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Feminism In A Doll's House

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“ Free, to be free, absolutely free. To spend time playing with the children. To have a clean, beautiful house, the way Torvald likes it ” (page 23). This is a quote extracted from Henrik Ibsen’s play, A Doll’s House, which was said by the protagonist of the story, Nora, to her childhood friend, Mrs. Linde. This play was written in 1879 and it was first acted out in Stockholm, Sweden in 1880. It gave Ibsen international fame due to the way it provoked the world. There were many strong responses to this play, whether it was praise or censure. The door that Nora slammed at the end of the play is said to be the loudest slammed door of the nineteenth century. It caused conservatives, traditionalists, and anti-feminists to rage and fear, where as it caused the liberals and feminists to cheer and hope, hope for a better and more equal world, where women and men are viewed as parallels. If written in our time (the twenty-first century), the play would not have as great an effect as it did in the nineteenth century. This is because people at the time lived in a more patriarchal society, following a certain set of norms, always giving the man authority. Some of the main norms used by the bourgeoisie of that time that we learn due to Torvald’s actions and words were financial success, hence the belonging in the bourgeoisie of society, upwards social mobility, portrayed by his promotion to a major position in the bank, freedom from financial debt, and having a stable, secure family
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