A Doll s House By Henrik Ibsen - 1544 Words

Throughout the 18th and 19th centuries and even including all the way up to the 21st century, there has been questions generated on the gender roles of the society. Expectations can differentiate upon the behaviors and attitudes that affect men and women within those societies. In A Doll’s House, the gender roles match those that are consistent to the real world expectations of women’s rights. Henrik Ibsen, author of A Doll’s House, uses his play to represent the traditional gender roles of the time and even go further in depth to explain the reality of it all. Gender roles are supposed to be the way males and females should talk, think, dress, and how to go about everyday life. Between the 18th and 19th centuries, present day, and the†¦show more content†¦Women were not allowed to have much of a social life because of the responsibilities that were expected to take care of. Ibsen used the characters Torvald and Nora to emphasize the typical gender role norms. The â€Å"gender script† that society self-inflicted upon us, had been taken as a norm that people were consistently tried to correct. Nora Helmer is considered to be the stereotypical wife that was there for her husband, raised the children, and also followed the society’s view of gender roles. The husband of Nora was Torvald, who was the â€Å"man† of the house and was the dominant figure. As I read the book, I connected some ideas and information together that was a lot easier to understand the gender role side of the play. The connection I made was Nora being a doll in the doll house that represented herself in the real world. The reason for that connection was because she was forced to do whatever she was moved to do, just like playing with a doll house. You had no free range of motion and you were always in the owner’s control. That would have translated to the husband being the owner. The husband controlled the women like an owner controlled the dolls. Eventually, everyone needs to identify themselves and have some individualism. During the play, there were some similarities that compared the 18th and 19th century roles to the roles that Ibsen described. Towards the beginning of the play, the commonalities that were shown would have been the man controlling the female,