Henrik Ibsen's famous play, A Doll's House, is widely recognized as a feminist work. The play delves into the seemingly perfect lives of Helmer, Nora and Torvald. Nora is beautiful, charming and sweet, and Torvald is a successful and wealthy banker. The exploration of feminism in the essay A Doll's House is crucial to understanding the play's underlying message about gender roles and societal expectations. Despite the couple's past difficulties, such as their financial difficulties during their first year of marriage and Torvald's illness, Nora's decision to take out a loan from Torvald's colleague highlights the societal constraints placed on women in the 19th century. Although Nora's experiences highlight the couple's current good fortune, the play highlights the systemic oppression and limitations women faced during this era. Say no to plagiarism. Get a custom essay on “Why Violent Video Games Should Not Be Banned”?Get Original Essay Rich, attractive and prominent, the Helmers seem like the perfect family. Yet the old adage remains true: appearances are deceiving. As Nora reveals how she worked secretly to repay the loan to Krogstad, Torvald's colleague, it becomes clear that there is a lot of tension beneath the calm surface of the couple's home life. This tension rises when Torvald tells Nora that he wants to fire Krogstad from the bank, and Krogstad then threatens to expose Nora's lies to her husband if she does not find a way to save her job. The action of the play intensifies, eventually culminating in Torvald's discovery of a letter written by Krogstad, revealing the truth about Nora's loan. Upon learning that his wife has cheated on him, Torvald becomes furious and immediately becomes concerned with preserving his own image - even though Nora's deception allowed Torvald's recovery, for which he would probably be grateful. At this point, Nora's transformation from a silly, childish girl to an intelligent, independent woman is complete. She realizes that Torvald only saw her as a doll and leaves him. Audiences and critics have varied reactions to Ibsen's A Doll's House, but the most widely held view of the play is that it is undoubtedly a feminist text. In her article titled "The Doll House Backlash: Criticism, Feminism, and Ibsen," Joan Templeton discusses the many ways in which A Doll's House is indeed a play that addresses the issue of feminism and women's rights. She states that: When Nora discovers that she has duties higher than those of a "wife and a mother", obligations which she describes as "duties to myself", she expresses the most feminist principle fundamental: that women, just as much as men, possess a moral and intellectual nature and have not only the right but the duty to develop it (Templeton 32). Templeton argues that Nora's very transformation from childish and naive to driven and strong-willed is in her very essence feminist; moreover, the play's feminism is prevalent, whether Ibsen likes it or not. And it seems quite likely that Ibsen did not in fact intend to read A Doll's House as strongly feminist, declaring at a banquet hosted by the Norwegian Women's Rights League that he "must give up the honor of having worked consciously for women's rights. movement...my task has been the description of humanity” (Templeton 28). Reading such a statement, it seems clear that Ibsen did not write A Doll's House with the intention of writing a historical feminist work. Following this logic, a number of other criticisms arestrongly disagrees with Templeton's assertion that Nora (and therefore the game as a whole) is inherently feminist. British critic Michael Billington disagrees with this interpretation of the play as feminist. Seeing a production of A Doll's House at the Southwark Playhouse in London, Billington wrote that "far from being a simple feminist clarion call, the play becomes a complex study of two people who must both rebuild their identities" (Guardian Unlimited). Here, Billington changes the emphasis from Nora's character, which is the central tenet of Templeton's argument, to Nora's character. of the dynamics of the relationship between Nora and Torvald. In this way, the focus is less on Nora struggling with her self-perception, and more on who the two characters are. Similarly, in a rebuttal to Templeton's essay on feminism in A Doll's House, Michael Werth Gelber writes: "In Torvald and Nora's Doll's House, husband and wife suffer from arrested development, which neither d 'they will not ultimately exceed' (Gelber 361, Billington and Gelber, as well as many others, seem to read Ibsen's classic as a humanist). rather than feminist, arguing that Ibsen's message was not that women should strive to find themselves, but that everyone should engage in a search for true identity. A Doll's House was written and published in 1879, and as such Ibsen was certainly aware of the prevailing attitudes towards women. Before the 20th century, women were expected to obey their husbands and concern themselves only with matters of frivolity and entertainment. In fact, years earlier, United States President Thomas Jefferson summed up the attitude of the time when addressing the issue of women and literacy, saying: "The education of women should concentrate on the ornaments and entertainments of life...dancing, drawing and music" (www.vst.cape.com). Women were not expected to educate themselves or become independent, this which ensured them total dependence on their husbands These widely held beliefs were surely known to Ibsen, and although he states that his aim was never to draw attention to women's problems. , the concept of feminism played at least an unconscious role in the writing of A Doll's House At the same Norwegian Women's Rights League banquet, where he claimed that attacking women's rights was not his business. intention, Ibsen said: "I'm not even entirely clear as to what this movement for women's rights really is...It's women who must solve the problem." the human problem” (Gelber 361). Although Ibsen claims to be unaware of the existence of the women's rights movement, he places the responsibility for dealing with human rights movements in the hands of women, demonstrating that he has at least a deep respect and great trust in women. House features a protagonist who is meant to be an example to women and humans, demonstrating the importance of finding a sense of self and true identity. Women and men of yesterday and today can look to Nora to see how each person should truly find themselves. When Nora finally realizes that she is just a doll for Torvald, she says: "I played tricks on you, Torvald. That's how I survived. You wanted it that way... It's thanks to you that I survived. I didn't do anything with my life" (Ibsen). Although relationships resembling Torvald's hold on Nora were much more common in the 1870s, they are not obsolete even today. However, domination can now happen in both directions; in some relationships, women are controlling.