The Artist is Alive and So Are You

         We often find ourselves appreciation art, whether it be a song or a painting, and wanting what lies beneath.  We want more; we want significance.  For most of us, most of the time, who are experiencing art, is experiencing an interaction between the art themselves.  It follows that any significance is exclusive to the observer and, more importantly, unique to the observer.  The art stays the same and we change, you change.  The art is not the experience; your interaction with the art is the experience.  Any significance is individual and irrelevant to another’s experience and therefore unusual in deciphering meaning, specifically that which is meaningful to you.

            Keep in mind that the artist in question deciphers meaning in her work in the same way that you might.  A notable difference being that the artist’s experience with the work encompasses the creation processes and the creation, whereas on observer will usually only experience the finished work of art.  Whatever meaning the artist finds in her own work is not necessarily synonymous with the artist’s inspiration for crating their art.  It seems to me that many observers of art get caught up on what the artist’s inspiration was as if it was the artwork’s ‘true meaning.’  But there is no true meaning; you, and everyone, give meaning to the art.  If you’re bent on discovering the ‘artist’s intent’, than I would say that you’ve missed the point.  The point was for you to connect with the art in a personal way.  You must look inward for meaning because where you and the art meet is entail determined by where you are.  Your interpretation of art says more about you than it says about the art itself.  So what does it say about you when your interpretation focuses on the art’s meaning to someone else?

Worldly View

If only our personal issues were the worst of our worries, than we’d have few worries at all.  Take worldly issues personally to make personal issues the least of your worries.

A Life of Balance and Passion

            I entertain the notion that balance is the key to stability.  Finding balance in one’s life is not done without great introspection and self-actualization.  For me, it has becoming clear that in order for me to lead a balanced life, I must actively engage in all of my passions on a regular basis.  It is true that I am more passionate regarding some passions than others.  Regardless, I deliberately choose to engage in these passions equally.  Without a doubt, the result will be an unequal division of my time among these passions due to preference; this will balance my planed equality of time.

            In my case, there are five main passions which require my attention in order to lead a fulfilling life.  But to divide my time five ways after work would leave too little time to any one passion and would surely result in the casting aside of my lesser passions, which I maintain are also essential to my leading of a fulfilled life.

            The clichéd solution is to attempt to monetize something which you are passionate about.  Now you can do less “work” and have more time for you remaining passions.  But there is a problem; this, now monetized, passion would now consume far more of your time than it would otherwise deserve.  Too much may be as detrimental to appreciation as too little, with the added anchor of becoming a financial obligation.

            For this reason, one must only engage in a passion “part time” in order to not overindulge, leading to an exhaustion of the activity or run the risk of neglecting your other passions.  This may not be a problem for an individual who only has one or two passions, but in my case (as stated above) I have five passions.  Usually, one cannot sustain off of the income of one part time job.  But doing anything fulltime may be a potential detriment to life balance.  The solution is to reject the notion of any full time activity, resulting in a necessity to monetize two or more of your passions.  Finding a way to monetize any passion is problematic enough, but spending a substantial amount of your time (full time) engaged in passionless “work” would be a much greater anchor to your leading of a meaningful, fulfilling, and balanced life.

Unsociable

More juvenile than childishness is manliness.

In The Dark

I walk into a table in the dark, not because I am unaware of where it is, but because I am unaware of where I am.

The Tao of Feminism

            The struggle of women in the face of masculinity and patriarchy is no new dilemma.  The ancient philosophy of Taoism deals with this struggle in the context of constant wars.  By the twentieth century, the war seemed to be on women and feminism was its adversary.  These two ideologies beautifully support each other and are independently strong and persuasive.

            Taoism embraces and embodies many characteristics of femininity.  None are more prevalent than yielding and non-control.  These characteristics come as a response to the warring states period in eastern history.  In these constant wars, masculine characteristics were widely utilized as means to seize and control others. Taoism attempts to explain the advantages of yielding and non-control.

            “Return is the movement of the Tao.  Yielding is the way of the Tao” (Tao Te Ching 40).  Such a sentiment would be considered weak from a more masculine prospective.  The masculine would ask, “Shouldn’t the strong advance and firmly hold steady?”  The Tao would lead us to believe otherwise.  Even in the context of war, contracting compels the expansion of the opposition, widening the gaps in its armor.  The one who yields is flexible, and can withstand more than the rigid.  The flexible will endure a greater force before it breaks.  If the strong is not easily broken, than the strong is soft.  Although the Tao seeks peace, its feminine tendencies would fare better than the masculine against conflict.

            The Tao would have us believe that less is more.  That it is better to be content with some than to strive for excess.  “Fill your bowl to the brim and it will spill.  Keep sharpening your knife and it will blunt.  Chase after money and security and your heart will never unclench.  Care about people’s approval and you will be their prisoner” (Tao Te Ching 9).  One goal of yielding is the acquisition of balance.  As the world expands, we contract; as the world contracts we flow naturally into that void.  The masculine would believe that more is better.  Taoism more so suggests a balance that prevents ourselves from expanding to the point of conflict with our counter balance.  If having enough is the goal, having excess is as destructive as having deficiency.  Such is balance and the way of the Tao.

            When we yield and move away, what we gain is an increased prospective.  “Rather than make the first move it is better to wait and see” (Tao Te Ching 69).  The masculine might think that it is better to advance and enforce its own will.  Rather, it is as if a stone is attacking a pond.  The pond does not go out to oppose the stone.  The stone will plummet toward the pond while the pond lay still, waiting.  When the stone arrives, it is taken in by the yielding water.  The pond, therefore, envelopes the stone.  “When two great forces oppose each other, the victory will go to the one that knows how to yield” (Tao Te Ching 69).

            Many seek control to then make the world what they want it to be.  “The world is sacred.  It can’t be improved.  If you tamper with it, you’ll ruin it.  If you treat it like an object, you’ll lose it” (Tao Te Ching 29).  The arrogance of masculinity believes that if only it had control, the world would be greatly improved.  I think not.  The nature of the beast that is war, the mechanism of masculine conquest, brings damage to the very world it fights over.  Such damage is exemplified by the trenches of World War I which still can be seen as scars on the landscape of France.  “The Master sees things as they are, without trying to control them.  She lets them go their own way, and resides at the center of the circle” (Tao Te Ching 29).  The world is better left to its own devices.

            The Tao goes further to explain that the best outcome would be born from the natural course.  “Let go of fixed plans and concepts, and the world will govern itself… [The Master says] I let go of all desire for the common good, and the good becomes common as grass” (Tao Te Ching 57).  This is difficult for the masculine to accept because it mean s accepting that things are already better than he can make them.  Humility is required to let go of control, whereas the masculine thinks superiority is needed.  I think that the Tao shows a great optimism in human nature.  How can it be thought that people require controlling when those who seek control (the masculine) are people themselves?  People are naturally good, if left to do so naturally.  A masculine perspective seeks to control others.  So who is more fitting than the non-masculine?  Masculine efforts over the feminine have had no positive effects on people as a whole, but rather devastating effects on women.

            The male dominated control over women, throughout history, finally led to the feminist movement.  Feminism is a movement toward social balance for women.  Despite the achievements of feminist, women are still colonized by males.  Women are also conditioned to act in accordance with sexist stereotypes.  Despite a historical awareness of women’s struggles, this post-feminist construction is known as ‘enlightened sexism.’

            Cultural domination is a feminist prospective that is as undeniable as it is disturbing.  Women live in a world which is dominated by men and wen’s culture.  Women, similar to many races and nationalities, have been controlled and colonized by men.  This colonization is, in several respects, worse than other colonizations.  The first of these reasons is that women are a much larger percentage of the population to be oppressed.  The reality being that women are a majority of people on the planet.  But to make such large scale oppression worse, “women are not now in possession of an alternative culture, a ‘native’ culture which, even if regarded by everyone, including ourselves, as decidedly inferior to the dominant culture, we could at least recognize as our own” (Bartky 25).  Because women have no culture of their own to embrace, they are forced to embrace a culture which is systematically designed to subjugate the women embracing it!  Furthermore when that cultural standard is challenged, the women dominated by it will defend it.  This defense of a culture that oppresses the defender is most disturbing when it is exacted against its own liberator, feminists!  Now women are fighting against the liberators of women.  To be clear, women are not, in this instance, defending the men directly.  They are instead defending the stereotype of women which men have created to cage women.  This cage is the only identity that women have.  ‘What it means to be a women’, in the eyes of men, is what feminists attack.  Therefore, the next systematically oppressive device is to have women embrace their own stereotype under the notion that the stereotype is the expression and result of an already achieved liberation.

            The term for this is ‘enlightened sexism’ and has been used by feminist author Susan Douglas.  In her writings she defines this term as “a response, deliberate or not, to the perceived threat of a new gender regime” (Douglas 18).  Enlightened sexism suggests, falsely, that women have achieved complete liberation and equality.  “Indeed, full equality, has allegedly been achieved. So now it’s okay, even amusing to resurrect sexist stereotypes of girls and women” (Douglas 18).  But what about women’s lack of identity?  The answer from the patriarchy:  a pre-existing sexist stereotype of a sexualized woman who is primarily interested in men, motherhood, and being ‘girly’.  What is worst of all, the implied ‘equality’ possessed by women causes their women to reject any counter/cultural movement, such as feminism, that might challenge their, now supposedly liberated, place in society.

            The identity of women under enlightened sexism is exactly what men want it to be for their own purposes.  First, women are sexualized to make them mere objects for men to possess.  “Enlighten sexism sells the line that it is precisely through women’s deployment of their faces, bodies, attire, and sexuality that they gain and enjoy true power” (Douglas 18).  When really, this notion reinforces the sexual objectification.  This dehumanization solidifies the male dominated view of men being the rulers of ‘mankind.’  Next, as mothers women are expected to produce more men who will be considered superior to them.  Last, women are to be obsessively ‘girly’.  This cyclically enforces the first two stated aspects of the stereotype.  In the pursuit of being ‘hyper-feminine’ (exaggerated characteristics of the stereotype), women make themselves more sexual and more oriented toward children and homemaking.  Women have been subject to the forces of the male world that they were born into.  It is true to say that women have experienced a substantial amount of oppression, but they have endured.

            But is this ability to endure a result of the Taoist concept of yielding?  Has yielding been to the disadvantage of women?  No.  The disadvantage of women has been patriarchal policies of social inequality.  Historically, women’s feminine influence, such as yielding, has benefited humanity, even if men were in charge and being influenced by women.  The Taoist concept of yielding is even more applicable now, since the rise of feminism, in order to resist enlightened sexism.  If women can maintain an identity of the true feminine, like the branches of a flexible tree, then stereotypes won’t break it like a powerful wind.  It’s true that historically, women have bowed the lowest, but now that civil rights have been mostly achieved, social inequalities are one of the last weapons that the patriarchy has.  But how are women supposed to rise in a male dominated society obsessed with controlling women like objects?

            Remember, “If you treat it like an object, you’ll lose it” (Tao Te Ching 29).  And lose women, men surly will.  It can already be seen how women are moving up the social ladder.  This is most evident in education.  Some women are beginning to rise in politics and business.  This should not suggest that social equality is in anyway near, but it is considerably better than any recent historical period.  Taoism would have us believe that the patriarchal control over women is not to last.  The natural course is toward balance.  The more that the Tao is embraced and the lass that enlightened sexism is embraced, the more distant we will be from the cultural domination of women.

            Taoism more than supports the feminist agenda, it empowers it and provides women with a guide to the true nature of feminine characteristics, in contrast to the sexist patriarchal female characteristics.  At the same time, feminism fights to encourage women to move closer to a Taoist persuasion and farther from a patriarchal one.  The final victory of both Taoism and Feminism is for both genders, not just women, to embrace the ideas present in each respective discipline, to the benefit of all.

Works Cited

Bartky, Sandra Lee. Femininity and Domination: Studies in the Phenomenology of Oppression. New York: Routledge, 1990. Print.

Douglas, Susan J.  Girls Gone Anti-feminist. In These Times, 2010. Print.

Stephen Mitchell and Laozi,. Tao Te Ching. New York: HarperCollins, 2000. Print.

Humanistic Feminism in A Doll House

            A Doll House by Henrik Ibsen is a brilliant play that tackles many, still relevant social issues.  This play is an illustration of a humanist prospective of feminist issues.  The issues presented in the play pertain to the struggle which women were enduring and fighting against in the late nineteenth century.  Of course, such struggles existed before the nineteenth century and, sadly, still exist today.  The play was written in 1879.  Unfortunately, women would not see suffrage, at the earliest, until several decades after this play was written and takes place.  But this time was pivotal in the women’s rights movement.  Such a topic as women’s rights is a natural one for Henrik Ibsen, who was humanist.

           Today, A Doll House is widely considered to be one of the great feminist works of literature.  But wait, wasn’t Ibsen a humanist, not a feminist?  It seems that this play would be better described as a humanist work.  The reason for this is that feminism wasn’t a movement yet, and would not be for more than seventy years.  Feminism is a movement for the equal rights, opportunities and treatment of women.  These ideas fit under the scope of humanism.  Humanism is concerned with the same issues, but it extends to similar issues of race, ethnicity, nationality, age, and much more.  Henrik Ibsen may have written this play from a humanist prospective, but the specific issues addressed are very much of a feminist nature.

          A Doll House takes place in the late nineteenth century in Europe.  It is important to understand that women had almost no rights, whatsoever.  Women could not participate in politics or law, nor could they privately sign contracts or engage in business.  The only notable exceptions were widows who were then responsible for their late husband’s assets.  In the story, Nora (the main character) must go behind her husband’s back to save his life by borrowing a lot of money.  When the lender starts blackmailing Nora, Nora’s actions are revealed to her husband, Torvald, resulting in the end of their marriage.  Everything in the play masterfully leads up to and justifies the dramatic ending.

            Throughout the play, but made especially obvious during the beginning.  Nora is continually referred to by her husband, Torvald, as a squirrel, or other such pet name.  Pet names are usually used as terms of endearment.  It may very well be the case in this situation, at least from the prospective of Torvald.  Torvald may find it to be very cute and innocent, and Nora may also find it cute and innocent.  But it’s not.  What Torvald is doing by this, it reducing Nora down to the level of an animal.  He is literally dehumanizing her in, what is likely, an unconscious way.   We hear him use these pet names as much, if not more, than he uses Nora’s actual name.  Perhaps a respectful husband should not continually refer to his wife as a rodent.  It is very clear to the reader that it is insulting and demeaning.  It is a subtle expression of Torvald’s, and male society’s dominance over Nora.  It may be especially telling that Nora makes no comment of it and doesn’t seem to particularly mind it much.  After all, Torvald is not expressing any particular dislike for Nora.  Quite the opposite.  He is very satisfied as the man of the house and Nora just as a little squirrel.  Unfortunately, Nora does much more than tolerate these pet names.  She embraces them.

            We now must wonder why Nora does not mind living under such conditions where she is referred to as an animal instead of as a human or a woman.  The reason can be seen in several examples, but it boils down to a minor advantage.  When she is being ‘cute’ and playing along with Torvald’s name calling, she can then persuade him to give her what she wants.  Such behavior is simply a feminist nightmare!  Nora is actually embracing her own oppression.  Furthermore, she is encouraging the demeaning behavior by playing along with it.  The reason is that she probably has no memory of a time when she was not referred to by pet names and demand in this way.  Before her husband, Nora was likely talked to in this way by her father.  We, the readers, find it immediately appalling the way she is referred to.  But Nora has no baseline to judge such behavior.  She has never known anything different from this.  More so, she probably expects Torvald to act and speak to her in this way.  Another reason that she would embrace the oppressive behavior relates to what I mentioned earlier about Nora being able to get what she wants when she, herself, uses the pet names which she’s been given.  This may be the only time that Nora can ever exercise control openly with her husband.  She would surly not sacrifice even this small amount of power for respect.  Especially since society has promised her neither power nor respect.  As a matter of fact, society has given Nora almost nothing at all, either in the home or in the outside business world.

            The legal inequality that women of that time period faced, including Nora, is monumental.  Nora needs to do something as a simple as taking out a loan, but she is incapable of this by her own volition because of laws restrictive to women.  Much of the conflict in the story comes from the secretive nature of Nora’s exploits.  Even under secrecy from her husband, she must still have a man’s signature to take out a loan form a silent individual, not even an official financial institution.  But the salient point is this story is that it must be kept s secret from her husband.  It’s bad enough that society won’t legitimately let her take out a loan or sign a contract alone, but even her husband would not hear of such an action.  On the contrary, he would rather die than take the expensive vacation he needs to recuperate.  All of this is made painfully clear in the scene where Nora is confronted by Krogstad, the secretive lender of the money.  It is not Nora’s debt to him, but the truth of the existence of the loan that gives Krogstad the leverage he needs to blackmail Nora. The sexist tones become overwhelming as Nora starts to come to the conclusion that she is greatly disadvantaged by her ignorance of legal matters.  This realization will gestate in her mind until the conclusion of the story.  Her lack of business education is by design and a product of her oppressive society.  This financial setup is designed to inform us of Nora’s situation.  She is not only trapped in the confines of her home by her husband, that is merely a microcosm.  She is also in the confines of her society by all men.  When she exercised the forgery of her father’s signature, which is certainly a bad thing, she brings a great conflict onto herself because now only a woman signed the document.  Considering Nora’s defiance, it can be wondered if she would have done the same if she had a better knowledge of the system which confines her.  Nora realizes, as we do, that this treatment of her was present when she was a child and remains present in her life as an adult.

            Nora’s explains to Dr. Rank, and therefore to the readers as well, that she is not in love with him, despite all of the time she spends with him and flirting she does with him.  But first, we have to ask why Dr. Rank is in this play at all.  Why would Henrik Ibsen create a character that would love Nora just to be turned down by her?  The answer lays in Nora’s relationship with her father.  When she was a child, she loved her father and wanted to be with him.  But she found herself, not with her father much of the time, but rather with the servants in the servant’s quarters.  She did so because the servants gave her something that her father couldn’t or wouldn’t.  Respect.  The servants talked to her the same way that they talked to anyone and about anything.  They did not treat her different because she was a women.  From Ibsen’s humanist prospective, they treated her like a human, plain and simple.  Now we can turn to Dr. Rank and his painful rejection.  Dr. Rank and the servants form Nora’s childhood share the same function in Nora’s life.  Conversely, Torvald and Nora’s father share a similar role.  This time, Torvald is the one who won’t give her the respect by talking to her like a person about things that matter, and Dr. Rank is the one she turns to for a real conversation.  Unfortunately, Nora’s preference for Dr. Rank’s company is most misleading to Dr. Rank’s feelings.  Near the end of the play, and Dr. Rank’s life, he expresses his feelings of passion to Nora.  Nora must then reject him because despite her dissatisfaction with her husband, she does not want to hurt him.  Nor does she share the same feelings for Dr. Rank.  Nora would have been content with simply flirting and some good conversation with poor Dr. Rank.  The next minor character in A Doll House that we will look to for Ibsen’s depiction of women’s struggles is the character of Christine.

            The character of Christine was created by Henrik Ibsen to show the readers an alternative depiction of a strong woman.  She is meant to give us some prospective on what might happen to a woman who is, for whatever reason, independent.  This step-up will not pay off until the end of the story when Nora choses to leave Torvald and rely on herself.  Needless to say, the result of Christine’s venture into independence ends tragically.  Furthermore, Christine was in a more advantageous position to be autonomous than Nora will find herself in.  The reason for this is because Christine finds herself to be a widow, thereby possessing some default power over her late husband’s assets and an established business.  Despite this advantage, her business fails, partly as a result of her gender.  Despite her business effort, she got married for one reason, to be able to take care of her family while her new husband pays the bills.  Her gender role dictates that she must be the caretaker before anything else.  When her role as a mother overcomes her attention to the point where she must cease business, she then has no choice but to seek a new role as, again, a caregiver or anything else.  It is at this point that we are introduced to her in the story.  Except, we do not yet know that her struggle will mirror Nora’s, and perhaps foreshadow Nora’s exploits.  At first, she functions as a foil for Nora’s character.  Christine’s state being a great contrast to Nora’s state and allows us to understand Nora better.  Finally, Christine must revert to her caretaker role as her only method of helping Nora.  She can do nothing but use her feminine skills to become Krogstad’s wife.  This return to a wife’s status could be interpreted as a prediction to Nora’s future.  By the end of the story, when Nora is ready to set out on her own, we are meant to remember Christine as a warning or cautionary tale that reflects what Nora is very likely to encounter.  Christine serves as one of two other female side characters in A Doll House.

            The next female character is the nanny who cares for Nora’s children.  This character does more that marginalize Nora’s role as a mother and make her long-term absence understandable at the end of the story.  The nanny shows us a woman who is completely dominated by her role as a caregiver.  In contrast to Christine, who tries to overcome this role.  Not only is she confined to the caregiver role, but society has forced her to leave her own children to do so!  Her own children are left alone so that she can just serve others in the same maternal capacity.  This nanny not only is raising Nora’s children, but raised Nora when she was a child, severing Nora’s emotional connection with her own mother.  Likewise, Nora’s children have a stronger emotional connection to the nanny that with their mother.  What’s worse, Nora feels more distant from her children as well.  The nanny character gives us a more informed look at the role and condition of women in society.  The next supporting character that is probably the most influential to the plot of A Doll House is Nora’s Husband, Torvald.

            Torvald is portrayed as an affectionate husband who is also controlling and insensitive to his wife.  Henrik Ibsen is trying to show how men in general not just Torvald, do not treat their wives like real people.  The Feminist protective is that he is treating her, specifically, like a woman (at least how Torvald thinks a woman should be treated).  Either way there is a difference in the treatment and Nora is surely being treated poorly.  No scene shows this level of demeaning control over Nora than the scene where Torvald is instructing Nora how she is to dance at the party.  In this scene, Torvald is shaping her every move to be exactly what he wants it to be.  Under the context of dance choreography, this could seem permissible, even normal.  The reality is that this instance is a microcosm of their entire marriage.  The way he dictates her every move in the dance symbolized how he dictates her every move in day to day life.  In this scene, Nora is wearing a disguised for the party. This is a metaphor for how she is masked form her true self every day and all women too.  We also see how she is naturally much more wild and untamed before she is told how to be and how to act.  We can even read her off-beat performance as her natural tendency to stray form the rhythm of society.  Next, Torvald won’t let her go out until she has shown him her performance correctly.  This all serves as additions emphasis for how Nora and all women are being controlled and dominated by their husbands and other men in their lives.  However, Torvald does not control Nora for its own satisfaction; he is also using her to his own benefit.

            The dramatic finale of the play occurs after the big party.  Krogstad sends a letter to Torvald, revealing the truth about his arrangement with Nora.  When Torvald discovers that his wife went behind his back and forged a signature he gets most angry.  Torvald then explains how it must be a kept a secret and that he must give into all of Krogstad’s demands.  Nora was naively thinking that Torvald would take full responsibility of everything so not to put a mark on his wife’s honor, out of love.  At which point, Nora would insist on taking the blame herself.  Unfortunately, Torvald is only concerned with his own honor and his own reputation.  He says that his personal honor comes over love.  This statement shows extreme single mindedness (no wonder he ends up single) and a shallowness of prospective.  He takes no concern in the effect that the situation had on his wife or what his wife went through up until that point.  He also makes no attempt to understand his wife’s reasoning for her actions.  He instead choses to denounce all of his trust in her (as if he ever trusted her anyway), not only as a person, but as a woman and worse, a mother.  He actually tells her that she may no longer be trusted with the children.  Again, his single mindedness and shallowness of prospective results in Nora getting very hurt.  This hurt is nothing compared to when Torvald forgives Nora.

            Next, Torvald reads Krogstad’s second letter which relieves all debt and responsibility form Torvald and Nora.  Immediately , all of the consequences for Nora’s actions are dissolved; Torvald tries to act as if everything is back to the way it was before.  What Torvald doesn’t know is that the consequences to his actions with Nora haven’t dissolved.  Regardless of the consequences, Torvald revealed how little faith he had in Nora.  But worse, showed that Nora didn’t really matter to him.  All that really mattered to him was what effect Nora had on him.  After Nora realizes this truth, she has had enough.  She knows that she is not really being considered a person in the eyes of Torvald.  There is no mutual respect or equality, even in their private home.  She decides to leave him.  She tells him how she was always behind everything, making it all work and keeping it all going in the house.  She claims that she will then educate herself and become an engaged member of society.  This is the lesson that Henrik Ibsen wants everyone to take.  From this, we can infer that he thinks that Nora is taking the righteous action.  By this point in the story, we are glad to see a strong woman trying to overcome her oppression as a woman and a subordinate to her husband. 

            Nora takes the time to give us some prospective at the end in regard to her relationship to her father and how it compares to her relationship with her husband.  She tells how her father used to talk at her about many things.  She soon learned to repeat these same opinions and remain silent when she didn’t agree with them.  This same practice was use in the marriage with Torvald.  She just adopted and assimilated what she had to.  She was effectively colonized by her male dominated society.  Such colonization is nothing new, of course.  Too many of us know women who find themselves engaging in activities with the men they love, may they be familial or romantic, that they probably would not otherwise bother with.  The involvement or agreement is to facilitate bonding time without the benefit of actually bonding over the topic matter.  In the event of Nora, she starts to see these effects and realizes that they are a false form of connection that modern feminists would immediately recognize that Torvald made no attempt to assimilate into Nora’s Life.  The effective colonization of women usually creates a most agreeable spouse.  But in Ibsen’s A Doll House, we get to see the rightful response to female oppression.  The abandonment of the oppressor.

            Torvald goes onto insist that Nora is a wife and mother before anything else.  This type of gender role is exactly what Ibsen is trying to get at; any feminist would agree that this type of social construction is oppressive and sexist.  By this point in the story Nora is far beyond accepting any type of conclusion form anyone on how she should be.  As it was common for the time, the nanny was the primary caretaker for children of those who had as much money as Torvald did.  So that dissolves the mother role for Nora.  Next, she is far from thinking that at this point that her worth as a wife is at all significant to Torvald.  His comment is not only useless to its goals, but also offensive to Nora.  So actually, the mother and wife expectation is counterproductive to winning Nora back.  For if she is only valuable as a wife or mother, and is apparently not valued as either, why stay?  This part is so important to Ibsen because Nora is not being viewed as a human, but as a woman.  A feminist would agree and focus on the female aspect of the dehumanization. A feminist, like Nora, would not sit still for such treatment of so many.

            By the end of the story, we are left with a clear message that Henrik Ibsen is a humanist who is concerned with feminist issues.  That is why feminists love this play for showing women’s struggles.  Sometimes, A Doll House is translated as A Doll’s House.  This translation is most interesting because the possessive form of ‘doll’ suggests that the doll controls the house and not that the house is fit for a doll.  I hope that this and all insights are not lost on anyone who reads or watches this great play.