Doll House: Criticism of the bourgeoisie through its protagonist
Introduction.
The following letter will evaluate the critic of the writer IBSEN to Bourgeois Society through Nora, protagonist of Casa de Dolls (1880). The work was based on the real case of a writer, Laura Kieler, family friend, who falsified a promissory note after asking for a loan to pay for her husband’s trip to Switzerland due to health problems. When he was discovered, she was admitted to the husband and was under her strict surveillance without being able to educate her children, as if she were a scourge of society. I will perform this analysis based on the prescribed question that best suits my task, in this case, how and why a given social group is represented in a certain way?
To carry out this research in its best version, I must analyze the features of the bourgeoisie that are reflected in the work and how Nora’s character is used to criticize these. The task refers to the third part of the course, literature: texts and contexts. I will focus on the play Doll Casa. The following analysis will focus on the following key points. To begin I will establish the relationship between Ibsen and the bourgeoisie. I will continue with the reflection of the bourgeoisie in his works, specifically in the house of dolls where the bourgeoisie is very reflected, since, in the 19th century, the great debate of the bourgeoisie occurred.
Finally I will analyze how bourgeois society is criticized in the work through the protagonist, I will base on the work and on different sources that refer to it, to be able to make a more detailed analysis as possible. Ibsen’s criticism towards bourgeois society in his work "Doll House", through its protagonist Nora.
Developing.
During the time when Ibsen lived, Norway was a place where society appeared shamefully discriminatory: "Our society is masculine and until the woman enters her, she will not be human," wrote Ibsen. We can then affirm that the author with the work that concerns us, fully deliberately and conscious, intended to send a daring and uncomfortable message, which will invite reflection.
Ibsen could not witness what was happening around him and remain silent. He felt forced with his conscience and with society itself. Proof of this is that the author was inspired by a real fact of his surroundings to write "dollhouse". Specifically, the story of a woman named Laura Kieler, who asked for a loan without the knowledge of her husband. As a result, the case had a tragic outcome. Her husband demanded divorce, lost the custody of her children and ended with an acute emotional crisis that forced her entry into a psychiatric center.
The fact that Doll Casa has as its protagonist a female figure (Nora) whose behavior evolves throughout the work (from the stereotyped canons of a bourgeois woman of the moment, to those of a woman released and with their own ideas) constituted aVery considerable scandal in the Norwegian society of the moment and, at the same time, a great achievement in the emancipatory movement of women, given the international resonance that the work had.
If we go on to analyze “dollhouse” and its protagonist Nora, perhaps what first attracts attention is the title of the work itself. A title full of symbolism, which oozes criticism from the four sides. What can first evoke us is that women since they are girls play "the houses with their wrists". Since childhood, they are instilled in their role as adults, such as "good mothers and wives" in home care.
As Ibsen said about this work: the essential thing for me has been to describe human beings, human feelings, and human destinations based on certain social conditions and positions. Based on this we can infer that the author has previously decided. And around them he "weaving" a suit to measure his needs millimeter.
Thus the different characters, the relationship between them, their dialogues, etc. Each scene is carefully calculated to denounce a concrete fact or attitude, and whose objective is none other than that of "sting" the reader’s conscience. In reference to the work: each scene, every dialogharmony, until the sense of the whole.
An interesting example of this is found in one of the dialogues between Torvaldo and Nora, near Krogstad, and where Torvaldo launches an affirmation full of prejudices against the female gender: almost all depraved people had liar mothers. It is due to mothers more frequently, although the father, as is natural, has worked the same. In this work the author, as indicated before, feels obliged to tell us that the world must change. Ibsen faces the reader with a bourgeois society anchored in ideas and values that look the other way in the face of the stubbornness of a grossly unfair reality. Where the woman is relegated by the author’s authority (father/husband).
On the other hand, Nora (the wife) does not know what to expect what is correct or incorrect. The protagonist faces her own conscience (where she believes to understand what is correct) on the one hand and the trust in the authority of man for another, and this adds her to a total confusion. The "pieces" of how they had instilled in her what her life should be, and how she sees now she is, they no longer fit.
As the work evolves, the protagonist realizes that a woman cannot be authentically in today’s society, which is an exclusively masculine society. Everything is valued from the prism of men and their conscience (not from obedience or submission), aimed at saving her husband’s life, she is completely misunderstood from the bourgeois parameters of society and her own partner. The fear of "scandal", to "what will they say", to "what will be of our good name", etc. becomes the most important. Love, trust, generosity and spirit of sacrifice that should be present in every marriage, goes to the background. The first thing is to take care of appearances.
As a result, an obvious moral conflict arises. Overwhelmed and confusing under the supposed "respect for the authority of man", loses confidence in his moral reason, and even (which is more terrible) in his ability to educate his own children. The protagonist reflects on the role that is expected of her, where she must put her own "me" before her (her conscience, her will and her intellect) to all other elements that surround her: husband, children, home, what they will say,etc. Deciding that, if they are not able to understand it, to assume their reasons and their status as an adult and independent woman, he will break with all this.
conclusion.
In conclusion we can say that Ibsen shows "in view of all" a society and family relationships, transnochadas, incongruous and unfair. Where you want to show that a world where women do not have an active role and "you to you" with man, it is deeply unfair. A world that can only advance their freedoms if it accommodates a full and independent woman. Where a man and a woman, beyond his sex, must be valued as "human beings".
Leave feedback