A Doll's House - Henrik Ibsen

Ha dit not been for some considerate person I would never have even touched this play. I found it in a make shift library where you can leave your books in exchange for others. I was sceptical as I have read some other Ibsen (Master Builder) and not enjoyed the experienced. This, however, reads like a dream. It centres around a couple who have a social standing but the husband has been out of work for a while, although he is due his first wage in April. In terms of money is a tight ar$sed chauvenist who thinks his wife fritters away what little they have spare. He is a typical male of an era when men were men and women merely trinkets. The ...  Read the complete review

Note: this is an adaptation of one of my University essays written in 2008. Copyright Shaun Munro. ~~~ "No other dramatist had ever meant so much to the women of the stage" - Elizabeth Robins on Henrik Ibsen. Henrik Ibsen's play A Doll's House chronicles the attempts of one woman (as well as a wealth of ancillary characters) to find freedom in a hegemonic, patriarchal society. It is an extremely important literary work in the field of gender studies. In A Doll's House, Ibsen initially decieves the audience; the opening act seems to reinforce the social hegemony of the late 1880s, in which women were seen as ...  Read the complete review

A Doll House was the first of Ibsen's plays to create such a HUGE sensation and I think it is now perhaps his most famous play. It is my favourite Ibsen play. At the time when it was published, the play was highly controversial due to it's blatent criticicism of the standard Victorian marriage. About the author Henrik Johan Ibsen was a Norwegian playwright of the late 19th century. He brought to the European stage a whole new order of moral analysis that was placed against a very traditional middle-class background and developed with economy of action, powerful dialogue, and gusto thought. Basically, Ibsen wrote for and about the middle class and ...  Read the complete review

This is undoubtedly one of the greatest play's ever written, Ibsen draw's on what he percieved as the ill's of society in his time and as a result has created a play that is more accepted and appreciated by today's society than it was by his contemporary audience. At the time there was such an outcry about the end of the play (I won't spoil it for you) that Ibsen was eventualy forced into writing an inferior, weaker ending. If however you can get hold of a copy of his re-written finale then it is worth it if you wish to see deeper into his society. Ibsen's time, when public image was everything and real life didn't matter is likeley ...  Read the complete review

A Doll's House caused controversy when it was first shown because, Heaven Forbid, a woman stood up for herself and said "I want to be my own person". There was an Anti-Ibsen League formed too. Feminism aside, Doll's House is also a story of desire, conjugal rites and rights, and the oppressive nature of upper middle class society in the 1800s. Ibsen manages to create such a claustrophic atmosphere from the outset and builds up to a dramatic climax which has you biting your nails and wanting you to give the husband the biggest slap you could muster. The humour is dark, the plot thick, and the characters superb a randy drunken patronising husband ...  Read the complete review