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Theme Of Feminism In A Doll's House

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This paper focuses on the theme of Feminism and its related issues highlighted by a Norwegian Dramatist Henrik Ibsen in his most wonderful play A Doll’s House. His great emphasis on the importance of ‘individualism’ as against the vast majority of society gave him the distinguished note. His targets of attack were the decadent institutions of marriage, degenerated moral codes of public conduct.His greatness laid in inventing characters especially female characters that are more impressive and his grasp of female psychology. In the first draft of A Doll’s House he wrote: “There are two kinds of spiritual love, two kinds of conscience, a man’s and – a very different – a woman’s. The play deals with the important theme of the liberation of the individual from the shackles and restraints of custom and convention. Nora who has remained passive and self-effacing for eight years ultimately asserts herself and hence becomes an individual in her own right. Nora has been a passive and obedient wife to Helmer, always conforming to his ideas, opinions, and tastes. Thus Nora has all these years been a “doll” and she has been living in a doll 's house. But at the end she rejects her role as Helmer’s doll’s – wife and, forsaking him, goes into the world outside in order to have first-hand experience of life to establish her own identity and to discover her own potentialities.
Key Words: Feminism, individualism, liberation, custom, convention, doll, identity and potentiality.

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