Consider the relationship between the use of theatrical space and thematic development in Ibsen's A Doll's House.

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Consider the relationship between the use of theatrical space and thematic development in Ibsen's A Doll's House

The prominent theme in A Doll's House is that of male supremacy and the subsequent suppression of women's participation in society, particular to the nineteenth century and early twentieth century. In conveying the prevalence of Nora's constraints and the restrictions placed upon her, Ibsen uses subtle visual nuances of space within the setting to compliment and emphasise the idea of imprisonment and limitation. One of the most evident of these being the idea of the set on stage acting as a realist representation of a house, symbolic of the doll's house that Nora, the metaphorical doll, inhabits. This structural division of space into the interior and the exterior of the house carries with it social and cultural implications. Gender roles are spatially defined in relation to the inside and the outside of the house. Traditionally it is the woman who makes the house into a home, her home, while the world of commerce, war, travel, the world outside, is a man's world. Seeing the within and the without in terms of the outdoors and the indoors immediately transforms the theatrical space into