Critical Views (ADH) Flashcards
Haugen
“Ibsen’s Nora is not just a woman arguing for female liberation; she is much more. She embodies the comedy as well as the tragedy of modern life”
Brustein
Ibsen was “completely indifferent to [the woman question] except as a metaphor for individual freedom”
Adams
dismissing feminist claims for the play he said “Nora has no sex. Ibsen meant her to be Everyman”
“it’s real theme has nothing to do with the sexes”
Valency
“Nora is a carefully studied example of what we have come to know as the hysterical personality – bright, unstable, impulsive, romantic, quite immune from feelings of guilt”
Lee
“Nora realizes she has always been controlled by other people’s desires not her own”
Scott (Victorian critic)
no other way Torvald Helmer could have “treated his restless, illogical and babyish little wife otherwise than he did”
Daves
the play is a “battle against the brutal society”
John Stuart Mill
“all women are brought up in the belief that their ideal of character is submission and yielding to the control of others”
(feminist) Tarantella dance
she is dancing and using her sexuality to her advantage.
However, you could also say that by dancing she is still conforming to societal expectation.
Krogstad interpretation
Robert K Merton (Strain theory) 1938 – Merton (1938) concluded that Americans were socialised into believing in the American Dream – that people’s goals should be success and material wealth. However, equal access to those goals did not exist: there was a strain between the socially-encouraged goals of society and the socially-acceptable means to achieve them. People were socialised into believing that to achieve the American Dream they had to work hard and they would succeed because the society was a meritocracy. Individuals made various adaptations in response to this strain, some of which were likely to lead to crime. Krogstad could be said to have suffered from this strain.
Duce
thought in 1893 that the dance symbolized Nora’s exhaustion.
A Dolls House (1973 film version)
Fonda (as Nora) tries to seduce Torvald to distract him from the letter.
