On the Other Side of a Slammed Door in A Doll House

English 1020 April 1, 2000 On the Other Side of the Slammed Door in A Doll House Nora Helmer’s decision to leave her family in Henrik Helmers’s 1879 play A Doll House reflects the dilemma faced by many nineteenth-century women who were forced either to conform to highly restrictive gender roles or to abandon these roles in order to realize their value as individuals. Although Ibsen brings his audience to the moment that Nora chooses to disregard …

…to her role as dutiful wife and mother suggest that society was quick to punish disobedient women and that the slamming door at the end of A Doll House was not necessarily the sound of freedom for Nora. Works Cited Durbach, Errol. A Doll’s House: Ibsen’s Myth of Transformation. Boston: Twayne, 1991. Ibsen, Henrik. A Doll House. Trans. Rolf Fjelde. Meyer 1564-1612. ---. Letters and Speeches. Ed. And trans. Evert Sprinchorn. New York: Hill, 1964. 337.