How was your understanding of cultural and contextual (literary) considerations of the novel developed through the oral exercise?
When I first started reading the play I was prepared for it to be a little backward since I had the knowledge of it been written in the 19th century and set in Norway;in which time day to day life and the culture was very closed and what it’s called now is backwards. In the beginning of the play, I felt really bad for Nora when she was referred to as a pet or belittled in the play by Torvald; to me, personally being equalled to someone’s pet is offensive, it depicts how that person is likely to treat you and especially in today’s date a women have jobs and they are independent more like how Ms. Linde is in the play. Ms. Linde’s actions made me question why Nora couldn’t stand for herself given that they both belonged to the same century but I couldn’t resist disliking Torvald throughout the play, I found his character very annoying at times for his actions. In the very end we do see Nora standing up for herself and making her own decisions and she totally shuts Torvald out. Although Nora’s act of bravery causes for the couple to separate, deep inside I felt good about their divorce which is something that I would normally find devastating but in this case even Nora knew her marriage was going to last only until the time she was pretty to Torvald’s eyes but once her body starts aging Torvald wouldn’t care about her existence as much I find it very absurd for a man to stop loving his lady because of her looks. Also Ibsen has set this play near Christmas time, Christmas is supposed to be a happy occasion where the family gets together, buys gifts for each other, decorate the Christmas tree and it all adds up to happy and cheerful events whereas in the play the family is going through a very tragic time in their lives and the couple, instead of discussing the matter and try to find a solution to their problem Nora’s hiding it from Torvald unlike in today’s culture where a couple would try and work things out between them.
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