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Women’s Issues In and Concerning A Doll’s House

A Doll’s House was a groundbreaking play upon its original theatrical release. Critics were extremely negative at first, as demonstrated by Rosefeldt’s opinion, “In Henrik Ibsen's A Doll's House, Nora abandons her children. This offense against motherhood shocked the play's original audience just as it shocks some students of literature today. Certainly the play questions the real definition of motherhood” (Rosefeldt). The play was even banned for how it portrayed women. It showed them acting in a way that was illegal at the time, taking out loans without their husband’s permission and forging signatures. At the end of the 19th century in Europe, women were not allowed to speak up; they were to do as told by their significant others. Simone de Beauvoir’s The Second Sex also touches on this social issue, as the rights of women are the main subject of the book. The message of Ibsen’s A Doll’s House is that women should be able to think for themselves, and over time, with the influence of other important figures such as Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony, women gained autonomy by securing jobs comparable to men’s and by making their own decisions.
The most influential and important figures of the women’s suffrage movement were Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony. Uglow explains in The International Dictionary of Women’s Biography, “Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony formed the National Woman Suffrage Association to work for a constitutional amendment to give women the vote” (442). Without them, the Suffrage Movement may have never been in full swing and the rights of women would not have changed to this day. When they grew too old to be suffrage advocates, they passed the torch to the other women who kept it going. In The 100 Most Influential Women of All Time, Felder explains, “During the 1870’s and 1880’s suffrage became Anthony’s single-minded cause, while Stanton expanded her activism to include campaigns for broader women’s rights reforms. Despite their diverging interests, Anthony and Stanton collaborated on a three-volume work, History of Women Suffrage, published 1 volume at a time between 1881 and 1886” (29). Because they knew their work counted for all women, Anthony and Stanton put their differences aside and worked for the greater good. They also expanded their reach to try to affect all women in a positive way. Without Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton, women would still not be able to vote today.
In A Doll’s House, not only was Nora unable to vote, but she lacked many basic rights and was, for much of the play, subconsciously unhappy. This feeling of oppression is what most women of the time period felt. Torvald thinks he is giving her a nice favor although in reality he is doing nothing special when he says, “Nora dear, I can forgive you this panic, even though basically you’re insulting me. Yes, you are! Or isn’t it an insult to think that I should be afraid… But I forgive you anyway…” (Ibsen 993). Torvald also talks to Nora like she is nothing but a child. In his eyes, a woman insulting a man is something prohibited that would need forgiveness if it is ever done. Later, Nora is shown to not know the ins and outs of the real world when she says, “This I refuse to believe. A daughter hasn’t a right to protect her dying father from anxiety and care? A wife hasn’t a right to save her husband’s life? I don’t know much about laws, but I’m sure that somewhere in the books these things are allowed” (984). Nora is definitely naïve in believing that laws can be changed strictly based on her needs. However, there is some truth in believing that the law sometimes makes desperate exceptions. The oppression of women contested in A Doll’s House is also shown in other books such as The Second Sex.
Beauvoir mainly discussed the women’s role in their household and in society, and how they should be treated and how they are supposed to treat their husbands. She explains what women get when they marry here: “In marrying woman gets some share in the world as her own; legal guarantees protect her against capricious action by man; but she becomes his vassal… She takes his name; she belongs to his religion, his class, his circle; she joins his family, she becomes his ‘half’” (429). There were some advantages in getting married as a woman, but mostly they were disadvantages in losing your own world and adopting your husbands. Men had and usually exercised the right to control everything women believed in. The women’s supposed role in society is explained by Beauvoir here: “But even the primitive societies that are not aware of the paternal generative role demand that women have a husband, for the second reason why marriage is enjoined is that woman’s function is also to satisfy a man’s sexual needs and to take care of his household”. (427) Beauvoir knew she had to try to change the way women were treated, and her way was expressing the jobs a woman was currently supposed to accomplish. These “jobs” were to satisfy a man’s sexual needs and take care of the condition of the household. The issue of how women are poorly treated is also widely present in Achebe’s Things Fall Apart.
Women being thought of as unequal to men is the theme that Achebe explains in Things Fall Apart. He shows how a man operates in society when he describes this situation: “Okonkwo knew she was not speaking the truth. He walked back to his obi to await Ojiugo’s return… And when she returned he beat her very heavily.” (29) The only problem with Okonkwo’s beating of his wife in this case is that it was during the Week of Peace. Because of one lie Ojiugo spoke, she is forced to be unfairly beaten. The job of a man compared to a woman is explained by Achebe here: “Nwoye knew that it was right to be masculine and to be violent, but somehow he still preferred the stories that his mother used to tell, and which she no doubt still told to her younger children” (53).Being thought of as feminine in the community was a very bad thing. But although Nwoye, who is only ten years old, likes his mother, he is forced to be with his controlling father the majority of the time. The issues in Things Fall Apart are also ever present in A Doll’s House.
Things Fall Apart has similar issues and qualities to A Doll’s House, and the way they present women is quite similar. Both Okonkwo and Torvald are oppressive husbands, as the latter demonstrates here: “Helmer: Are your scatterbrains off again? What if today I borrowed a thousand crowns, and you squandered them over Christmas week, and then on New Year’s Eve a roof tile fell on my head, and I lay there-” (970). Helmer goes as far as treating Nora like she is some kind of small child. And there seems to be no problem in calling her a scatterbrains, it seems to be an everyday type of thing. A Doll’s House and Things Fall Apart both display arranged marriages as well. Achebe explains, “‘Yes,’ replied Obierika, ‘my daughter’s suitor is coming today and I hope we will clinch the matter of the bride-prince. I want you to be there’” (95). Arranging marriages is a pleasant experience in their community, obviously showing women had no choice in their husbands. This is no different from A Doll’s House, as the women have no say in the matter, just like Nora in Ibsen’s story. Other people also get to find out the groom at the same time the bride does, which is odd, but not entirely unexpected with the rest of the way they treat women.
The original audience reaction to A Doll’s House was extremely negative.
The role of women in society was originally perceived to serve as a caretaker of children and the household and providing amusement for the men, but with the influence of women’s suffrage figures such as Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony, women gained their own rights and jobs just as well compensated as men’s. Women were treated unfairly compared to men, and they were forced to take care of the children, the household, and the man’s sexual needs. Because of A Doll’s House and the Women’s Suffrage Movement, women all over the world are now treated better than they were in the 19th century.

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