Henrik Ibsen‘s A Doll’s House: A Postmodernist Study

Abstract

Henrik Ibsen is deemed as one of the major Norwegian playwright of the late 19th century who introduced to the European stage a new order of moral analysis that was placed against a severely realistic middle-class background and developed with economy of action, penetrating dialogue, and rigorous thought. Most of his literary works are often dissected from a modernist perspective; however notions like women's emancipation, irony, and conflict, have paved the path for critics to survey his works from various angles and terms. This paper tends to lay stress on the postmodernist dimensions of Henrik Ibsen's A Doll's House, a play which manifests different aspects of modernism as a common feature of Ibsen's works; nevertheless, demonstration of different notions of postmodernity cannot and will not be repudiated in the play. Those who have just read A Doll's House for the first time are suspected to have little trouble forming an initial sense of what it is about, and, if past experience is any guide, many will quickly reach a consensus that the major thrust of this play has something to do with gender relations in modern society and offers us, in the actions of the heroine, a vision of the need for a new-found freedom for women (or a woman) amid a suffocating society governed wholly by unsympathetic and insensitive men. It is frequently argued that the play's theme is not women's right or emancipation, but rather the need of every individual to find out the kind of person he or she really is and to strive to become that person. Throughout the play we can feel the dusty and shattered framework of Helmer's marriage, reflections of unbelievably egotistical behaviors of the characters and the endless pain of searching for one's self in the characters mannerism and meditation. This study begins with an introduction to postmodernism and then it will specifically accentuate some of the postmodern elements of A Doll's House.