Nora Helmer of A Dolls House Nora Helmer in a A Dolls House is a women ahead of her time. In order to protect her children from a false life, she inflicts tragedy upon herself by leaving everything she has by walking away. She puts herself in this tragic situation by not being honest. Nora lies to herself and the ones she cares about. Before she leaves her life is not her own person she is carrying on life as a role. Making others happy, instead of herself. A Dolls House by Henrik Isben is about a young woman and her life. The main characters name is Nora Helmer. She is married to a bank manager named Trovald. In the early years of their marriage just after their first child Trovald becomes ill. Doctors say that he will not live unless he goes abroad immediately. Nora takes it upon herself and borrows two hundred and fifty pounds from a money leader named Krogstad. She was dishonest with Trovald and said her father gave it to her. It was illegal because she forged her dying fathers signature on the document. Nora was unlike most women of her time period. Most women would be afraid to do the things Nora did. In the end of the play A Dolls House after the truth has been discovered about Nora she makes a very courageous decision. It was not heard of for a woman to leave her family , but Nora did. She did this because she knew if she stayed with the children it would not be fair for them. She was not best mother for her children even though she loved them like ant mother loves her children. When we learn that the model for Nora was intelligent and ambitious everything falls in to place. There is no need to wonder about motivation or changes of character sudden revelations (Hardwick). Nora is very wise in many of her ways. She planned to perform a dance at a ball just to dictract Trovald. When all the truth is discovered at the end of the play things become very tense between Nora and Trovald. In the raging depate over the morality of Noras behavior , however, it is all too easy to neglect Trovalds dramatic function in the play (Kashdam). After the ball, Trovalts rage and anger, e calls Nora a hypocrite, liar, and a criminal. He says she has no religion, morality, or sence of duty. Then as always he confesses his love to her and wants to take care of her. In the final dramatic scene of the play she explains to Trovalt that she feels like his little doll in a doll house. She leaves and wants no contact with Trovalt or children. Nora wants to begin a new life. All through out her marriage, she was not who she wanted to be, she was the perfect image of a wife. She walks away feeling excited, yet inside, is full of tragedy, and full of pride.
Jonson’s Volpone
Homosexual Overtones in Volpone
During the Renaissance, women did not participate in the theatre; hence, men, dressed in drag, played women’s roles. This particular characteristic of Renaissance drama adds many dimensions, erotic and social, to the spectacle on the stage. However, “The primary difficulty in surveying this landscape results from the strong indications that early modern eroticism was fundamentally different from that today. Consequently, the challenge deciphering what may be radically different cultural codes for the Rena issance is formidable” (Zimmerman 7). The interactions between cross-dressed boy actors and the adult male actors, by today’s standards, would be considered homo-erotic. In Ben Johnson’s Volpone, the role of Celia, the main female character, would have be en played by a cross-dressed boy; hence, many inferences about Renaissance eroticism may be made by exploring the element of cross-dressing and how it transforms the action on stage and the audience’s perception.
Celia (played by a cross-dressed boy) interacts with men throughout the play. The scene in which Volpone attempts to rape Celia could be construed as extremely homo-erotic. Volpone desires Celia, yet she refuses to succumb to his advances; thus he trie s to force himself upon her. Bonario is Celia’s true love interest, which also has homosexual overtones. The sexual and intimate interactions between Celia and the male characters creates an interesting dynamic. For instance, “When an actor in a male role did not need to impersonate adult-ness, his interaction with a cross-dressed actor, particularly a cross-dressed boy, change. Presumably, the adult actor, by virtue of age, voice, physical appearance and interpretive range, lent credence to the (usually) heterosexual valences of cross-dressing within that fiction. The dual lens on the dramatic action that the adult male actor provided was in all likelihood angled most directly at adult male spectators” (Zimmerman 46). The actors are interacting like hete rosexuals of the opposite sex, however, the fact that it is really two males blurs the lines of what the audience was actually seeing and enjoying.
Celia was obviously made to be attractive to the male spectators, because she is the main female love interest in the play. The male spectators may be attracted to what aesthetically appears to be a woman, or they may be attracted to an androgynous, cr oss-dressed boy. Hence, Celia’s appeal is twofold.
