A Doll's House Evaluation

Nicole Molee
Mrs. Johnson
Honors English 10
20 Dec 2011
The Difference of Morals Between Genders
John Gray, a novelist, once said, “Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus”. In this he meant that women and men are completely different. This is true in the play A Doll’s House written in 1879 in Norway by Henrik Ibsen because Torvald and Nora do not understand each other and do not treat each other as equals. At the end of the play, before Nora leaves she makes a comment on how her and Torvald never had a serious conversation. This shows that Torvald and Nora, like most men and women in 1950, have completely different morals. Men focus more on reputation while women focus on love, and this is exemplified through Torvald’s reaction to Krogstad’s letter and Nora’s defense of her forgery, yet this is not completely true in life today.
After a thorough reading of the play, I have concluded that men’s morals mostly focus on their reputation and appearance. This is exemplified through Torvald’s emotional explosion after Krogstad’s letter was delivered. Torvald says:
The matter must be hushed up at any cost. And as for you and me, it must appear as if everything between us were just as before--but naturally only in the eyes of the world. You will still remain in my house, that is a matter of course. But I shall not allow you to bring up the children; I dare not trust them to you. To think that I should be obliged to say so to one whom I have loved so dearly, and whom I still-. No, that is all over. From this moment happiness is not the question; all that concerns us is to save the remains, the fragments, the appearance— (Ibsen 179).
Torvald, in this quote, shows that he does not care about what Nora has gone through, or what she might do to herself. He didn’t even think about the legal aspects about the forgery. He only thought about Krogstad and the repercussions of the letter, and his ruined reputation. The quote shows that Torvald, and all men, have their...