A DOLL’S HOUSE: A FEMINIST STUDY

A DOLL’S HOUSE: A FEMINIST STUDY

As one of the founders of modernism in theatre, Henrik Ibsen is often referred to as “the father of realism” and the second most influential playwright of all time – after Shakespeare. He completely rewrote the rules of drama with a realism that we still see in theatres today. He also turned the European stage away from what it had become – a plaything and distraction for the bored – and introduced a new order of moral analysis. The Doll’s House was first performed in 1879, at that time, and still today it is one of the most famous gender political moments in world literature. Due to its fame, A Doll's House has also been adapted into several films.

The role of Nora even holds an iconic status: UNESCO’s Memory of the World register calls Nora “a symbol throughout the world, for women fighting for liberation and equality”.
The play was Ibsen’s first play to create a sensation and is now perhaps his most famous play, and is read in many colleges and universities. The play was controversial when first published, as it sharply criticizes the 19th-century marriage norms. It follows the formula of well-made play up until the final act when it breaks convention by ending with a discussion, not an unraveling. It is often called the first true feminist play. The play is also an important work of the realist movement, in which real events and situations are depicted on stage in a departure from previous forms such as romanticism.

A Doll’s House is about a couple with three children who live a seemingly pleasant middle-class life until individual, economic and social circumstances force a change in the wife‟s attitude towards her marriage and social norms which leads her to leave her family to seek her own freedom or life independence. The play deals with women’s problems under the domination of patriarchal culture within the society. It is centered on the major female character named Nora who experiences various circumstances in her marriage. She married a man named Torvald Helmer. At the beginning of the play, she seems completely happy with her marriage and relationship with Helmer. She enjoys her role as a wife and a mother although she has to order the rule of patriarchal ideology on how should be a “good” married woman. Helmer sees Nora’s only role as being the obedient and loving wife. In Helmer’s view, Nora is an obedient wife but she tends to be childish and sometimes difficult to manage. Nora’s childish behavior mostly appears when she interacts with Helmer. This childish behavior results from Helmer’streatment. Helmer always treats Nora as his doll which can be played anytime.

At the beginning of the play, Nora has been attributed nicknames such as “sweet little spendthrift” and” extravagant little person”. It clearly shows that Helmer judges Nora as an extravagant person, who always wastes money on unimportant things and can not manage the money for the family. Since her husband is the one who is in charge to support the family’s finance, Nora always follows what her husband says although it is not true that she always spends the money recklessly. In fact, Nora takes a secret job copying papers by hand in order to make money to pay the debt that she borrows from a disgraced lawyer, Nils Krogstad, to save Helmer’s life when he is very ill, but she has not told him in order to protect his pride.

In the patriarchal society, women are regarded as powerless and weak. In this case, Nora tries to fight against all forms of discrimination and oppression with her struggles. In breaking the limitation to women’s freedom to decide to do something in domestic life, she decides to solve her family's financial problem and in breaking the limitation to women’s freedom to express feelings over men’s domination, she decides to express her feelings over her husband’s domination.

As the conflict rises and the interaction between Nora and the other characters happens, Nora, herself starts to doubt her role and her existence in the family. She begins to realize the way patriarchal ideology, which lies in the domination of his husband, considers her as inferior and as the other, even by his own husband, even though she has done many sacrifices for him. Nora’s conflict with Krogstad, who threatened to tell her husband about her past secret, namely forging her father’s signature of surety on the bond, enflamesNora’s journey of self-discovery. Nora’s primary struggle, however, is against the selfish, stifling, and oppressive attitudes of her husband and of the social norms at that time.

In the patriarchal society, women are regarded as powerless and weak. Women have been discriminated against not only in social life but also in domestic life. There are some limitations of freedom that occur in domestic and social life which bind women’s rights. In domestic life, the limitations are the limitation to women's freedom to decide to do something and the limitation to women's freedom to express feelings over men’s domination. In social life, there is a limitation to women’s freedom to decide an important thing. There are also weak images of women, which regard women as incapable of doing domestic work and of deciding important things in social life.

In this case, Nora tries to fight against all forms of discrimination and oppression with her struggles. In breaking the limitation to women’s freedom to decide to do something in domestic life, she decides to solve her family's financial problem and in breaking the limitation to women’s freedom to express feelings over men’s domination, she decides to express her feelings over her husbands' domination. In social life, in breaking the limitation to women’s freedom to decide an important thing, she decides to do an important thing. Meanwhile, in breaking the belief about the incapability of doing domestic work in domestic life, she tries to show her ability in doing domestic work. In social life, in achieving the incapability of deciding an important thing, she decides to do an important thing in order to gain her life independence.

Well as such historically, patriarchal culture started to be popular during the Victorian Era in the 19th century when there was a significant change from agricultural to industrial aspects (Lambert, 2009: 5). The Victorian Era was the golden age to bridge modernization through the industrial revolution in England. In this era, people were triggered to change their fate also by having better economic conditions. Men worked outside the house as the bread maker of the family, while their women were only busy with their daily activities in the household.

People of the Victorian Era were handed the principle that women should get married and have children because they were born, raised, and educated as good wives, not anything else. As a result of the lack of education, a woman of the Victorian Era was expected to marry a man in order to support her, since she did not have the knowledge to do any jobs. This reason brings economical roles for men and familial roles for women as the main arrangers of the household. Therefore, there is a notion that men’s role is to be the breadmakers and the leaders of the family. The patriarchal cultures become an influential aspect in forming the social rules of Victorian society. As a result, all rules including women’s roles are organized by patriarchal power. Automatically, marriage, duties, and women’s careers become a part of patriarchal production.

Based on these aspects of patriarchal culture, women’s position and roles in society and marriage lives were established strictly. Women were considered to be inferior to men both in social and marriage lives. A good wife is a woman who obeys her husband’s order, looks after her house and children, and has no right to deal with financial matters since the husband is the one who is constructed as the breadmaker of the family. This separation of roles was influenced strongly by the idea of patriarchy that men are superior to women.

For centuries, men and women have been treated unequally in a society that believes in a patriarchal system. Patriarchy is the name given to the whole complex system of male dominance by which most societies are run now and were run in the past. In this system, men are the controller and women become the follower. Men have full power to treat and control women and, thus, women-only follow what men say as the head of a society. In this case, have no right or chance to break the rules. The result is that men are superior to women in all segments of life such as in domestic areas, education, politics, and social life. Furthermore, this condition raises many problems between women and men After exploring the feminist theory and women’s problems we can say that there are two kinds of women’s problems found in Ibsen’s A Doll’s House. Those are strong patriarchal power and weak images of women.

A Doll's House is a representative feminist play. It deals primarily with the desire of a woman to establish her identity and dignity in a society governed by men. Here, Ibsen uses his works or writings to voice his support to solve women’s problems which are related to discrimination and oppression towards them in the world. Through A Doll’s House, he tries to emphasize to the reader that women can be independent and have the same ability as men in many aspects of life. To sum up, women’s problems that happen in the play area because of the strong patriarchal power and the weak images of women which create many limitations to their freedom in doing their activities and also create some bad assumptions about their ability in domestic and social life. Nora, as the main female character, tries to fight to overcome the problems with the struggles she takes. Her final decision, which is deciding to leave her family, results from her profound disappointment because of her husband’s negative response. It brings out her desire to be an independent woman without the existence of anyone who is superior to her anymore and it can only be accomplished employing leaving her family.