Ibsen Said That His Mission in Life Was to "inspire Individuals to Freedom and Independence
Summary:
A Doll House by Henrik Ibsen is basically about his revolutionary play that inspired females towards freedom. Henrik Ibsen was one of the first writers to use his plays to comment and analyse controversial social topics of the Victorian society. He used his writing as a way to express his belief that societies conditioning was holding individual people hostage.
Ibsen said that his mission in life was to "inspire individuals to freedom and independence." Discuss in relation to A Doll House.
Henrik Ibsen was one of the first writers to use his plays to comment and analyse controversial social topics of the Victorian society. He used his writing as a way to express his belief that societies conditioning was holding individual people hostage. He made it his mission in life to "inspire individuals to freedom and independence." Ibsen's distrust for society began when his family became socially disgraced due to poverty. His contempt for those controlling society advanced as he was swept up in the Revolution. He adopted new ideas of personal freedom against the monarch. These ideas are present in many of his plays primarily A Doll House. The play was revolutionary as the hero was a middle-class woman who rebels against her controlling husband so that she can discover her inner self. Through a Doll House, Ibsen demonstrates that it is far more important to have the freedom to express oneself and to be who you are than to adhere to social conditions that make you something that you are not.
In A Doll House, Ibsen is mainly targeting females to listen to his message of freedom. Women's rights started to become an issue in the nineteen century although society tried to marginalise the feminine movement by deeming it not worthy to be talked about in educated circles. Great thinkers of that time however, like Ibsen became distressed at the way women were treated, as if they were slaves. He believed that the problem was mainly due to the fact that society was dominated by men. "A woman cannot be herself in the society of the present day, which is an exclusively masculine society." It was discovered that 'women' had been artificially stimulated into 'the happy housewife' by the forced repression that men had put on them. Women of the Victorian society had therefore been so distorted that they were not natural. Ibsen showed this forced naturalisation through Nora. Nora was moulded into the perfect housewife by both her controlling father and her husband. "I've been you're doll-wife here, just as at home I was Papa's doll-child." (pg110) They both manipulated Nora like they would a doll. Her forced persona was also shown when the reader discovers that Nora puts on a 'lark' act for the benefit of her husband. She is disguising her true self and condones a façade so that she is still within the rules of societies conditioning, which was being a passive wife. Nora however breaks free from this control by leaving home so that she can learn who she is for herself. "Now I'll begin to learn for myself. I'll try to discover who's right, the world or I." (pg111) Nora was the way for Ibsen to express to women that they could break free from men's control by getting away from society and its traditional way of thinking and experience life for themselves. This was one of the ways A Doll House helped to inspire people to freedom and independence by teaching them to be themselves and not what society wants them to be.
Although a select few saw the inequality of the situation between men and women the majority did not. Society had naturalised man's control over women because it had always been the case, men had always been the dominant sex even in 'cave men' times. Nobody had experience anything different so women being inferior to men had never been a major issue. Ibsen sought to use his novels as a learning tool to break through society's views on women and to give women a chance to see what life can offer. Ibsen plays therefore did not just target men but also traditional women who did nothing to better their situation. He wanted to give women an image to reflect upon, a new woman who could be bold and speak out and thus Nora was born. Through Nora, Ibsen shows society that a woman too must have the freedom to develop as a mature, independent, and responsible person. Nora had been created to be the ideal domestic woman by the men in her life and by society's expectation and conditioning. In order to learn who her true self is she decides to leave her husband and children. This was why A Doll House was so ground breaking and shocking because it questioned a women's place in society, and asserted that a women's self was more important than her role as a wife and mother. This kind of thinking was unheard of; a woman would always first and foremost be a mother and wife. "Before all else, you're a wife and a mother. I don't believe in that anymore. I believe that before all else, I'm a human being," (pg111) It was a shock to people that such a thing was even talk about, a women abandoning her husband and children just to go on a path of self discovery.
A Doll House also targeted men by expressing to men that they did not always have to be 'pillars of society', that men and women could be equalised. He wanted to show men, that life at the moment was unfair and unnatural on women and soon women would fight back. Ibsen was concerned with the 'falseness' in society in general. He wanted explain that men and women have different ways of doing things and the methods won't work as well if they are mixed. That's why Ibsen was appealing to men also because he wanted to change the view, that only their way is the right way. He wanted men to realise that they did not have to be the 'pillars of society', women could think for themselves. It was a question of 'realising oneself,' and then freeing oneself from social restriction. Ibsen believed that once it had been shown to men that suppressing women was horrible, guilt would build up in their minds. Then stopping the suppression will be in the best interest of men as well as women because that guilt would disappear. Ibsen understood that men and women were created by God to complement each other. Men and women are perfect together, not man being higher in status than woman. This was a way to reach freedom by reaching your full potential. This freedom was shown in A Doll House by the character of Krogstad. Krogstad was freed from his malicious ways and thinking by Mrs. Linde who brought him out of his bitter shell with her love. "He's sent back your note. He says he's sorry and ashamed-that a happy development in his life" (pg107) At the beginning of the play Krogstad was a bitter man who blackmailed Nora to get him a job but the relationship he started with Mrs. Linde brought him out of that frame of mind. Ibsen wanted men to realise that if they were to break away from social conventions and treat women more equal that it would also free them not just women.
Ibsen used A Doll House as a vehicle to achieve his mission in life, which was to "inspire individuals to freedom and independence." Henrik Ibsen highly valued the individual's search for the true inner self and so wanted to express to people that they needed to break free and not bow to society's conditioning. A Doll House was an inspiring book for people of the Victorian society because it serves to focus attention on the whole issue of women's rights. A Doll house had an explosive impact on its time. People even blamed Ibsen for the growing rate of divorces. Ibsen had led the way in the freedom movement which saw a general victory in Norway for concepts of freedom and honesty, whether in history or natural science, in social or religious matters, in painting or in art.
