Summary of themes and links for Rossetti and A Doll’s House - Drama and poetry pre-1900 (H472)
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Course
Drama and poetry pre-1900 (H472)
Institution
OCR
This document provides information on eight key themes for Rossetti’s poetry and Ibsen’s ‘A Doll’s House’. There are also AO3 (context) points related to the themes and AO5 (alternative interpretation points) points related to the themes. I have included quotes for each theme, as well as ...
A Birthday - Love is as natural as the natural world
- Her heart is full of love
- Her heart is happy in a natural way
- ‘Rainbow shell’- Rainbow image, God sent a rainbow out to the world after he
helped Noah to escape the ood
- Her love is elevating her, even though it does not have monetary value, it still has
value
- Lyric love to christ?
Maude Clare - Marriage is a social expectation and a way of raising your status- similar to Nora
- Nell has achieved social respectability through her marriage
A Doll’s House - The Helmer’s are a comfortable family in terms of money
- Appearances of a family life but there’s no family there
- Very staged, could be anyones house- there is no individuality
- Appearance and reality
- The living room is a public space that has to be ready for public eyes
Love comparison A birthday
AB and ADH - Speaker is enriched through a pure love
- Sensual rich imagery, not greedy, using it to represent the wealth of her love
- More authentic love
A Doll’s House
- Nora’s love is a facade
- She realises she is not bene ting from being married so she leaves him
- Not pure love
Marriage Nora
comparison - Realises she has to sacri ce her identity for marriage
ADH + Maude Clare - Its a trap that she wants to escape from
Maude Clare
- Potentially cheated on
- She had earlier hopes of marriage to Them
- The gold chain represented her marriage
- Similar to Christine, married for wealth and both reveal the truth
Both
- Both use their beauty to in uence
Christine
- Has to give up her relationship because of circumstance
- For her, marriage needs to be linked to love
- Her future marriage to Krogstad will be one of equality as it was an active choice
to marry
- She has experienced a marriage like Nora
Nell
- Nell will su er because of Thomas’ crimes
- Thomas still loves Maude Clare more than Nell
- Similar to Nora
- Marriage of status
ADH-> ‘In attempting to behave according to convention they developed a marriage
based on illusion’ Myers.
Performative nature of the characters means that their marriage isn't based on truth, it's
based on pretence and illusions. It supports Ibsen’s interpretation as Ibsen’s main criticism
of the Bourgeoisie is that they want to appear a certain way rather than being real and
truthful.
ff fi fl flfi
, ADH-> “A Dolls House is about “Every woman's struggle against every man”
Templeton
Nora struggles to gain her independence from Torvald until the end of the play. However,
Christine doesn’t struggle against Krogstad so it is not true for every relationship.
R-> “Clear critique of dominant masculinity” (‘Maude Claire’) - Avery
Maude Claire is criticising Thomas and his masculinity or lack of.
Rossetti has a broken engagement to James Collinson. Loss of earthly relationships for
reasons of faith.
Rossetti read a lot in her youth, inspiration from this can be seen in depicting women
struggling to overcome romantic love
Gender and power
From the antique - She has no power because she is a woman- she has no power to change her life
- She feels that a woman’s life is ‘blank’ and that she may as well not exist at all
- The speaker gives a voice to many women of the middle class con ned at home
with no power to determine their own lives
- This was not published in Rosetti’s lifetime as she felt it was too personal
No, Thank you - Adopts a di erent tone than From the Antique
John - She is self assured in dealing with an unwanted suitor
- Her language is unambiguous and she is not afraid to contradict him
- She has the power in this poem
The World - This poem concerns the contrast between romantic, innocent love and erotic
desire. Rossetti’s narrator battles with the two contradictory, extreme forces, and
expresses the con ict in terms of night and day, good and evil, men and women?
- In many respects this is a disturbing poem, in that it places the responsibility for
the ills of the world on an unnamed ‘she’; that is, woman.
- human sinfulness is Eve’s fault because she was tempted by Satan in the Garden
of Eden and then she tempted Adam.
- She contrasts traditional romantic imagery such as ‘the moon’ and ‘sweet owers
with demonic night-time ‘pushing horns’ and ‘clawed and clutching hands’.
- It seems clear here that Rossetti is arguing that daylight wooing between a man
and a woman hides the sexual desire which lurks underneath. Sex is obviously
something demonic and sinful to Rossetti.
A Doll’s House - 19th century Norway was a patriarchal society which granted little power for
women
- Unmarried women needed special permission to undertake legal functions
- When she wants money she irts with him to get it. She is proud of her secret debt
and the way she has worked independently to repay it.
- Power struggle between Nora and Krogstad. He can reveal Nora’s secret about
the loan but she has the potential to persuade Torvald to get rid of Krogstad’s job.
- Torvald’s masculinity is re ected in his name. Torvald means ‘thunder power’. He
is part of the male sphere which Nora is excluded from
- For Laura Kieler, the strain led to breakdown and the asylum.
ff fl fl fl fi fl
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