Ibsen’s A Doll’s House and Strindberg’s Miss Julie
Introduction
A Doll’s House is the story of Nora Helmer, a loyal woman, and wife who tires off from the fatalism of a marriage life where she has to submit to her husband, Torvald Helmer. The play builds up around the happiness of Mr. Helmer, and Nora works hard to hide her strengths and abilities (Ibsen 50). The play ends with Nora growing weary with the relationship, and when Dr. Rank declares his love to her, she decides to break up with Torvald and elope with Dr. Rank. On the other hand, the play, Miss Julie, is a story of the Count’s daughter who is keen on eloping with a man from a poor background named Jean. Miss Julie’s engagement was broken by her boyfriend, making her feel stressed and worthless. All her life, Miss Julie grew with the understanding of the strength of women, and her mother was the greatest influence in their homestead, believing that women’s role in the society should be enhanced. When the estate was underperforming, Julie’s Dad took control, but he mother razed it down and proposed that they borrow money to rebuild it. Apparently, she was suggesting that they borrow the money from a secret lover (Strindberg and Meyer 27).
Analysis
The two plays meet at the point of questioning the role of a woman in the society. Both books are set in an era dominated by the male species, and the role of the woman was reduced to that of a helper. That meant women were viewed as auxiliaries to men, and those ideologies were ingrained in the society’s structure. The impact was that even women supported that idea and thought of themselves as servants, rather than as being equal to men. The general outplay was that a girl gets a husband, plays a good wife and gets kids for the man. That subservience is seen in both A Doll’s House and Miss Julie, as Nora spends the big chunk of her life trying to build a strong family for Torvald, while Miss Julie gets heartbroken when her engagement is broken, showing how much she yearned for an opportunity to have a husband and a home for herself and children in the future.
On the other hand, the plays indulge into romantic love and the sacrifices that come with it. In Miss Julie, Jean, the peasant’s son, explains how she had fallen in love with Julie, narrating how he broke into the farm of Julie’s father to catch a glimpse of her, and going to church with the aim of seeing her. Jean did not see Julie, and that damaged him to the point of attempting suicide. For Nora, when she became tired of her marriage to Torvald, she decided to move out with Dr. Rank, a man of average ways who was very respectful. Dr. Rank had been in love with Nora for a long time even though she was married to Torvald. The two incidences bring out the concepts of love and affection, and the fact that women did not see social classes or family ties as impediments to love.
The equality debate erupts in both plays at different times; we are told that Miss Julie’s mom was keen on the equal treatment of men and women in the society. She noted that a woman could manage the estate just like the man would do. In a society that had stereotypes on women, first as social objects, and, secondly, as a susceptible gender that stood higher chances of stress and hysteria (as seen in Miss Julie), she chose to stand by the idea that there is no difference between man and woman. At the point of awakening, Nora Helmer realizes that she has sacrificed her life for someone who did not care about her, and she gets to a point where she decides to rule her destiny by loving a man who appreciated her. These events raise attention on the way women were becoming self-aware and determined to break the glass ceiling on the blanketed nature that the society used to judge people; men and women (Harbin 16).
The idea of love as the locus of relationships emerges in the two plays. Miss Julie’s mother had an affair with a man who she thought could bail them out after their estate went ablaze. On the other hand, Nora loved the company of Dr. Rank, who was a constant visitor to her house. It meant that apart from the marriage arrangements, women held a deeper desire for love than men, and it did not matter whether the man they loved was the same man they were married to. Miss Julie tosses the idea of going to Italy with Jean and the house maiden, Christine, a thought that goes unresolved on the play. At the end of both plays, the subject of love passes at the point of triumph and failure, first, because love wins in the play A Doll’s House, but the same time, it fails in Miss Julie.
Conclusion
In conclusion, the two plays carry deep analyses of the nineteenth-century gender matrices that pitied love, gender, loyalty and male dominance against the rights of women. The idea of debt as a solution to financial problems comes up in both books, and by the end of both pieces, the audience is left fidgeting with the possibilities of both plays if they were continued (Nilsson 84). It suffices to say that both plays are feministic, at least to the 19th-century definition of the word, and they push for the rights of women.
Works Cited
Harbin, S. Julie. “Gender Differences in Rough and Tumble Play Behaviors.” International Journal of Undergraduate Research and Creative Activities 8.1 (2016): n.pag. Web.
Ibsen, Henrik. A Doll’s House. London: Theatre Communications Group, 1994. Print.
Nilsson, May. “The Dolls’ House: Dream or Reality? A Borderline Girl’s Psychotherapy.” Journal of Child Psychotherapy 26.1 (2001): 79–96. Web.
Strindberg, August, and Michael Meyer. Miss Julie. Eds. Jo Taylor and David Thomas. London: Bloomsbury Publishing PLC, 2006. Print.
