The Significance of the Set in A Dolls House
The “A Dolls House” Set plays a significant role in the playwright’s attempt to deliver the themes of his work and is usually made after a careful consideration of the drama. Henrik Ibsen chooses the Helmers’ living room, a decent well-furnished house taken care of by the protagonist of the play Nora Helmer as the set of the entire play for various reasons. This A Dolls House Set Significance essay will carefully interrogate the set of “A Dolls House” and its significance in delivering the playwright’s commentary about his society and development of the characters throughout the play and depicting the conflicts between various characters (Ibsen).
A Dolls House Set Living Room
Being the protagonist of the drama, the selection of the Helmer’s living room, a play that Nora took care of or every day, was Henrik Ibsen’s way of helping his audience contextualize the play’s theme in Nora’s life. The playwright uses Nora’s living room to give his audience a sneak-peak into her mind, thus helping them make sense of her reality. Her living area’s constant presence grants the playwright the ability to win the audience biased in Nora’s favor and root for her throughout her struggles as the play’s plot unfolds.
By basing all the action on just one A Dolls House Set, the audience can view any action that happens outside of the Helmer’s household as an outside force that is of no relevance to Nora. Therefore, the audience can inhibit the protagonist’s thoughts of the play that important matter outside of her life like the Law is of no importance. Henrik Ibsen knows that confining his audience to just one setting can be frustrating to the audience, thus helping them understand how frustrating it is to be a woman in Nora’s world where the value of a woman only exists household setting (Ibsen).
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A Dolls House Set & Character’s Socioeconomic Status
As depicted by Henrik Ibsen, the Helmer’s Living area was well furnished and comfortable, and the selection of décor tasteful, but not lavishly depicting that the Helmers were middle-class. The Helmer family’s financial status is significant in understanding the theme of the play, which revolves around a loan fraudulently by Nora to help her husband. Therefore, the audience must note that the Helmer family was exposed to a substantial amount of resources; however, they were not self-sufficient.
The house’s furnishing also exposed the audience to Nora’s mind, a person who can utilize the resources they are exposed to effectively without wastage. The playwright clarifies that Nora is not in debt due to extravagance but her duty and dedication to her family. The continuous presentation of the house’s elegance also shows that Nora’s priority is her family, and he is very capable of taking care of it, something that she strives to achieve.
She begins the play by teasing Mrs. Linde and the audience that she could be having an affair and give the various scenarios of how that could be possible; the relationship between this scene and the A Dolls House Set shows that even though Nora is committed to her current life, she is open to the opportunities that life might present to her (Ibsen).
A Dolls House Set Revealing Character Psychology
The playwright uses the confinement of the audience’s attention to Nora’s living area to help her experience her naivety. Even with her sharp mind and dedication to being of use to her family and the society at large, Nora is not well-exposed in making her a naïve person. People who have been exposed to the outside world often take advantage of her lack of exposure to obtain whatever it is they want. Nora has no property of her own but influences her husband’s decisions, making her a potential target of individuals who want to obtain favors from her husband indirectly (Eslmieh).
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A Dolls House Playwright Analysis
The playwright is, therefore, able to help the audience understand the relevance of the title “A Dolls House” with Nora being the doll, she can be easily manipulated and used by other parties to pay whatever role they wanted, with all the action taking place in her house. Krogstad, the lawyer, was able to able to manipulate her by lending her money early on, and he later presents himself to her house to collect on his favor by using his loan agreement with Nora to coerce her into influencing her husband into getting him a position into his business (Ibsen).
A Dolls House Gender Roles
The playwright also uses the A Dolls House Set to depict gender roles and the role that Nora was expected to play in her house. Nora was always present on the A Dolls House set, her house, except for one instance at the beginning of Act III, when Krogstad and Mrs. Linde converse in her house. This depicts gender roles because her husband is not as available as his wife in their household. It is clear that in their world, the woman’s place is in the house while their husband goes out to seek the daily bread for the family.
It is a source of the conflict between the couple where Mr. Helmer is out to please the outside world while his wife’s primary concern is their household. Having realized this, the husband uses Nora’s dedication to the family to manipulate her to take a loan on his behalf, as she tried to impress him and the rest of society. The contract between the gender role in the society is well depicted in the drama “A Dolls House” due to the playwright keenness in relieving Helmer, his duty to his family so that he serves the rest of the society while reliving Nora her duties to the society so that she can serve her family diligently (Ibsen).
A Dolls House Set & Conflict
Henrik Ibsen also uses the contrast between the drama and Nora’s mind to depict the conflict that she can perceive and the limited reality to which she is constrained. The playwright ensures that the play of the entire play unfolds in one location, Nora’s house, where she is continuously present throughout the play. He then depicts Nora as a very open-minded person who can come up with various scenarios in life and develop solutions for the problems, which is evident in her conversation with Mrs. Linde when she told her of the various ways one can make money.
With all this capability, her society’s reality confines her to being a housewife who can barely help her husband without digging herself into an impossible situation (Charan). This conflict is used to show the amount of potential loss in a discriminatory society where a given demographic’s talent goes to waste.
The male chauvinistic society in which Nora lives wastes the human resource of almost half of the population after confining them to housework. The predicaments of this are elaborate on the A Dolls House Set of the drama, the Helmer’s living room which, even though it is decent, it does not depict expensive taste, which they might have been able to afford if Nora was contributing to the expenses of the household (Ragavi and English).
Work Cited
Charan, Swati. “Shift in the role of women in the society: Through the lens of A Dolls House by Henrik Ibsen.”
Eslmieh, Razieh. “The Development of Social Identity Stratum In Henrik Ibsen’s A Dolls House: A New Perspective To Identity.” People: International Journal of Social Sciences 3.3 (2017)
Ibsen, Henrik, et al. Doll’s House by Henrik Ibsen. International Business Publications Usa, 2009.
Ragavi, R. S., and I. I. M. A. English. “Feminist Analysis of HenrikIbsen’s A Doll’s House.” Greetings from the Vice-Chancellor: 298.
