Is A Doll's House a feminist play or a reformist play? How do you see the difference between the two categories? Examine the play critically and justify your answer.

      A Doll’s House is a reformist play as it aims at reforming society by ending the inequalities among people and giving them freedom and education for living a life of dignity and independence. Feminism basically means dealing with the issues of female and questioning the assumptions of patriarchy about women. It explores the way women are treated by patriarchy and subverts the values of that system based as they are on stereotypes for describing the abilities, tendencies and nature of woman. Reformist implies having a project/ program for reforming society by removing the bad practices related to inequality, discrimination, domination and injustice. Reform is not only related to ending the discrimination practiced against woman, it deals with various issues concerning the people as a whole. Though, A Doll’s House deals with the position of women in patriarchal society, Nora should be seen as an individual first before we talk about her position as a wife and a mother.
    A society is a group of different individuals. These people belong to different caste, class, gender, culture and groupings. Above everything else, everybody should be seen as a human being. No matter what role a person fulfills in a society he/she should be able to enjoy equal opportunities. Everybody should be free. In this kind of social environment individuals can explore their potentials to the fullest possible extent. They can live a self reliant, free and a happy life. Inequality, discrimination and injustice in any form hinder individuals from realizing their potentials. A Dolls House is a reformist play because it questions the prejudices and inequalities that exist in society. Nora as an individual is treated as a child by her husband. She has to accept all family affair liked by her husband. She has always been ruled and controlled by her husband. She cannot decide things for herself. Torvald Helmer is the puppet master and she is his puppet. Her life is without dignity and freedom. She is playing things for her husband. She has no education and no job so she is dependent on her husband. She works for her husband and exists for him. Her life is confined within the four walls of the house and it is a kind of imprisonment for her.
    When a society allows and individual to ill-treat another individual as inferior and subordinate, the society as a whole is tainted. Something must be done to change such society. As long as such ill practices are there in society we cannot call that society an ideal and a civilized one. By making Nora, leaving her husband and children, the dramatist is serving a great blow to a society where all individuals are not equal. At the end of the play when Nora is leaving home she says that her duty towards herself is more important and primary than to her duty towards husband and children. First and foremost she is an individual. Her role as mother and wife is secondary. She leaves home to educate herself by gaining the first hand experience of life and world. She needs to empower herself as an individual so that she would no longer have to live the kind of life that she lived as wife and mother.
    Hence, A Doll’s House aims at reforming society by advocating equality for all. When all individuals are equal and only they can live a life of freedom and dignity. Then only society as a whole will be a better place to live in.

What is the signification of the slamming of the door in the last scene of A Doll's House.

    Nora, the protagonist of Ibsen’s much discussed play A Doll’s House is a developing character. In the earlier half of the play we see her as a submissive wife and a dutiful mother. As she knows her husband more she becomes aware of her own position and more self-conscious. All her life she has lived according to her husband’s will with no sense of self. Her patronizing and domineering husband is a representative of the patriarchal society. Her slamming the door at the end of the play is thematically significant because it symbolically stands for Nora’s revolt against her husband and by extension a slap on the face of patriarchy.
    Nora was dominated and controlled by her father before marriage and afterwards her husband was the agency for dominating her. Helmer never treated her as equal. He treated her as his chattel. She existed for her husband. However, she had always expected that her husband would come to her aid when she will be in trouble. She had been waiting for miracles to happen in the Krogstad’s case too. She had the fear that the villain would expose everything and their family would be undone. Contrary to her expectation, her husband behaved like a hypocrite concerned more with morality and a notion of social prestige not with his wife’s welfare and care. He came out in his true colors. Read More...

Nora's ultimate decision doesnot stem from her need to seek freedom from marital life alone, but the need to establish her identity as a person. Discuss?

    Nora, the protagonist of Ibsen’s problem play A Doll’s House takes the bold decision to abandon her husband and children at the end of the play not primarily to be free from marital life marked by domination of her husband but to educate herself so that she can stand on her own thereby enabling herself to establish her personal identity and to develop a sense of an individual.
    As the play opens, we find Nora as a passive recipient of whatever treatment is meted out to her. Her husband is always trying to impose his will on her and she is expected to behave the way he wants her to. She cannot eat the things she likes and cannot spend money at her will. She is expected to conduct herself as told by her husband. Helmer treats her as his personal property. She has no sense of individuality. Before marriage she was controlled by her father and after marriage she was under the control of her husband. She moves as gestured by the norms of the patriarchal society. She is no better than a child-bearing machine confined with in the four walls of the house. Read More...