On Ibsens A Dolls House :: A Dolls House

On Ibsens A Dolls HouseThis is the text of a lecture delivered, in part, in Liberal 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 have conscionable read A Dolls House for the first time will, I suspect, have little trouble forming an initial sense of what it is about, and, if past experience is any guide, some(prenominal) of you will quickly reach a consensus that the major thrust of this play has something to do with gender relations in modern society and offers us, in the actions of the heroine, a vision of the need for a new-found freedom for women (or a woman) amid a suffocating society governed wholly by unsympathetic and insensitive men.I say this because thither is no doubt that A Dolls House has long been seen as a landmark in our c enturys most important social struggle, the fight against the dehumanizing oppression of women, peculiarly in the middle-class family. Noras final exit away from all her traditional social obligations is the most famous dramatic statement in fictional depictions of this struggle, and it helped to stave Ibsen (with or without his consent) into an applauded or vilified champion of womens powerfuls 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 oft 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, only the duty to accept their opinions. Excluded from meaning anything, Nora has never been subject, only object. (Templeton 142).Furthermo re, if we go to see a production of this play (at least among English-speaking theater of operations 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 pleasing out in the end by her courageous final departure. The sympathies will almost certainly be distributed so that our hearts are with Nora, however such(prenominal) we might carry some reservations about her leaving her children.