I think that Ibsen's point is that the manner in which
couples and people treat one another is something to be assessed. While Ibsen's work
speaks to how women's voice cannot be denied, there is a larger point in how the work
suggests that no relationship that is predicated upon the silencing of voice is
tenable:
Nora
Helmer, the "doll" wife, realizes after eight years of marriage that she has never been
a partner in her marriage. At the play's conclusion, she leaves her husband in order to
establish an identity for herself that is separate from her identity as a wife and
mother.
In this light,
Ibsen's statement becomes quite telling. The manner in which relationships are
constructed are often done so to benefit one person at the cost of another. This
becomes especially true in marriage, where routine and complacency can become so silent
and subterranean that individual voice is removed from such a configuration. If Ibsen's
idea of the work being about "human rights" is taken to its natural conclusion, Nora
leaving Torvald was because of the one- sided nature of their relationship. While
women's rights is a part of this, the larger and more human issue is that relationships
are often constructed where one partner silences another to their own benefit.
Intentional or unintentional, this is not an issue of gender, but of power and control.
In this light, Ibsen's work is seen in a much more compelling light in that it calls for
a reexamination of the roles in relationships and how partners interact with another,
being more mindful of voice and assertion of that voice in order to ensure that both
parties are heard and validated.
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