows his audience to be able to understand the role of the dominant male character while giving the reader the idea that women were needy, such as when Mrs. Linde, Nora’s friend asks how Nora was able to take out a loan without her husband’s signature. Ibsen’s descriptions helps the reader to understand the position of men and women.