dool house

dool house

  • Submitted By: sc0338
  • Date Submitted: 03/27/2015 2:37 PM
  • Category: Psychology
  • Words: 303
  • Page: 2

“A Doll’s House” is a play written by Henrik Ibsen, which is based on Nora Helmer, a young immigrant house wife with three children. Through a Psychoanalytic perspective the audience is aware of how her childhood affected Nora’s adult life. Nora’s adult life was affected by her father because he allowed her to live in a Dream World. Nora’s father parenting skills lacked in teaching her independence, responsibility, and maturity, which affected her as an adult.


The play is significant for its critical attitude toward 19th century marriage norms. It aroused great controversy at the time,[2] as it concludes with the protagonist, Nora, leaving her husband and children because she wants to discover herself. Ibsen was inspired by the belief that "a woman cannot be herself in modern society," since it is "an exclusively male society, with laws made by men and with prosecutors and judges who assess feminine conduct from a masculine standpoint."[3] Its ideas can also be seen as having a wider application: Michael Meyer argued that the play's theme is not women's rights, but rather "the need of every individual to find out the kind of person he or she really is and to strive to become that person."[4] In a speech given to the Norwegian Association for Women's Rights in 1898, Ibsen insisted that he "must disclaim the honor of having consciously worked for the women's rights movement," since he wrote "without any conscious thought of making propaganda," his task having been "the description of humanity."[5]

In 2006, the centennial of Ibsen's death, A Doll's House held the distinction of being the world's most performed play for that year.[6] UNESCO has inscribed Ibsen's autographed manuscripts of A Doll's House on the Memory of the World Register in 2001, in recognition of their historical value

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