A Doll's House

[pomology]

I just saw a production of Henrik Ibsen's play A Doll's House.

It occurred to me while I was watching it that it perfectly encapsulates how fundies treat women--both their wives and their daughters. Like dolls.

It shows the bullshit that is female submission. Nora was perfectly happy to submit to Torvald until he proved that there was no way that submission was equal or fair or whatever fundies claim it is, because Torvald put himself first and thought of himself, not of her.

I commented to my father how the misogyny in the play bothered me (of course, before the ending when Nora takes things into her own hands and exposes the misogyny for the bullshit that it is) and he was like, "Yeah, it's hard to believe that this was only 130 years ago."

It's so hard to believe that a segment of our society still clings to this stuff.

I wish I could make every homeschooled fundie child read this play.

[luckylassie]

OMG! I had to read that play in High School and at my community college. I think that the way Nora is treated by her husband is the way A.T.I. women are treated also. IMO Torvald treats Nora like a little girl who cannot think for herself and she acts like a little girl to please him. Torvald has all these cute "pet names" for her such as "skylark", "spendthrift", and "songbird". Nora evidently has brains but is playing the dumb wife for Torvald.

[xDreamerx]

I read this in my Modern Drama class last term. I haven't seen it preformed but I recommend reading it. Yes, he does infantilize her, but I feel like she is the one with with agency. She goes to all the trouble to save him and his honour. She eventually leaves him because she can't take it. Gender was obviously a huge theme, but for me the more important theme was performance and appearance vs. reality. She was putting on a play for him the entire time.

[Cran]

Yepp, and I think the captioning of the fundie-lifestyle of today was kind-of intended by the author, as they try to teleport themselves into a victorian family-life (or what they think it to be), and it was made to criticize this and it caused an enormous uproar when it was first published/performed. SCANDAL!

[JesusFightClub]

I remember seeing a fundy discuss this. They HATE it. This person said it "caused feminism". She was also very angry with Brecht, for reasons which weren't clear.

Fundies pick up buzzphrases, though, and they don't really know what they are talking about. Same with rightwingers of a certain type. For a while I saw some of the dafter righties describe everything as Gramscian although I strongly doubted, given their general lack of brainpower and high levels of misunderstanding of his work, that they had ever read anything the man had written. That seems to have died down now.

[QueenNocturne]

I read this play in high school: I think I was one of the few in my class who actually got it.

I should mention that I absolutely love Henrik Ibsen's work and sadly have not yet seen "A Doll's House" on the stage (though I have seen "Hedda Gabler"...the fundies would have an apolexy at that one).

[pomology]

I remember seeing a fundy discuss this. They HATE it. This person said it "caused feminism".

I'm not surprised a fundie would hate it. The funny thing is, it was not only written by a man, it was written by a man who claimed to a women's rights organization that he could not be honored for for advancing women's rights because had not consciously worked for women's rights, and instead was just trying to describe humanity.

I'd say Ibsen had an apt perception of humanity.

Also, I'm not sure how it could have "caused feminism" considering that one of the landmark events of feminism (at least in the United States) the Seneca Falls Convention happened about 30 years before it was written.

Also, Ibsen must have already been a feminist to write the play in the first play.

Maybe, the fundie woman you're talking about is just angry that Ibsen captured so well the real cause of feminism: the fact that men did not treat women like human beings.

[dilannsmom]

I teach A Doll's House in my tenth grade honors class and Ibsen's Ghosts in my eleventh grade honors class. My favorite part is always telling the tenth graders that 1. Ibsen did not consider himself a feminist and 2. critics found the ending of A Doll's House so "controversial" that Ibsen was forced to change the ending if he wanted to see the play performed. Obviously the worry was women actually seeing that they had options outside of being first their father's doll and then their husband's. (Totally fundie there--the idea of going right from father to husband...Nora the stay at home daughter--of course!)