Nora’s Decision: A Revolt for both Women and Human Oppression

The topic of this paper is the pursuit of feminist autonomy in a marital relationship.  It will also raise the issue of whether feminist oppression in marriage is unique or is representative of other forms of human oppression.   The objective is to analyze, using feminist theory and other approaches, Ibsen’s A Doll House in order to come to some conclusions about depictions of gender expectations and the marital relationship. The research focuses on Nora’s psychological paradox in Ibsen’s A Doll House: an irreconcilable conflict between the individual’s need for autonomy and the emotional and social expectations of motherhood and marriage.  The questions on this aspect of this paper are the following: 1) how is Nora depicted initially in the play? 2) what are the forces that affect her? 3) what is the nature of her choice to leave?  Nora is depicted as passive and dependent and behaves as a good wife.  But Nora’s husband is an angry and self-absorbed man who is unkind to her and whom she believes will not change, and therefore her behaviors as a good wife cannot achieve a happy marriage for her.  This is the source of her irreconcilable conflict.  Ultimately, she “buys” her autonomy by sacrificing her relationship with her children.

In addition, this paper will include a discussion of the extent to which Ibsen’s play can be read on more than one level as being about feminist oppression or about human oppression.  Nora can be understood as a woman fighting against patriarchal oppression, or she can be understood as a representative of a broader class of victims of human oppression, whether male or female.  Do other victims of human oppression face similar paradoxes as Nora face? And do they have to make equally tragic decisions.    

Poetic conflicts in Julia Alvarez’s “Dusting”

            In her poem “Dusting” Julia Alvarez uses the poetic forms and different words to expose variations in repetition of each line to emphasize her conflict between her mother and herself. Particularly when she states, “practicing signatures like scales, while Mother followed squirting” (5-6) she wants to show that event though she has emotional problems with her mother, she keeps mapping her identity through her works.  

The second stanza continues shows that there are some contradicted principles between her mother and herself.  For example, “she erased my fingerprints from the bookshelf and rocker” (9-10), this exhibits that there is no harmonization between the mother and her daughter.   The other line, “scribbled with my alphabets” (12), shows that the mother intensely erases for whatever the daughter creates.

Eventually, for what the mother does exhibits that there are strong opposite attitudes between the two women, mother and daughter.  The daughter is searching her identity through writing, while, on the other hand the mother creates her identity through dusting.  This can be seen from the expression: “My name was swallowed in the towel with which she jeweled the table tops” (14).  This statement improves that the mother keeps dusting for whatever the daughter does.  While, on the other hand, the daughter keeps creating her painting ignoring for whatever the mother does.  Briefly, this poem shows the complexity emotion between her, a daughter, and she, a mother. The complexity comes from the way she call a mother till she change into she.