Theme Of Realism In A Doll's House

There are many realism elements in A Doll’s House. The obvious one is the background. This play wrote by Ibsen Henrik in 1879. In that era, the mainstream female values were hard to generalize in just one or two sentence. Thus, I quote from Alfred, Lord Tennyson’s The Princess (the most distinctive poet of the age of Victoria in England) “Man for the field and woman for the hearth; Man for the sword and for the needle she; Man with the head and woman with the heart; Man to command and woman to obey. ” From the poem, we could see that was a patriarchal society, women were the accessories of men, and husbands enjoyed absolute authority in such families. In that era, Tennyson thought a woman’s greatest happiness was marriage, and this marriage was based on patriarchal supremacy and clear division of work. Men supported their families and bore social responsibilities; women arranged family life, took care of their husbands and raised their children. Female who followed such values were called Family Angles. And Helmer as husband in this play was the model husband representative of that era. At work, he was a qualified worker. He loved Nora in his own way. However, in my opinion, he regarded Nora as his private property or pet. They were not equal in marriage. He was the representative of men of that time. Economically, female had no independence, and in life, female did not have equal status with their husbands. Women were the followers of the male power represented by Helmer.