Nora Helmer vs. Miss Julie - the Role of Women being Degraded by Man

Authors Avatar

Nora Helmer vs. Miss Julie – the Role of Women being Degraded by Man

“A Doll’s House” by Henrik Ibsen and “Miss Julie” by August Strindberg are two plays, the first from 1879 and the latter from 1888, which portrays the life and role of women at their time in society, as both have as their main characters two women – Nora Helmer and Miss Julie. Still, the role of women in the two plays is shown to be different. Strindberg, in one hand, conveys in “Miss Julie” that women are inferior in the society, as he pictures them as a less important form of human beings. In the other hand, Ibsen portrays Nora, at a first look, to be a standard innocent wife – showing women to be plain wives, mothers and working at home at the eyes of society. In order to show the need for change, Ibsen illustrates and emphasizes the subordination of women in the social pyramid. The purpose of this essay is to make a comparative analysis in order to understand the lives of these two women and the roles they’ve taken up in each play.

In “A Doll’s House”, Nora is a housewife married to Torvald Helmer, and she stays at home with her children and managing the household. This is the typical life of a standard wife at that time. Ibsen leads on the play, penetrating and unveiling Nora in a subtle way conveying a huge effect. At the beginning he illustrates Nora to be taking the most normal life, and Torvald to be the husband who goes to work, and earns the money to support his family – the usual patriarchal society of that time. Nora just seems to be like a doll, as perfect a wife and mother can be, and innocent too, as she is completely dependent on her husband. She also has a childish behavior towards Torvald as she speaks to him in a foolish way “Pooh, we can always borrow till then”, at other times she has small attacks of disobedience and she is irresponsible in an immature way.

Join now!

“Oh, do, Torvald…please, please do!  Then I’ll wrap it in a pretty gold paper and hang it on the Christmas tree.  Wouldn’t that be fun?”

The role of men and women can be seen to be different at this point since the men is the one earning the money through his work and the wife spends it on house duties.  Therefore Torvald is able to manipulate Nora because he is the one in control of the money.  

“…Just like your father – always on the look-out for all the money you can get, but the moment ...

This is a preview of the whole essay

Here's what a teacher thought of this essay

Avatar

This is an interesting essay and a very difficult subject to write about as there are so many similarities and differences. There are some errors of expression which make the writer's meaning unclear at times. Quotes are appropriate but are sometimes too long and although they highlight comments there needs to be analysis of the language used in the quotes. There is some social and historical context. Some mature and insightful comments are made. *** 3 stars.