Chaucer and Ibsen - critical views

Beidler - January, sexual politics

January is “emasculated by a wife who plays a knightly tole he should be playing“

Baruch - Nora, independence, religion

Nora is a “rehabilitated Eve who has the courage to leave her garden to search for knowledge”

R.M. Adams - Nora, gender roles

“like angels, Nora has no sex, Ibsen meant her to be everyman“

Strinburg - marriage, religion

“marriage was revealed as being far from divine institution“

Fiona Dunlop - femininity, deception

“women are forced to be manipulative in a patriarchal society“

Pearsall - Chaucer, morality

“reduces all human behaviour to lust and greed“

de Beauvoir - patriarchal order, female power

“patriarchal order can be conserved at the expense of all the women in society“

Meally - Chaucer, deception, morality

“chaucer makes the affair look like the moral option“

Brunner - Chaucer, May as property

“[May] is simply another piece of livestock, bought to fulfil a specific sexual and procreative purpose“

Dinshaw - female desires

“proper women in the world must conform their desires to the desires of others'; for the smooth operation of the system, women will desire the man to whom another man has traded her“

Dinshaw - female passivity

“female passivity is structurally required in patriarchal society“

de Beauvoir - female power

“the men need to make sure that the women are never allowed to rise in the social heirarchy and remain chained to their familial and marital lives rather than seek alternative identities and indpendence“

Zelinka - Chaucer, antifeminist

“Chaucer’s tales are not antifeminist literature but in fact anti-antifeminist literature, that is veiled praise of womanhood“

Sheridan - Chaucer, view of women

“for January, women are the same as commodities; both reflect only the value he gives them”

Bensen - Chaucer, deception

“trust the tale, not the teller”

Harrington - Chaucer, happiness

“we are left with a disturbing notion that a level of happiness is only possible through folly and self deception“

Ashe - Chaucer, marriage, class

“for the nobility, almost all marriages were arranged by the couples families”

Ellis - Chaucer, objectification of women

“[May] enters the tale as a blank upon which the men can write their desires“

Pearsall - Chaucer, Damyan, control

“Damyan is no mote than a poodle to this lady dog-trainer“

Dalbey - Chaucer, garden

January’s garden is “the underworld where Pluto and Prosperina alone determine the outcome“

Bathard-Smith - Chaucer, power

“the tale is not easily classed as misogynistic - the woman wins“

Hathway - Chaucer, deception, idenity

“all May has to do is adapt her idenity accordingly to win freedom for herself and allow her husband to scuttle back into the fool’s paradise he has fashioned for himself“

Lavender - Ibsen, religion, sacrifice

“Nora, to save Torvals’s position as a god to her, will soon determine to stave off disaster by sacrificing herself“

Valency - Ibsen, madness

“Nora is a case study of female hysteria, a wilful, unwomanly woman“

Templeton - Ibsen, feminism

“it can be argued that A Dolls house is not a feminist play because it lacks an overtly feminist heroine“

Paris - Ibsen, power, control

“Nora controls [Torvald] through her dependency“

Strongm Tufts - Ibsen, morality

Nora is “as much the exploiter of others as she has been exploited by them“

McNamara - Ibsen, power dynamics

“Torvald’s apparent ‘strength’ was wholly dependent on Nora’s ‘weakness’“

Duncan - Ibsen, work

“Nora has a gendered conception of appropriate work for women“

Shepherd Barr - Ibsen, gender roles

“Ibsen shows how both men and women unconsciously play roles they seem expected to play: the obedient wife, the authoritative husband“

Duncan - Ibsen, money

“access to money is highly gendered“

Cron - Ibsen, appearances

“Torvald is never allowed to remove his mask of masculinity, least of all by Nora who leaves him when he does so“

Ibsen - speech to Norwegian Women’s Rights League

“I must disclaim the honour of having consciously worked for the women’s rights movement…my task has been the description of humanity“

Archer, 1894 - Ibsen, Nora, purpose

“if [Nora] were really and essentially the empty headed doll we hear so much about the whole point of the play would be gone“

Shepherd Barr - Ibsen, Torvald’s emasculation

“Torvald switches roles [with Nora] to become the stereotypically hysterical feminine“

Hathway - Ibsen, Torvald’s victimisation

“Torvald is far more of a doll than Nora…he doesn’t see how he is even more entrapped through the gender role he unwillingly adopts as a man then Nora is as a woman“

Eyre - Ibsen, feminism

Ibsen’s “female characters are largely not paragons of female behaviour of feminist ideals; rather they are messy and flawed

Shepherd Barr - Ibsen, gender roles

“far from being villains, the male characters in the play are, like Nora, simply replicating patterns of behaviours that have persisted throughout most of history“

Wright - Ibsen, female liberation

“the protagonist enters a brave new world of female liberation which is neither endorsed not glorified but rather deemed necessary in the face of the oppression of the marital home“

Peterson - Ibsen ending

“ugly and distressing”

Brun - Ibsen ending, marital roles

“any real wife would throw herself into her husband’s arms, and the play’s screaming dissonances defy common sense“

Strongun Tufts - Ibsen, Kristine, marriage

Kristine’s relationship with Krogstad “is the only one she can desire, only one she can envision not because she s inherently selfless, but because it allows her to maintain an idealised image of herself“

Luepnitz - Ibsen, absent parents

“predominant family structure is patriarchal yet paradoxically, father-absent“

Paris - Ibsen, marriage, transactionality

“Nora’s relationship with her husband is based on a bargain she has made in her own mind. She will be a charming, obliging, self-sacrificing wife, and Torvald will love and protect her“