A Doll’s House Essay topics, Ideas, and example

Henrik Ibsen’s A Doll’s House is a reflection of societal problems in the 19th century. During the period of writing, marriage was sacrosanct; women stuck by their husbands and gender roles were clearly defined. The play criticizes the traditional approach to marriage, through the protagonist and main character, Nora Helmer.

In the play, Nora’s character is developed from a meek and husband soothing wife to the modern day independent woman. With societal pressures to conform to the “normal” wife, Nora finds a way to walk away in the end. However, Ibsen does not shy away from explaining Nora’s previous mindset on the ideal life.

Nora’s pampered lifestyle is a mirrored situation of entitlement problems in our society, with the title showing that at one point, Nora is merely a doll. Ibsen craftily tackles issues on marital problems, the identity of a woman, patriarchy, realism, and the submissive wife. Before Nora discovers her feminine power, she is a dependent that cannot speak her mind and refuses to understand the abstract realities of life.

Suggested Topics on a Doll’s House Essay

The Transformation of a Woman- As Henrik Ibsen’s A Doll’s House

Henrik Ibsen’s A Doll’s House Essay

The Identity of a Woman in A Doll’s House by Henrik Ibsen

The Transformation of a Woman in A Doll’s House by Henrik Ibsen

An Analysis of Feminism in A Doll’s House by Henrik Ibsen

Main Themes

The Sacrificial Role of Women as portrayed by Nora’s decision to marry Torvald, a man that constantly condescends her, forcing Nora to hide a loan from her own husband.

Marriage

Ibsen skillfully shows that marriage should be a union of equals, and in the end, the Helmer’s dissolve their marriage because it does not meet these standards.

Feminism and Patriarchy

In the play, both men and women are trapped by traditional roles, that in the end, are unsustainable. The men are expected to be the infallible kings of their homes, while the women are the submissive wives.

Respect and Reputation

In the play, men are obsessed with their reputations and are keen to do anything to maintain good standing with the community.

Other themes that you can explore during writing include love, money, and lies.

Learn by Example

Writing an essay on A Doll’s House is an achievable goal especially, with the comparative example below to use as a guide, and also draw ideas from. However, if the example does not provide adequate assistance, contact Paper per Hour for professional Essay Writing services.

A Doll’s House and Othello Essay example

The two plays A Doll’s House and Othello provide the reader with current issues affecting the family. The two plays contain several characters that act out roles that are significant to the themes discussed in them. A Doll’s House entails a play with three acts in it written in by Henrik Ibsen (Baseer et al. 16). The setting of the play mainly appealed to the critical attitude towards the marriage norms in the 19^th century. The play has its lead character named Nora as the protagonist. As the play surrounds her family and her activities, she makes a decision at the end of the play to leave her marriage, her children as well as the husband to discover herself (Curtin 24). The play by Ibsen was motivated by the belief that the society being dominated or exclusively for the males, then a woman could not be herself in the current period.

William Shakespeare, on the other hand, wrote Othello in 1603 that forms our second play. It narrates the tragedy faced by the lead character Othello alongside other three characters namely; Desdemona, his lovely wife; Cassio, the loyal lieutenant, and Lago, who initially was a trusted character but later became a sign of the unfaithful person (Bauer 32). The play discusses different and lasting themes such as love, racism, repentance, revenge, betrayal and jealousy through the characters.

The characters within the two plays have been used to portray the happenings in the society and communicate various themes to the reader. Therefore, the authors have employed the major and minor characters to perform certain roles that the reader may agree with and some are likely to be condemned. Therefore, the paper will focus on some of the actions taken by the character in both plays that I condemn as a person.

The paper will first analyze the play by Henrik Ibsen, A Doll’s House, by looking at the main character Nora and her actions. Secondly, will be the tragedy narrated by William Shakespeare and focus on the choices made by Othello who plays the role of a Moorish General under the Venetian army.

Nora, Torvald, Christine, and Krogstad

Act I introduces Nora as the wife who comes home after going for shopping for the family. However, the setting provided by author identifies her as a spendthrift woman. Her first scene involves her carrying several packages while being followed by a maid and a porter. The porter carries a Christmas tree indicating the season of the play. The act of her giving the porter a generous tip shows how easy she is in issuing out money (Hanssen 46). However, I am in disagreement with such action as in the consequent happenings within the same act, it all seems that all such generous acts are for a show off to get more cash from the husband, Mr. Torvald Helmer.

As the play continues, Nora also displays a character of being deceptive from small actions such as nibbling on macaroons that her husband Torvald had asked her to refrain from eating. She also comes home claiming to have spent a lot of cash in purchasing expensive clothes that drive her husband crazy, but she reiterates that they can afford it since her husband was promoted to a bank manager (Henrik 23). All the actions done by Nora are indicative of her protective motherly instincts coupled with twisted lies that lead to her getting what she wants or needs in life. She insists on her husband to embrace the heavy spending, as all this is to pay a debt she took previously from a loan shark named Krogstad. The loan was for the purpose of a leisure trip to Italy that she convinced her husband that it was from her father. Her actions are more of a compromise to get what she thinks is necessary without talking to her husband. Such actions often bring division in the family when they finally come out in the light. She also makes deals with blackmailers such as Krogstad who upon getting fired by Nora’s husband comes to cash in the loan secret. Nora persists in her actions of being deceptive and doesn’t inform her husband who condemns Krogstad’s forgery act that led to him getting fired. He confirms that such high level of deceit committed by Krogstad ends up corrupting the family.

The use of the forgery act by Krogstad to seek selfish again is undesirable and makes Nora do as he asks. Nora still finds it hard to tell her husband and keeps postponing the news despite the advice from her high school friend Christine to come clean. However, when Nora doesn’t comply with her requests, Christine moves to help out her friend since she and Krogstad had been close in the past before dumping him for the man she got married to at the end (Henrik 25). Therefore, Christine approaches Krogstad with a lie that she still loves him. The act is evil as it entails Christine lying for her friend to get her from trouble through getting the forged letter from Krogstad. It is also an act of abetting a crime committed by Nora but all these changes when she changes her mind and wants the lies in the Helmer’s home to get uncovered.

As the play continues, Torvalds gets to open the letter from Krogstad and becomes aware that his wife was involved in the forgery hence declares that he has stopped loving her because of the shameful act. He even asks her to stay away from the children, as she would corrupt them (Baseer et al. 26). However, upon receiving a second letter from Krogstad regretting his blackmailing attempt, he turns and all over sudden loves Nora again. At this time, Nora acknowledges that her husband has become a stranger and she regrets being ready to sacrifice herself to protect her husband from the crime but the same doesn’t apply to her husband. She makes a decision to leave her marriage and discover herself (Frisvold 44). The decision is a selfish one, as she will leave her children growing up with a single parent. It will negatively affect their growth due to lack of motherly love.

The play surrounds the life of a very great General of the Venetian army whose marriage and life is destroyed by an envious, deceitful and conniving soldier named Lago. At the first scene, we meet Lago and Roderigo who has been giving money to Lago (Shakespeare 96)Lago is angry with Othello because he gave Cassio the position of Lieutenant position and not him. Such an act entails encouraging the act of favoritism because of being friends with Othello who was now the general of the Venetian army. However, because of the bitterness, Lago outlines a plan to get revenge on Othello. He makes a visit to Brabantio who is Desdemona’s father (Serpieri 62). Desdemona is the wife to Othello. The marriage between Othello and Desdemona happened without the blessings of Brabantio. The act by Othello to marry Desdemona without the permission of the father is uncultured. It means that he also never paid the bride price for Desdemona despite the marriage being an agreement between her and Othello.

As the play continues, we are made aware that Brabantio, Desdemona’s father, is a senator. However, Othello is not threatened by the influential position of Brabantio as he relies on his service record to take on any force from him. Brabantio is on the hunt to kill Othello which is an act of murder, and this is unwarranted as he should leave her daughter to marry who she wants since she is an adult (Shakespeare 57). However, he proceeds to look for him, and when Othello gets summoned at the Duke of Venice, he claims that the courting was mutual. We also get to meet Emilia, who is Lago’s while they are in Cyprus.

In a conversation between Roderigo and Lago, Roderigo confesses to Lago that he is lovesick for Desdemona. Since Lago has Roderigo’s debt, he promises to get them together. In this plot, Lago is bound to get revenge for Othello’s act of not giving the lieutenant position and settling his debts with Roderigo. The action is that of deceit as he knows well that Desdemona is Othello’s wife.

At Cyprus, where the battle was supposed to happen, we get to see a big party taking place. At this place, Cassio gets drunk and gets into a fight with Roderigo. Othello gets angered and fires Cassio from being the lieutenant. Lago sees an opportunity and manipulates Cassio to ask Desdemona to convince Othello to give him his job back. However, Lago goes on the other side and creates doubt in the mind of Othello that Cassio has an affair with his wife. The event result to the death of Desdemona when Othello gets the special handkerchief, which was a family’s heirloom, in possession of (Serpieri 66). Roderigo also gets stabbed in the process after attempting to kill Cassio. Othello’s act of killing Desdemona while claiming to be the love of his life was wrong, and he could have enquired more from her before making a hasty decision.

Conclusion

It is clear that the two plays highlight the decisions made by the characters that I have condemned in the essay. The characters have played their role well in communicating the themes of the play, but in the process, they made choices where some were right, but others were questionable. The need for critical analysis on the choices made needs to be further researched to inform readers more of the reason for such decisions.

Works Cited

Baseer, Abdul, Sofia Dildar Alvi, and Fareha Zafran. “The Use of Symbolic Language in Ibsen’s A Doll’s House: A Feministic Perspective.” Language in India 13.3 (2013).

Bauer, Maximilian. ““But I do think it is their husbands’ faults If wives do fall.” A gender studies approach to William Shakespeare’s” The Tragedy of Othello, the Moor of Venice.” (2015).

Curtin, Jeffrey T. “From Narcissism to Empathy: Ibsen’s Plays in the Digital Age.” (2015).

Hanssen, Eirik Frisvold. “A Doll’s House and the Performance of Gender in American Silent Cinema.” Screening the Past (2015).

Henrik, Ibsen. A Dolls House. Xist Publishing, 2015.

Serpieri, Alessandro. “Othello and Venice: Discrimination and Projection.” Visions of Venice in Shakespeare (2016): 185.

Shakespeare, William. The Tragedy of Othello, the Moor of Venice. First Avenue Editions, 2014.