Doll’s House and Revolutionary Road: A Comparative Study on the Issue of Women

Akila Dalpatadu

"Is this all?"

The role of a wife and mother: The Russian bourgeoisie and the American suburban. The play Doll’s House and the film Revolutionary Road represents two married women imbued with the idea of becoming a person, an independent entity in a patriarchal society. The two works of art could be said to have been created by three iconoclasts: The play being written by Henrik Isben and the film being directed by Sam Mendes based on the novel by Richard Yates. They question the validity of feminine fulfillment while raising the ultimate issue of gender roles, the inability to accept women as independent entities, the lack of understanding on the part of their husbands and the difficulty in the women themselves to understand their own problem, the ultimate denouncement of women as hysteric-frivolous-narcissists, psychological violence, and the consequential attempts to seek liberalization.

It is often told and will be told that a woman’s role is to seek fulfillment as wives and mothers: “Over and over women heard in voices of tradition and of Freudian sophistication that they could desire--no greater destiny than to glory in their own femininity” ( Feminine Mystique, Betty Friedan).

She finds true feminine fulfillment if she lives for her husband, her children.

Both Doll’s House and  Revolutionary Road are quintessential work portraying this socially accepted role. Nora shops for her children, her husband. April does the laundry and carries the garbage bins outside. This mystique of prescribed gender roles that lay in the west led women to a state of confusion as to whether they were superior, inferior, or equal to men. While men in their closed rooms over a drink discussed business, politics, war; women in their small groups of mostly three or four spoke on how to make their husbands happy. His study, which Torvald was confined to during his presence at home and in which he entertained his guests who were all men, was never open to Nora. Even if she did enter, it was interestingly upon the permission of Torvald, her husband. April experiences similar oppression. She never visits Frank in his office in New York. She never moves around with his colleagues.

Having given up her dream of becoming a successful actress, April is now discontented with her seven years’ of marriage. Women were supposed to have no careers or simply limited careers. The prescribed gender roles are such that the men naturally thought that it was their duty look after the best interests of their wives by being their provider. When April decides to take up a sectarian job in Paris, the patriarchal society questions Frank in Shep’s voice “while she supports you”. This was the accepted position in the 1950s and no doubt even in the 1800s. A wife is not to make financial or business decisions. Nora’s financial decisions were concealed from the society. Even though, her decision to borrow from Krogstad was proven to be a bad judgement, it is not due to a deficiency of her gender, but the mere exclusion of women  by the patriarchal society  from knowing the shape and form of finance or to that matter business. It is also interesting to note in this context that the patriarchy allows and suggests only widows like Mrs. Linde to work in the absence of a patriarchal protector.

As Brad D. Parker in Gender Issues in A Doll’s House, points out in such patriarchal society women are not seen as independent entities. They are either the possessions of their fathers or their husbands. Nora cannot borrow without her husband’s consent. April’s decision to abort her baby is ruthlessly manipulated by Frank on the premise that April’s desire to abort is unnatural and un-womanly.  This depicts that the “entire society of the day was based on the assumption that women were only accessories to a man and would possess neither individual rights nor freedoms.” Nora mentions: “when a wife deserts her husband’s house...he is legally freed from all obligations towards her.”

Men fail to understand, neither does the woman herself: “you don’t understand me. And I’ve never understood you”  Frank does not understand April and on the other hand, Torvald fails to understand Nora. With the promotion and social acceptance of his abilities, Frank decides that things are better for him now. The men in the two stories seem to be highly self-centered. April says, “Frank knows what he wants. He’s found his place. He’s just fine. Married, two kids. It should be enough. It is for him.” Trapped, April struggles for her happiness which is exacerbated with Frank’s inability to summon the courage to be happy by thinking unconventionally. He is relived when April is trapped again with a pregnancy.  He simply orders April to condition her mind that she loves him despite his adulterous behaviour, despite his follies. Torvald only reveals his true feelings to Nora when he discovers that his social status will suffer no harm.  For Torvald Nora is only a ‘little squirrel’, a ‘skylark’. His conversations with Nora suggests that he is only interested in her physically and not mentally: “When I saw you turn and sway in the tarantella-my blood was pounding till I couldn’t stand it.” Torvald asks, “Can’t I look at my richest treasure? At all that beauty that’s mine, mine alone-completely and utterly”. He then commands: Aren’t I your husband?” It can be safely concluded therefore, that the difference between these male and female personalities arise out of their inability to communicate leaving the woman trapped and the man somewhat satisfied.

Both the drama and the movie reminds of Betty Freidan’s The Feminine Mystique. Both Nora and April share the same problem, the problem that has no name . Torvald and Frank never understood what their wives were talking about. They (both Nora and April) did not understand it themselves. They found it harder to talk about. They felt hopelessly neurotic and as it is often pointed out the problem isn’t sexual either. Simply, throughout the drama or the movie what they, the protagonists, and we, the viewers see is that they “feel empty...incomplete...as if they do not exist.”

April says, “if being crazy means living life as if it matters, then I don’t mind being completely insane.” Women are always denounced as irrational and frivolous narcissists. The original outcry of female liberalization of the 1800s was continued to the1900s and still remains in the open air. Nora becomes a case study of female hysteria, a willful, unwomanly woman. Towards the end of the film, Frank indirectly declares April insane for attempting to seek Nora’s solution for somewhat abandoning her family in a paroxysm of selfishness. Only John Givings, the apparently insane son of Mrs Givings, understands the real reason behind the female hysteria evident in women like April and Nora.

The belief that women were irrational and incapable to come into terms with their own problems, lead psychologically conditioned men to control them, both mentally and physically. It is now de rigueur to explain that household stress leads married women to be psychologically unstable. April yearns for peace, peace in mind. Yet, Frank continues, pressing her to speak of things she does not want to discuss for the moment. In April’s case, unlike Nora’s, violence leads from abusive words to almost physical violence. Psychological violence in Doll’s House is in the form of dominative patriarchal behaviour distorting Nora’s own identity. She is frequently interrupted by Torvald. When Nora was small she was told everything by her Papa, so she shared the same. Once she moved from her Papa’s hands to Torvald’s everything was arranged to suit his tastes and she ultimately came to have the same tastes as his, quite forcibly but in a kind tone.

She eats macaroons and brazenly offers macaroons to Dr. Rank, and the other plans an escape to Paris. The first revolutionary step is taken. April says to Frank: “Our whole existence here is based on this great premise...we are like everyone else. Look at us. We’ve bought into the same ridiculous delusion. This idea that you have to resign from life and settle down the moment you have children...It’s what you are that’s being denied and denied in thus kind of life...You’re the most beautiful and wonderful thing in the world. You are a man...” With a note of dismay it is interesting to note that towards the end of the story, both realizes and start to believe in liberalization, as Nora points out: “I believe that before everything else I’m a human being- just as much as you are... or at any rate I shall try to become one”. So, patriarchy a woman cannot be caged on the premise that feminine fulfillment is all that she simply deserves or created to be. She deserves more, and both Nora and April rises as a  phantom that appears visually and  cries out loud to the world that what is ‘more’ could  only be obtained through struggle, not tears. Nora’s exit from the dollhouse and April’s abortion, thus, becomes the international symbol for women issues, a solution that is yet, questionable under widely accepted moral standards.