i know this is long but pleeeeeeeease help me.
writing a paper on A Doll's House (Ibsen). I need to write a 7 page paper, so it has to be pretty specific, but there's so many different ways to go i can't decide on a topic. help. it's due thursday also.
options:
1) the importance of individual happiness over societal/family roles. specifically: comparing Nora (lead of A Doll's House) to Mrs. Alving, the lead of Ghosts, another Ibsen play. Mrs. Alving attempted to run away from her marriage but the priest convinced her to go back to her husband who was an alcoholic and cheated on her. she stayed with him until he died and was miserable the whole time. The priest tells her "All this demanding to be happy in life, it's all part of this same wanton idea. What right have people to happiness? No, we have our duty to do, Mrs. Alving!" (Ibsen 113). At the end of a Doll's House, Nora leaves her husband because she needs to learn how to be independent and happy.
2) syphillus in ibsen plays as a symbol of how parents' mistakes, feelings, and attitudes are passed down to their children there is a case of syphillus in each play, so i could compare both for this one also. theres also a lot of talk about how deciet plagues a house and stays in the air, a la the crazy "miasma" beliefs of the late 20th century. also common to believe that juvenial delinquents came from a dishonest mother. -- therefore nora leaves her family out of fear of hurting her kids
3) feminism as humanism Nora wants equality not superiority. For this one i'd talk briefly about Chaucer's The Wife of Bath Tale where the main point is that what women really want is to rule their household (over their husband). i'd argue nora wants equality, to rule equally with her husband and to have an influence over him in his decisions instead of being treated like a pet.
4) The Tarantella as a symbol for the death of Nora's old self and rebirth as an independent woman the tarantella is a really fast italian dance - named after tarantism, a disease that caused hysteria and was thought to be the effect of spider bites. nora dances it in act 3 right before the climax. i'd talk about continual death imagery/symbolism, she expicitly says she's dancing for her life, maybe talk about how hysteria is considered a feminine attribute, therefore her calmness as she tells torvald she's leaving him makes her no longer feminine...
help. please. i'll love you forever.
ok help for the love of god.
Moderator: aquaphase
ok help for the love of god.
I myself am hell;
nobody’s here—
nobody’s here—
are you just looking for help on deciding a topic? personally, i like #4, but of course i would. i think it's the least overdone of all those topics (i mean, come on, how many papers have been written on a doll's house since it was written?). i just checked my hard drive for my theatre history paper on a doll's house, but for some reason, it's spliced with my critiques on beckett's "endgame," and kopit's "oh dad, poor dad, mama's hung you in the closet and i'm feeling so sad" (which i LOVED and highly recommend). if you want some more references, i can probably get some papers from my friends who i'm sure still have their papers.
i dunno if this helps with anything, but it's interesting. at the end of a doll's house, when nora leaves, she slams the door. the door slamming was the first proper sound effect used in theatre and is often referred to as "the door slam heard 'round the world." the fact that the door actually made noise when slammed was a BIG FRICKIN DEAL at the time, and it was the creation of sound design for theatre.
if you want to chat about a doll's house or just toss ideas back and forth, feel free to pm me. i know the play really well and i love talking theatre, so i'd love to help.
i dunno if this helps with anything, but it's interesting. at the end of a doll's house, when nora leaves, she slams the door. the door slamming was the first proper sound effect used in theatre and is often referred to as "the door slam heard 'round the world." the fact that the door actually made noise when slammed was a BIG FRICKIN DEAL at the time, and it was the creation of sound design for theatre.
if you want to chat about a doll's house or just toss ideas back and forth, feel free to pm me. i know the play really well and i love talking theatre, so i'd love to help.
dread stuff
NEW ETSY NEW ETSY NEW ETSY
[But if I cross paths with him on Farm Town I'll harvest the fuck out of his trees and not even say thank you.] -jimbo.
NEW ETSY NEW ETSY NEW ETSY
[But if I cross paths with him on Farm Town I'll harvest the fuck out of his trees and not even say thank you.] -jimbo.
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NerfHerder
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I just finished my own 10 page paper on Islamic law, adultery and stoning Muslims to death. I used logic to contradict the Qur'an with the Hadith (the two bodies from which Islamic law is derived) in respect to the topics above.
So I'm not too keen on starting up another large paper just yet. Or even thinking about one, really.
So I'm not too keen on starting up another large paper just yet. Or even thinking about one, really.
Def. #4. I hate A Doll's House as a feminist work, it seems to me like the boogieman version of feminism that people warned about when they were trying to keep women from voting. The slippery slope. It's much better as a story of individualism / insanity, cuz I think Nora was about 75% nuts.
"There are many fish in the sea, Maria. But you're the only one I want to mount over my fireplace." ~Walter Matthau
I'm not familiar with these works, but I do have some info that may support some of your arguments. For #4, it is important that what was formerly diagnosed as 'hysteria' by Freud, Charcot, Janet, etc. is now thought by psychologists to be a form of post traumatic stress disorder resulting from incest and sexual abuse of these women when they were young. This may help, or it may not.
Also, if you are still interested in the intellectual history of the subordination of women - here are some highlights from my notes.
Euripides – Medea(c. 480–406 BC)
“We women are the most unfortunate creatures.
Firstly, with an excess of wealth it is required
For us to buy a husband and take for our bodies
A master; for not to take one is even worse”
Plato(c. 427–c. 347 BCE), – “Plato was both dualistic and misogynist, and his negative views about women were connected to his negative views about the body, insofar as he depicted women’s lives as quintessentially body-directed” (Spelman 1982:40)
Aristotle 384BC, died 322BC Greek philosopher. Aristotle argued that men and women have different kinds of reason. A man's reason fits him for government, a women's reason fits her for domestic life.
Kant (22 April 1724 – 12 February 1804), “Woman regardless of age is declared to be immature in civil matters; her husband is her natural curator” (Kant 2006:103) “One can only come to the characterization of this sex if one uses as one’s principle not what we make our end, but what nature’s end was in establishing womankind; and since this end itself, by means of foolishness of human beings, must till be wisdom according to nature’s purpose, these conjectural ends can also serve to indicate the principle for characterizing woman – a principle which does not depend on our choice but on a higher purpose for the human race. These ends are: 1) the preservation of the species, 2) the cultivation of society and its refinement by woman kind” (Kant 2006:207)
Rousseau (June 28, 1712 – July 2, 1778)- Women are closer to nature than men. They do not partake of the general will to the same extent as men as their closeness to the biological functions of childbearing and rearing makes them too concerned with defending their individual family to share in the rationality of the wider culture. This is very important for society and politics. Women, although unsuited to take part in politics, inspire men to patriotism because they stir in men the desire to defend their hearth and home. By arguing for separate and different reasons in men and women, Rousseau develops the tradition of Aristotle.
Mary Wollstonecraft (April 27, 1759 – September 10, 1797)- If, in reality, women tend to use their reason to flatter men, it is because male dominance has perverted reason. Reason is the same in women and men, and the future well being of human beings depends on all of us exercising our reason to establish rational human relations.
Schopenhauer (February 22, 1788 – September 21, 1860)– “You need only look at the way in which she is formed, to see that woman is not meant to undergo great labor, whether of the mind or of the body. She pays the debt of life not by what she does, but by what she suffers; by the pains of childbearing and care for the child, and by submission to her husband, to whom she should be a patient and cheering companion. The keenest sorrows and joys are not for her, nor is she called upon to display a great deal of strength. The current of her life should be more gentle, peaceful and trivial than man’s, without being essentially happier or unhappier. Women are directly fitted for acting as the nurses and teachers of our early childhood by the fact that they are themselves childish, frivolous and short-sighted; in a word, they are big children all their life long—a kind of intermediate stage between the child and the full-grown man, who is man in the strict sense of the word. See how a girl will fondle a child for days together, dance with it and sing to it; and then think what a man, with the best will in the world, could do if he were put in her place”
John Stuart Mill (May 20, 1806 – May 8, 1873), - Mill and Taylor argued that, after the basic necessities of life have been met, freedom is the most important human need. Freedom meaning, for them, the opportunity to develop one's own life according to one's own values, rather than living, however comfortably, under the control of someone else. The working class, they argued, were rightly taking this power into their own hands. Women, they added, should do the same.
Freud (May 6, 1856 – September 23, 1939) - Freud, therefore saw a distinction between male and female (personalities) as having a central effect on the content of our minds. He disagreed with those theorists (e.g. Plato, Wollstonecraft, Taylor and Mill) who had argued that, in almost everything except physical organs and ability to bear and breast feed children, men and women are essentially the same.
Also, if you are still interested in the intellectual history of the subordination of women - here are some highlights from my notes.
Euripides – Medea(c. 480–406 BC)
“We women are the most unfortunate creatures.
Firstly, with an excess of wealth it is required
For us to buy a husband and take for our bodies
A master; for not to take one is even worse”
Plato(c. 427–c. 347 BCE), – “Plato was both dualistic and misogynist, and his negative views about women were connected to his negative views about the body, insofar as he depicted women’s lives as quintessentially body-directed” (Spelman 1982:40)
Aristotle 384BC, died 322BC Greek philosopher. Aristotle argued that men and women have different kinds of reason. A man's reason fits him for government, a women's reason fits her for domestic life.
Kant (22 April 1724 – 12 February 1804), “Woman regardless of age is declared to be immature in civil matters; her husband is her natural curator” (Kant 2006:103) “One can only come to the characterization of this sex if one uses as one’s principle not what we make our end, but what nature’s end was in establishing womankind; and since this end itself, by means of foolishness of human beings, must till be wisdom according to nature’s purpose, these conjectural ends can also serve to indicate the principle for characterizing woman – a principle which does not depend on our choice but on a higher purpose for the human race. These ends are: 1) the preservation of the species, 2) the cultivation of society and its refinement by woman kind” (Kant 2006:207)
Rousseau (June 28, 1712 – July 2, 1778)- Women are closer to nature than men. They do not partake of the general will to the same extent as men as their closeness to the biological functions of childbearing and rearing makes them too concerned with defending their individual family to share in the rationality of the wider culture. This is very important for society and politics. Women, although unsuited to take part in politics, inspire men to patriotism because they stir in men the desire to defend their hearth and home. By arguing for separate and different reasons in men and women, Rousseau develops the tradition of Aristotle.
Mary Wollstonecraft (April 27, 1759 – September 10, 1797)- If, in reality, women tend to use their reason to flatter men, it is because male dominance has perverted reason. Reason is the same in women and men, and the future well being of human beings depends on all of us exercising our reason to establish rational human relations.
Schopenhauer (February 22, 1788 – September 21, 1860)– “You need only look at the way in which she is formed, to see that woman is not meant to undergo great labor, whether of the mind or of the body. She pays the debt of life not by what she does, but by what she suffers; by the pains of childbearing and care for the child, and by submission to her husband, to whom she should be a patient and cheering companion. The keenest sorrows and joys are not for her, nor is she called upon to display a great deal of strength. The current of her life should be more gentle, peaceful and trivial than man’s, without being essentially happier or unhappier. Women are directly fitted for acting as the nurses and teachers of our early childhood by the fact that they are themselves childish, frivolous and short-sighted; in a word, they are big children all their life long—a kind of intermediate stage between the child and the full-grown man, who is man in the strict sense of the word. See how a girl will fondle a child for days together, dance with it and sing to it; and then think what a man, with the best will in the world, could do if he were put in her place”
John Stuart Mill (May 20, 1806 – May 8, 1873), - Mill and Taylor argued that, after the basic necessities of life have been met, freedom is the most important human need. Freedom meaning, for them, the opportunity to develop one's own life according to one's own values, rather than living, however comfortably, under the control of someone else. The working class, they argued, were rightly taking this power into their own hands. Women, they added, should do the same.
Freud (May 6, 1856 – September 23, 1939) - Freud, therefore saw a distinction between male and female (personalities) as having a central effect on the content of our minds. He disagreed with those theorists (e.g. Plato, Wollstonecraft, Taylor and Mill) who had argued that, in almost everything except physical organs and ability to bear and breast feed children, men and women are essentially the same.
all of those quotes piss me off except for maybe the one by Kant, who i like a lot. yeah of course a woman is going to have a "maternal instinct" if she is programmed to have one her whole life. and of course men will be better at math and science if women are never called on when they're little and they're told they're better suited to writing novels and knitting.
grr.
men and women are the same, they just have different parts. women are no more likely to have a "natural" maternal instinct than men are, nor are they more likely to suck at math, nor are they more likely to suck at politics, nor are they more likely to feel feelings, i.e. "get hysterical".
grr.
men and women are the same, they just have different parts. women are no more likely to have a "natural" maternal instinct than men are, nor are they more likely to suck at math, nor are they more likely to suck at politics, nor are they more likely to feel feelings, i.e. "get hysterical".
I myself am hell;
nobody’s here—
nobody’s here—
yeah i dont think i can do any kind of feminist argument because i get too hysterical and can't focus, after all i'm just an irrational woman.
feminism is humanism anyway. a feminist is someone who believes men AND women should have equal social, political, economic (and psychological) rights. it's for equality not female superiority. therefore its only different from humanism in that it focuses on how women aren't equal, which humanism should focus on anyway.
grumble grumble.
feminism is humanism anyway. a feminist is someone who believes men AND women should have equal social, political, economic (and psychological) rights. it's for equality not female superiority. therefore its only different from humanism in that it focuses on how women aren't equal, which humanism should focus on anyway.
grumble grumble.
I myself am hell;
nobody’s here—
nobody’s here—
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