Character research paper Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1000 words

Character - Research Paper Example He unwittingly propels Nora to autonomy through a loan and unforeseen reactions. Henry Ibsen's productions upset social mores and were always controversial. "Of the many Victorian controversies and questions over art, morals and religion, none was more bitter and more provoked than....by Ibsen" (Decker 632). Ibsen's life portrays a man who experiences bankruptcy and economic downfalls which cause him to question the moral fabric of society. He constructs his plays with an underlying, often iconoclastic message. Family values are undermined by gender. Many of his plays were unpublished and unknown, because of bouts of failure at the box office. Ibsen left his family and migrated to Italy for twenty seven years where he became the father of modern prose drama. His life demonstrates the conflict between money and family. It should come as no surprise that A Doll's House exhibits a web of relationships with financial ruin as the prevailing fear and society's scorn as the main element to be averted at all costs. Ibsen greatly disagreed with traditional male and female roles. Ibsen's plays were classified as "thinking dramas" because of the philosophy. Ibsen feels that marriage is a union to be enjoyed in a couple comprising of equals and conveys a strong human rights message. A Doll’s House, written in prose, is grounded in realism which defaces society's idealized gloss on marriage and the male/female relationship. Girls and women usually cherish dreams of living in a tastefully designed doll house with a perfect spouse. However, Ibsen smashes these illusions by authoring a work which counters the supposed myth of forever happiness. He speaks against the child-like and dolled-up woman as the preferred ideal. In Ibsen's day, the woman had no right to take a loan without the confirming signature of a man and a married woman's leaving a man was an event rarely heard of. Thus, his plays stand as a poignant critique against the unequal status of women. The title, A Doll's House, connotes the role of the woman as a beautiful puppet, characterized with qualities such as superficiality, playfulness, lack of intelligence, lack of humanity and frivolity. However, in this play, the doll depicted as the woman of the family transforms and transitions Pinocchio-like into a real woman. "A number of Ibsen's drama's portray first the weak or displaced husband or father who lives in a world threatened by change and second, a woman who challenges the patriarchy" (Ross 242). The lead-female, Nora Helmer, comes into realization of her one-sided marriage and leaves her husband, coming into an awareness of her husband's lack of appreciation for her, his selfishness, and dominance - she recognizes that she is not self-actualized. Henry Ibsen also lays bare the difficult decisions in questions of morality and money. He mirrors his own life in his classic, A Doll's House in which characters must choose between life and moral obligations. In this situation, he u ndermines religion and its claims on individuals. A Doll's House unmasks the marriage problems of a bourgeois family and another demanding creditor. Want forms the