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Role Of Sexism In A Doll's House

1258 Words6 Pages

It’s A Hard-knock Life
To begin, A Doll’s House is an influential and eye-opening play by Henrik Johan Ibsen. With that being said, the play sheds light on what it is like to be a woman during the nineteenth century. In general, women struggled for equality and individuality during the nineteenth century due to society standards. For example, women could not vote, could not sue or be sued, and could not testify in court. As a result, most women remained at home—caring for their children/husband and running the household. Additionally, women were expected to remain subservient to their fathers and husbands—influencing a degree of sexism. With that being said, Ibsen’s play, A Doll’s House, contains various sexist issues from the nineteenth century. In general, these concepts are depicted through the unequal nature of Torvald and Nora’s marriage. For the most part, one might think that the Helmers have a successful marriage; however, the successful marriage is only apparent at a superficial level. For, once we delve beyond the comfort of middle-class security, we see that the foundation of the marriage is built upon Nora’s subservience to Torvald. In turn, the outwardly typical, happy marriage is anything but; in fact, the marriage between Nora and Torvald contributes to the shape of sexism within A Doll’s House. Overall, sexism is shaped through the following components: demeaning dialect, character behavior, and income.
The first component, demeaning dialect, contributes to

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