A Raisin in the Sun By Lorraine Hansberry

Last name 1

Atkinson 5

First Last

Professor Guerin

English 102-109

1 May, 2020

Toxic Gender Roles in A Doll House

Throughout history there have been certain expectations set in place for men and women, now commonly referred to as gender roles. It is expected of men to be hard-working, make critical decisions regarding their family, and to provide for their family’s needs, while women are to tend to the children and the household chores. As time has progressed, however, humanity has undergone several significant changes regarding these roles. Henrik Ibsen, often referred to as the father of realism, was a Norwegian playwright in the Victorian Era that cleverly used his art to convey what were considered controversial messages during that time. In Ibsen’s A Doll House, he displays how gender roles can be toxic to both men and women when they represent an imbalanced power dynamic.

For far too long, there has been an unnecessary expectation for men to prove their masculinity and Torvald Helmer is victim to this viscous, unattainable expectation. A man dares not let others think that he is not the man of the house, and that he is not the only one making important decisions. When Nora desperately wants Torvald to re-hire Krogstad and fire someone else, Torvald erupts and exclaims, “As long as our little bundle of stubbornness gets her way! I should go and make myself ridiculous in front of the whole office- give people the idea I can be swayed by all kinds of outside pressure” (1727-28). Not only does Torvald have to prove he is masculine and the man of the house, he feels as if he must prove he and Nora are perfectly happy, even if they are not. Later in the play, Torvald tells Nora “From now on happiness doesn’t matter; all that matters is saving the bits and pieces, the appearance” (1747). Green states that Ibsen’s play not only sends a message about the woes of women but of men as well. Green goes on to discuss how “Ibsen shows us that Torvald is under pressure to maintain an unrealistic masculine ideal” (Green 4). It almost serves to be a defense of Torvald, that he is merely acting like a normal man and doing what is expected of him by society when he viciously criticizes and judges Nora later in the play.

Torvald’s toxic masculinity is most apparent, in fact, in his dialogue with Nora. When Torvald is shouting at Nora and telling her that she is not fit to raise their children, it is easy to place blame on him. Elaine Hoffman Baruch makes an excellent point, though. Baruch points out that Torvald is also a “puppet” and that his freedom is also limited. Baruch also points out that, “Though he is permitted to live in a doll house, which provides a kind of refuge from a world of increasing bureaucratization, in other respects he is never allowed to take off his mask of ‘masculinity’” (Baruch 148). Torvald is just as much a victim to gender roles as Nora is thanks to society’s ideal image of a masculine male.

As the characters in the play suggest, it was not only men who were repressed in their roles in the Victorian period, but women were as well; however, although men were wrongfully required to uphold a masculine image, they still possessed more rights than women did and in fact, seemed to hold all the power in society. Nora describes herself as a “doll in a doll house,” an excellent analogy. For all of her life, Nora has not been capable of being her own person due to the restraints placed upon her by her father and husband. She tells Torvald that her opinions are her father’s opinions although she has her own and that she hid those opinions because her father would not have approved of them. When Nora finally gets the courage to explore and find out who Nora is, she bravely tells Torvald, “I believe that, before all else, I’m a human being, no less than you- or anyway, I ought to try to become one” (1750). Nora, a grown woman, has no idea who she is as her own person and “She can only express her individuality and act upon her own moral choices under cover” (Green 5). Denying a person their basic human right to individuality is callous and dehumanizing. Thanks to gender roles, Nora has always been someone’s doll, wife, and mother; she has never been just Nora.

A woman being repressed in her role is difficult to escape when the leading man believes that a woman’s sole purpose in life is to be a wife and a mother. Since the earliest recorded history, women have been treated as a man’s sexual play-thing, someone to reproduce the man’s genes in order to pass down the last name of the man from generation to generation. No human has the right to mandate what another human does with their life based on gender. When Nora decides to leave, Torvald desperately tries to manipulate her into staying by telling her that her duties to herself are not valid and asking her, “Aren’t your sacred vows your duties to your husband and children?” (1750). While it is sensible to see why so many people disagree with Nora turning away from her children, it is important to realize that being a mother is not a role that every woman wants to take on. However, Nora’s infamous exit is often still criticized simply because she does not stick with the status quo. Stephanie Forward said it best in her essay: “They regarded Nora as an unnatural woman for leaving her husband and children, because such behavior undermined and threatened the stability of society” (4). Even today, Nora is perhaps one of the most notorious rebels in theater history.

In the eyes of society, it is deemed acceptable for men to not want to marry or reproduce, but when a woman does not want to, it is assumed that there is something wrong with her or that she has an emotional void. This view is sexist and unjust. Nora’s love for her children is obvious in her conversation with Anne-Marie prior to her leaving, thus denouncing the theory that a woman has a void within her for not wishing to have children. Nora even asks Anne-Marie if she believes children can forget their mother after her being gone for so long. The mere fact that “She is denounced as an irrational and frivolous narcissist; an “abnormal” woman, a “hysteric”; a vain, unloving egoist who abandons her family in a paroxysm of selfishness” (Templeton 29) is disheartening. With many of Ibsen and Nora’s critics being male, it gives an example of what the male gender believes regarding a woman’s role.

Just as some men have stereotypical expectations for women, women can have the same unfair expectations for men. Since men are expected to be brave and masculine, women take this as a cue to expect men to be a hero of some sort. It is, however, in a man’s nature to protect the things and people he cares about, and Torvald proves this by telling Nora “Whatever comes, you’ll see: when it really counts, I have strength and courage enough as a man to take on the whole weight myself” (1728). Even though men are willing to face the trials and tribulations life may throw their way alone, it is erroneous of women to assume a man will protect them, simply because he is a male. Not only does this expectation put a man’s well-being and possibly his reputation on the line, it makes a woman seem weak, as if she cannot protect herself. As soon as Krogstad drops the fateful letter in the mailbox, Nora automatically assumes Torvald will swoop in and save her. Nora does not think twice about expecting Torvald to step in and take the blame. She only panics and tells Mrs. Linde that a miracle will now take place. However, Nora’s expectation backfires: “Nora too is unable to reach the ethical sphere, for as soon as Torvald fails to live up to her image of him, she rejects him” (Baruch 149). The same situation of toxic gender roles that she left to escape is placed upon Torvald. Her actions are unfortunate and display the amount of pressure that is placed on men to adhere to society’s rules.

With work such as Ibsen’s A Doll House, one can see how far men and women have come throughout history. Much progress has been made to put an end to gender roles, but society still has a far way to go to completely diminish these roles. In some ways, these roles have even been reversed by there being more women leaders among organizations and businesses and an increase in men staying home to care for their children. Many have fought tremendously and with passion for change, and society should be grateful for those who have paved the way for those changes. As we learn to live without the pressure of fulfilling such toxic and demeaning expectations regarding gender roles, hopefully men and women will be able to work and live together more harmoniously.

Works Cited

Baruch, Emily. “Ibsen’s Doll House: A Myth For Our Time.” Women, Love, and Power:

Literary and Psychoanalytic Perspectives, by Elaine Hoffman Baruch, NYU Press, 1991,

pp. 145-160. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctt9qftkb. 12. Accessed 1 May 2020.

Forward, Stephanie. “A New World for Women? Stephanie Forward considers Nora’s dramatic

Exit from Ibsen’s A Doll’s House.” The English Review, vol. 19, no. 4, 2009, p. 24+.

Gale Literature Resource Center, https://link-gale-com.bpcc.idm.oclc.org. Accessed 2

May 2020.

Green, Amy S. “Nora’s Journey through a Century of Feminisms to the Postmodern Stage of

Mabou Mines DollHouse.” Twentieth-Century Literary Criticism, edited by Jonathan

Vereecke, vol. 379, Gale, 2019. Gale Literature Resource Center,

https://link-gale-come.bpcc.idm.oclc.org. Accessed 2 May 2020. Originally

published in Feminist Theatrical Revisions of Classic Works, edited by Sharon

Friedman, McFarland, 2009, pp. 247-266.

Henrik, Ibsen. A Doll House. 1879. The Norton Introduction to Literature, edited by

Kelly J. Mays. Shorter 13th ed., W.W. Norton, 2018, pp. 1703-1753

Templeton, Joan. “The Doll House Backlash: Criticism, Feminism, and Ibsen.” PMLA,

vol. 104, no. 1, 1989, pp. 28-40. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable462329.

Accessed 2 May 2020.