A Doll's House Gender Roles Essay

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Pages: 7

Gender Roles and Ibsen’s ‘A Doll’s House’
On December 21, 1879 Henrik Ibsen’s A Doll’s House premiered in the Royal Theatre in Copenhagen. A common belief that was heard worldwide was that “a woman cannot be herself in the society of today, which is exclusively a masculine society, with laws written by men, and with accusers and judges who judge feminine conduct from the masculine viewpoint” (Farfan, 2). During the time period that Henrik Ibsen’s wrote A Doll’s House the gender roles were very different than how he made his protagonist Nora act throughout his play. There was many different responses directed toward Ibsen and his use of gender roles throughout his play, some saying that he was part of the feminist movement others saying the play was not feminism at all.
There are many differences between the traditional gender roles and the modern gender roles. Starting with the traditional gender roles. This is when the men would go to work and be involved in the
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In A Doll’s House Ibsen uses his voice and emotions to make the play show the strong, independent Nora. When Nora is borrowing the money for the trip with her husband Ibsen writes that she does take the money in order to keep her husband alive and she does this without his consent from her husband because he has a terror of being in debt to someone. “The play identifies inequality under the law with regard to women’s ability to possess property: Nora breaks the law because she is not allowed to borrow without male authorization (Lee, 626). Since Ibsen wrote about Nora getting the money without her husband’s permission he is saying that women don’t need men’s permission to get money and that women should be able to have the same laws as men and not have specific ones for just