In the play A Doll’s House by Henrik Ibsen, the story follows Nora Helmer and the life she has with her husband Torvald Helmer, who treats her as if she is his doll. The play was written in 1879 and the play takes place in the same decade. Throughout the whole play, Henrik Ibsen demonstrates the importance that social class had in the nineteenth century. In addition to the importance of social class, Ibsen also reveals the role that people were expected to live up to during the nineteenth century. To express and show how it was during this time, Henrik Ibsen’s play shows how Nora and Torvald struggle to live in a society where you expected to act a certain way to uphold your social standing. The time that the play takes place is when there …show more content…
The expectations of the upper middle class was that a family be debt free, have good morals, and kids at home. The wife was expected to be a stay at home mom who takes care of the kids and serve her husband. In the play A Doll’s House you can see how of the expectations that the middle class play out. Torvald Helmer calls Nora his “little skylark”, who will follow whatever he says to do. Torvald Helmer is the man of the household and he manages the family’s money and the family as a whole. This shows how during the nineteenth century, women were not able to be who they really are because of the expectations that the upper middle class brings. During this time, society was seen as exclusively male which meant that females were judged in the point of view of a man. When Nora decides to leave her husband Torvald Helmer, it came as a surprise to people who read the novel during the time it was published. The expectation of women during that time was never turned away from because there was laws that defended the ideology. Laws during the nineteenth century kept women from voting or borrowing money without having the permission of their …show more content…
The play shows that Henrik Ibsen was concerned with the ideas of freedom and change. A Doll's House is a direct representation of these two ideas. Ibsen presented the idea of freedom through his play and it is shown when Nora leaves Torvald Helmer and is finally set free from being under his rule. Henrik Ibsen also showed the idea freedom by being the voice for women during the nineteenth century. This play, surprised many people because they would not have expected it to end the way it did, but it gave women the courage to embrace and take advantage of the freedom they now had. A lot of change came with A Doll’s House because it was a play that went away from the social norms that people were used to in the nineteenth