Literature
Compare the marriage in A Doll’s House with that in “The Necklace”
The play “A Doll’s House” and the short story “The Necklace” have shown two different marriages of the two couples, the Helmer and the Loisel. Different lifestyle and different way of treating their marriage and each other.
The play “A Doll’s House,” Torvald and Nora Helmer lives a late nineteenth-century furnished comfortably and tastefully but not extravagantly house. Wherein they have their pianoforte, porcelain stove, a couple of arm chair and rocking chair, and a carpet. There were engraving on the walls and a small bookcase filled with handsomely bound books. They have their maidservant and nurse for their three children. This just shows that the Helmers are well off family.
In contrast with that, in the short story “The Necklace,” Loisel and Mathilde suffer from poorness of their house, from its mean walls, worn chairs and ugly curtain. With their round table covered with a three days old cloth.
Torvald was appointed to be the manager of the bank and they earn heaps of money while Loisel is a clerk of the Ministry of Education. Nora and Mathilde both are delighted with material wealth but the difference is that Nora is living in it while Mathilde is only imaging a life of wealth.
Nora was treated by his husband Torvald as a helpless child and relates her as like an object to be possessed. This is most evident when he refers Nora as his little “lark” and a “squirrel.” And he also repeatedly calls her as his “little one” or his “little girl” making his approach like a father and not as a husband, treating Nora like as child and not as his wife.
He does not view Nora as an equal but rather as a plaything or doll to be teased and admired. Generally, Torvald is overly concerned with his place and status in society, and he allows his emotions to be swayed heavily by the prospect of society’s respect and the fear of society’s scorn
Nora is so dependent with Torvald in almost everything. She was isolated from reality. She doesn’t care about the world she lived in. She relates the outer world primarily as material objects. She has to do whatever Torvald tells her to do even with his diet. What is forbidden is forbidden like in the case of macaroons. She even talks like a small boastful child when she told Mrs. Linde about her secret and even seems unable to understand and accept that what she thinks she does for love was illegal and wrong and refuses to believe that she is guilty just as Krogstad.
Nora initially is like playful, naive child who lacks knowledge of the outside world. However, she does have some worldly experience and the small acts of rebellion, like eating macaroons and make loans without her husband’s knowledge, indicate that she is not as innocent or happy as she appears.
In contradict to their situation, Loisel has treated Mathilde as his wife and a partner in life. Mathilde always has a voice in their house. She can do what she wants and what she doesn’t. Her husband would do what she wants. One very good instance is when she wants to go to the party and she has no dress to wear and she ask her husband for four hundred francs for a dress and her husband give her the money even if he had kept it for a his own want.
In contrast with Nora, Mathilde is clearly aware that she was unhappy with his married. For Mathilde feels that in her married she would never belong to the women elegance. She always had longed to have beautiful clothes and jewels. She had always longed for glamour and charm. She is aware that she is miserable. In her way to show her grief, despair and misery, she would just weep.
In the situation of the Helmers, Nora was the one that has sacrifice. As she has quoted that “even though most men don’t sacrifice integrity, most women do”. She has hidden her loan because she was afraid that her husband would know and would be humiliated that her wife has saved his life. Even though she is economically advantage, still she has a difficult life because society dictates that Torvald should be the dominant in the marriage.
While in the situation of the Loisel, his husband is the one that sacrifice more. He sacrifices his own wants just to please her wife. He never mind what would the society says.
Even in the times of problems, the Helmers and the Loisel faced them differently. With the case of the Helmers, when Torvald then knows that Nora had loan money when he was dying, he condemned her. He never put the blame on himself instead he was more concern of what the society would say. But with Nora, it was an awakening to her. It just makes her open her eyes that she had been a doll to Torvald, someone whom he can control. It made her realize that her life with Torvald is just like a performance to please the society and make a good reputation for Torvald and she has not existed as a true being. With this conflict it just made her make a decision to just leave her husband and her children and find herself without Torvald or any men influence. The marriage of Torvald and Nora was dictated by the society and been ruin because of that.
With the Loisel, after they had realized that the diamond necklace of Madame Forestier, Mathilde’s husband did not condemn her instead he never even sleeps for the whole night just to look for the necklace. The borrow money from almost every money lending institution just to buy the same diamond necklace as with Madame Forestier. He even risked his signature and mortgages his remaining existence. They solve their problem together. Mathilde also had been working just to pay the money they had lent. And after 10 years of working together, the Loisel finally had everything paid off.
These two stories showed that in every marriage, there are struggles on the way. It is just important that the couples should bear it together. Not how the society dictates it but in the way it should be done.
Credit:ivythesis.typepad.com
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