"Cliff Notes - Doll's House, A" - читать интересную книгу автора (Cliff Notes)

characters from seeing and expressing their true nature. When
Krogstad tells Nora that the law takes no account of good motives,
she cries, "Then they must be very bad laws!"

At the end of the play, she realizes she has existed in two
households ruled by men and has accepted the church and society
without ever questioning these institutions. In the third act, Nora
separates herself from the "majority" and the books that support
them. "But," she says, "I can't go on believing what the majority
says, or what's written in books. I have to think over these things
myself and try to understand them." The individual has triumphed
over society, but at a heavy price that includes her children. When
Nora walks out the door, she becomes a social outcast.

2. DUTY TO ONESELF

Ibsen seems to be saying that your greatest duty is to understand
yourself. At the beginning of the play, Nora doesn't realize she has
a self. She's playing a role. The purpose of her life is to please
Torvald or her father, and to raise her children. But by the end of
the play, she discovers that her "most sacred duty" is to herself.
She leaves to find out who she is and what she thinks.

3. THE PLACE OF WOMEN

This was a major theme in late nineteenth-century literature and
appeared in Leo Tolstoy's Anna Karenina, Gustave Flaubert's Madame
Bovary, and Thomas Hardy's Tess of the D'Urbervilles, to name only a
few.

Ibsen refused to be called a feminist, preferring to be known as a
humanist. He had little patience with people, male or female, who
didn't stand up for their rights and opinions.

Still, he argued that society's rules came from the traditionally
male way of thinking. He saw the woman's world as one of human
values, feelings, and personal relationships, while men dealt in the
abstract realm of laws, legal rights, and duties. In A Doll's House,
Nora can't really see how it is wrong to forge a name in order to
save a life, but Torvald would rather die than break the law or
borrow money. This difference in thinking is what traps Nora.

However, for Ibsen, the triumph of the individual embraces the right
of women to express themselves. In the end, Nora's duty to know
herself is more important than her female role.

4. APPEARANCE AND REALITY

At the beginning of the play, family life is not what it seems. Nora
is Torvald's "little squirrel"; they appear to have a perfect