A Doll’s House and Top Girls - 2459 Words

A Comparative Essay of A Doll’s House and Top Girls Henrik Ibsen’s A Doll’s House and Caryl Churchill’s Top Girls both are a pillar of critical writing about the society they were originally produced in and have a central theme of the oppression of women, which makes them great sources of feminist reviews. Although Ibsen â€Å"abandoned the concept that the play was about gender roles† (Urban, 1997), the central question is beyond the original context within which the plays were produced and received. A Doll’s House can be regarded as criticism of the 19th century marriage norm, the work of the naturalist and the romanticist movement, whereas Top Girls considers gender roles and necessary sacrifices of women to be successful and rise above a†¦show more content†¦NORA: But our home has been nothing but a playroom. I have been your doll-wife, just as at home I was papas doll-child; and here the children have been my dolls. (A Doll’s House,Act 2) Ibsen’s belief about free will and equal rights in marriage is portrayed in the play and he shows a possible way to bring it through while in the meantime he alarms people what may happen if society does not change. Churchill deals with the question differently and puts emphasis on the sacrifice women have to make, pointing out that even if they have the right to live the way they want to - it does not necessarily mean that they have the same facilities. WIN: Let’s face it, vacancies are going to be ones where you will be in competition with younger men. [...] NELL: Because that’s what an employer is going to have doubts about with a lady as I needn’t tell you, whether she’s got guts to push through to a closing situation. They think we are too nice[...] (Caryl Churchill, 1984. Top Girls. Post production. Grat Britain: Methuen London in association with the Royal Court Theatre, Act 2) ‘All quotations are taken from this edition’ Top Girls tends to show that a pushy woman can achieve everything in life – even in business – like Nora did when she managed to obtain a loan and pay it back. The same is true for Marlene: â€Å"Despite her background, Marlene managed to create a good life for herself by working hard and apparently acquiring a decent education† (Petrusso). The difference is,Show MoreRelated Restaurant Scene in Top Girls Essay1631 Words   |  7 PagesRestaurant Scene in Top Girls The restaurant scene in Top Girls (TG) revolves around Marlene celebrating her promotion at work, it is purely female gendered, having no male actors present throughout the whole play. The significance of the five guests she has chosen to celebrate with promotes the hard work and sacrifices she has made in order to get where she is. This scene uses women of the past, to highlight struggles of women through the ages, encompassing the theme of women’s experiencesRead MoreThe Story Of An Hour By Kate Chopin955 Words   |  4 Pagesnot a glance of reflection, but rather indicated a suspension of intelligent thought. (53) When she gazed out through her open window, she was seeing her metaphorically unattainable freedom. It’s just like the glass ceiling metaphor, you can see the top, but you can never reach it because of the glass. The open window poses as an invisible barrier separating her from being happy. Mrs. Mallard can see her freedom but cannot obtain it because of her marriage. After reviewing the story a second time aroundRead MoreRealism and Ibsens a Dolls House Essay1527 Words   |  7 Pagesthe author strays away from romance and fantasy and leans toward the everyday life of real people and the negative aspects of their lives. The Norwegian author Henrik Ibsen captures the true essence of realism in his famously controversial play A Doll’s House. Nora is an idealistic wife who bows down to her husband’s commands and fulfills his every wish. When Torvald, her husband, fell sick she did everything she could to save his life, going as far as forging her dead father’s signature to receiveRead MoreEssay on The Face of Eating Disorders1599 Words   |  7 Pagesloc ated in the center of the room. As Katie began to take a seat, she opened the brochure’s cover and was alarmed when this beauty’s image gawked at her. With the title â€Å"Eating Disorder Awareness† printed across the top of the page, Katie read the alarming statistics about media’s affect on girls and their self-image. â€Å"The average model, dancer, and actor is calculated to be thinner than 95% of the population† (Briscoe 1). â€Å"Medical records show that anorexia nervosa is the deadliest mental condition, andRead MoreI Am A Hot House1015 Words   |  5 Pagesthe temperature at -14C. The reading had been displayed on roadside lights during our two-hour drive from Iceland’s main airport at Keflavik to reach the four-star, luxury Hotel Ranga. Now, as any of my friends would readily testify, I am a hot-house girl so the nearest I got to bearing any flesh was taking off my gloves to photograph my husband, wearing trunks and, bizarrely, a woolly golf hat, waving merrily from the steaming tub. Water was to become a constant theme for our four-night say in thisRead MoreEssay about Henrik Ibsen’s â€Å"a Doll’s House† - Feminism1435 Words   |  6 Pagesâ€Å"Feminism† Henrik Ibsen’s â€Å"A Doll’s House† is a play about a young wife and her husband. Nora and Helmer seem to be madly in love with one another and very happy with their lives together. Yet the conflict comes into this show when Nora brags to her friend Ms. Linde about how she had forged her father’s name to borrow money to save her husband’s life and how she had been secretly paying off this debt. Helmer finds out about this crime and is furious, until he finds that no one will ever knowRead MoreEssay on Womens Roles in Society2664 Words   |  11 Pageshousework, and pretty much taking care of their husbands. â€Å"The Story of an Hour,† by Kate Chopin,† A Doll’s House, Henrik Ibsen, and â€Å"The Yellow Wallpaper, by Charlotte Gilman are all literature pieces talking about the roles women have in society. In â€Å"The story of an Hour, the main character is not happy in her marriage, and she finds out that her husband go t killed, and she felt very free. In A Doll’s House, the main character is not happy with her marriage, because she feels that she is being treatedRead MoreBarbie s Influence On Women s Equal Rights And Opportunities1760 Words   |  8 Pagesopinion of the fashion icon, Barbie, has contributed an impeccable standard for young girls--from the unhealthy body images for girls to the low self-assurance Barbie has brought upon them. To counteract the previous statement, with the help of Barbie’s many job titles, women s equal rights and opportunities have flourished. The creator of Barbie, Ruth Handler, created her so that, â€Å"through the doll, the little girl could be anything she wanted to be. Barbie always represented the fact that a womanRead MoreIs Children’s Development a Universal Staged Process or a Social and Cultural Process?1547 Words   |  7 Pagesa model of 3 mountains. The largest gray and snow capped, the middle sized brown with a red cross on i t and the smallest was green with a house on top. Children were then asked to sit on one side of the model with a doll at the opposite side. They were asked to arrange three pieces of cardboard shaped like the mountains. They they were asked to chose the doll’s view from 10 pictures and finally what the doll would see from other view points. Children younger than about 7 were unable to see thingsRead MoreA People s History Of The United States Essay1818 Words   |  8 Pagesthe law. In Chapter Six, Zinn has mentioned, â€Å"Sexual abuse of masters against servant girls became commonplace. The court records of Virginia and other colonies show masters brought into court for this, so we can assume that these were especially flagrant cases; there must have been more instances never brought to public light.† Zinn has also used Harriet Jacobs’s story of Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl as an example for masters attacking female African slaves. It says, â€Å"à ¢â‚¬ ¦now I entered on