A Doll's House Patriarchy Essay

Nora is the protagonist in “A Doll’s House”, and the audience has a constant view of how the patriarchy impacts her throughout the play, as she is on almost always during the play. The impact the patriarchy has on Nora progresses more and more until it is clear that Nora is deeply unsatisfied with life and that she cannot bare her married life anymore. She even considers suicide, shown by the lines “Never, never. Oh, the freezing black water! The depths—down— Oh, I wish it were over” . This alone shows the watcher of the play the desperation that Nora feels, and sheds light onto the context of the play, set in the 19th century. Women were forbidden to borrow money without a signature of a husband or father, and a forged signature by a women
Christine is an old friend of Nora, widowed and penniless. She is an example of what Nora could be like without marriage and its security. They are two obvious example, perhaps by deliberate by Ibsen, of how their lives have been so influenced by the patriarchy and the male control figures they have had. The desperate reaction from Nora of her ‘shameful’ situation draws similarities to the impact of the patriarchy on the major female characters in ‘Hamlet’. For example, Ophelia is shown to be an obedient and loyal daughter, yet she is only seen as valuable in terms of her family’s honour and is used as a ‘pawn’ in Hamlets game of madness. When her father is killed, Ophelia is driven mad. Is this because the control figures in her life have gone and she is afraid of the unknown? In the article by Carol Thomas Neely, “’Documents in Madness’: Reading Madness and Gender in Shakespeare’s Tragedies and Early Modern Culture”, Ophelia’s madness is quoted as it being “her liberation from silence, obedience, and constraint or her absolute victimization by patriarchal oppression”. This is an interesting view on how the sudden loss of both her guardian, Polonius, has affected