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Ibsen, “Notes for a Modern Tragedy”; quoted by Meyer (1967, 466); see also Innes (2000, 79-81).

Ibsen, Henrik. A Doll’s House. 1897.

Realism. Oxford English Dictionary Online. http://oxforddictionaries.com/

Realism in A Doll’s House

Realism is defined as the “Faithful representation of reality”(realism, Oxford English Dictionary Online), a literary genre that depicts the every day lives and quotidian events of middle and lower class people. These works lack the idealization, drama and romanticism of life that characterize the genre of romanticism. While romanticism was a response against the values of the Industrial Revolution, realism was in turn a reaction against romanticism. A Doll’s House is a three act play that falls under this genre. Written by Norwegian author Henrik Ibsen,  it depicts the everyday life of a middle-class Victorian family, in which sexism and a patriarchal point of view of society play an important role, and the addressing of these matters as well as the fact that Ibsen based his characters on real life people, are the reasons why this play is considered a realistic work of literature . Its purpose is to criticize the mentality and the situations in which the people of their time, 1879, were actually living in and going through.

Throughout the play, the main character, Nora, goes through an awakening  in which she realizes that her life has never really been hers, but the life that the men in it have chosen. She opens her eyes to the truth, that she has done nothing but follow every command of the male figures in her life. ” I have been your doll-wife, just as at home I was papa’s doll-child…” she claims to her husband. (Ibsen, 3) In the end, she decides she is to be oppressed no more, so she leaves her home, leaving behind her husband and children. At the time, Nora’s actions were scandalous and uncommon, for what was considered as a woman’s “duty” was to stay at home raising her children and serving her husband. Ibsen argues, and I quote: “a woman cannot be herself in modern society, since it is an exclusively male society, with laws made by men and with prosecutors and judges who assess feminine conduct from a masculine standpoint.” (Ibsen)  Nora’s decision may seem rather unrealistic and irrational at first, but that serves Ibsen’s purpose of portraying a real life, everyday situation lived at that time.

A Doll’s House is also considered a realistic play for it lacks the sentiment and drama that characterized romanticism. It doesn’t have any over the top characters, the characters involved in the play are all defined by realistic and truthful traits. Ibsen’s characters are so realistic, in fact, that some, like the protagonist Nora, were even based on real living humans. Ibsen based the character for Nora off of a close acquaintance of his named Laura Kieler. She was going through a similar situation with her husband, being a “doll” for him to play with, however, she never came to Nora’s realization and unlike Ibsen’s play, never left her home. This only serves to prove that Ibsen wrote what he saw, a real life woman living in a sexist environment, and tried to give a solution to the problem, thus the controversial ending for the play.

As we have seen, A Doll’s House is a play full of social criticism that portrays the mentality and situations lived at the time it was written. Its main focus being attacking the rampant sexism of the time and encouraging individuals to seek themselves and be true to what they are. Ibsen’s work does not only address these social problems, but he also proposes a solution and a key to that solution, which is self realization and coming to terms with who one truly is, regardless of everything else. Because of this, it is not only considered a realistic work of literature, but also the awakening of an ideology that would continue to grow to this very day.

Realism is defined as the “Faithful representation of reality”, a literary genre that depicts the every day lives and quotidian events of middle and lower class people. These works lack the idealization, drama and romanticism of life that characterize the genre of romanticism. While romanticism was a response against the values of the Industrial Revolution, realism was in turn a reaction against romanticism. A Doll’s House is a three act play that falls under this genre. Written by Norwegian author Henrik Ibsen,  it depicts the everyday life of a middle-class Victorian family, which is why it is often classified as realistic literature. It shows things like male chauvinism through the husband and the father of the wife and main character, Nora, who goes through an “awakening” throughout the play in which she realizes her life has never really been hers, but the life that the men in it have chosen, and she decides she is to be oppressed no more, so she leaves. At the time, Nora’s actions were scandalous and uncommon, for what was considered as a woman’s “duty” was to stay at home raising her children and serving her husband. The play lays down the facts for us, from the beginning one can see this type of mentality, this patriarchal society in which they live. The play’s purpose is to criticize the mentality and the situations in which the people of their time, 1879, were actually living in and going through.

A Doll’s House is considered a realistic play for it lacks the sentiment and drama that characterized romanticism. It doesn’t have any over the top characters, the characters involved in the play are all defined by realistic and truthful traits. Ibsen’s characters are so realistic, in fact, that some, like the protagonist Nora, were even based on real living humans. Ibsen based the character for Nora off of a close acquaintance of his named Laura Kieler. She was going through a similar situation with her husband, being a “doll” for him to play with, however, she never came to Nora’s realization and unlike Ibsen’s play, never left her home.

THIS IS WHAT I WROTE THAT GOT DELETED:

A Doll’s House might be slightly unrealistic due to the fact that Nora’s decision was not something common or likely at that time. It was scandalous and unaccepted by society.

It may also be unrealistic because of Torvald’s behavior toward his wife. Too sugar coated, too nice. Of course, it may be done on purpose by the author to show us how a man that seems to be a caring, loving husband turns into a cold person after he finds out what Nora has done. In other words, he is showing us the hipocrisy and lies of that time.

Other slightly unrealistic details worth mentioning would be how Krogstad seems to believe in Kristine again so easily. Everything looks like it’s been solved rather fast, it is too simple whilst in real life things wouldn’t be as easy or as simple. He is very quickly willing to forgive and forget, and he changes his mind about Nora in practically an instant. I know it is all for the purpose of the play, but I find it a tad bit unrealistic since in real life it is very unlikely that something like that might happen.

It could be said, then, that A Doll’s House is a fairly realistic play up until the ending, with a few minor unrealistic details here and there.

Quotes from the author: “A woman cannot be herself in modern society,” he argues, since it is “an exclusively male society, with laws made by men and with prosecutors and judges who assess feminine conduct from a masculine standpoint.” (bsen, “Notes for a Modern Tragedy”; quoted by Meyer (1967, 466); see also Innes (2000, 79-81).)

Draft

In the beginnings of the 20th century, race and color were, unfortunately, things that people were very prejudiced about. For that reason, there weren’t many  poets or artists out there who dared speak up for the discriminated races, even less consider them equal to all other human beings. However, every movement and every big change begins with a select few who are not afraid of speaking their mind and are aware of the need of change. And one of these people who helped and influenced the black race greatly, giving them a sense of pride and love for their identity was Langston Hughes. His way of creating this revolution of love and freedom was through his poetry. Poems like “As I Grew Older”, “Cross” and “Dream Variations” show his love for his race, and portray the message he insisted upon his whole poetic life: “black is beautiful too”.

James Mercer Langston Hughes, early innovator of the literary art form jazz poetry, wrote poems about his people, for his people.  His poems speak of a race that was being oppressed and misjudged, mistreated by the “white” population at the time. But what really identifies Hughes’ is that, even through all the pain that his people were going through he still spoke to them of courage and strength to rise up against the prejudice and the oppression. His poetry gave, and still gives to this very day,  hope and energy to the black race to get up and be proud of who they are, regardless of what the rest of the world might say or think. Through his poetry he shows his pride for who he is and his color. He is not ashamed of his race, on the contrary, he believes he is as beautiful as the rest of humanity. He wants to give this feeling of pride and power to his people and he accomplishes this through his poetry. Hughes preferred to identify himself with every day black people, because he felt that from them came the true essence of their race.

Langston Hughes was a man who had to go through a lot of rejection and little opportunities for, as it is implied in his poem “As I Grew Older”, his obstacle was his own skin color. In this poem he speaks of a dream, which can be interpreted as the opportunities of improvement of his lifestyle and overcoming adverse situations in his life (reaching the ultimate goal of happiness), and how this dream that he saw clearly once, was now being overshadowed by a large wall in between him and the dream, casting dark shadows over him. This wall and the dark shadows it casts can be interpreted as his skin color.

The poems I like most from Langston Hughes are “As I Grew Older”, “Cross”, “Dream Variation”, etc. These poems represent Langston Hughes’ favorite topic, the message he keeps trying to portray, the beauty of the black race. These poems are great examples of Hughes’ writing style. He wrote about his people, for his people.

The poem “Cross” is a beautiful poem, and very realistic at that. In a very simple and short poem he addresses a realistic situation that is the mixture of races and how that was seen back then. The evident racism is shown when it says that his father was a white person and died in a wealthy house, and his mother was a black person and died in a shack. He poses the question “I wonder where I’m going to die being neither white nor black?” as if to say “what now? who am I supposed to be? where do I belong?”. I’m pretty sure people back then had that query in their minds. I’m sure multi-racial people went through a hard identity crisis, they didn’t know who to identify with or who to belong with.

Langston Hughes

Lagston Hughes was born in Missouri on February 1, 1902, recently finishing the Victorian era. He was an American poet, a playwright, novelist and columnist. He dies on May 22, 1967 due to complications after abdominal surgery for prostate cancer. He was 65 years old. He was buried in Harlem, in the Arthur Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture.

His first and signature poem is “The Negro Speaks of Rivers” published first in The Crisis in 1921 and collected in his first poetry book The Weary Blues in 1926. Hughes poetry focused on the beauty of the black race, he was not ashamed of his cultural roots and he was not afraid of being a black man in a world of white people. He wrote for his people, to lift them and give them the courage and pride that black people were not https://lauramariaperez.wordpress.com/wp-admin/post.php?post=73&action=edit&message=10allowed to feel back in those times. He portrayed the life of the African-American race of those times in his poetry, speaking of pain and struggle, but also music and joy. He was an activist on the rights of black people in America.

Edgar Allan Poe

He was born in Boston, Massachusetts on January 19, 1809.  He was an American author, poet, editor and literary critic. He is considered part of the American Romantic movement. Edgar Allan Poe might come across as a cliche choice when it comes to literary analysis, however I chose him because he is one of my favorite authors. His poetry, and his stories, are intriguing and mysterious and not what your everyday author writes.

Poe was a troubled man, with a bad drinking habit, which in turn won him a bad reputation in 19th century society. This habit might have been a consequence of his troubled mind -or his troubled mind could have been a consequence of his drinking. Still, it is no doubt that this vice had an effect on his writing, whether it be a bad habit or not.

Maybe it is my love and interest for the 19th century and its mystery, but to me Edgar Allan Poe is one of the best writers I have read. His poetry is alluring, beautiful. His stories are captivating and intriguing. His writing is shrouded by a cloak of Gothic mystery and suspense that gives me the chills every time  read something of his, like the story “The Masque of the Red Death” (a personal favorite) and poems like “Alone” and, of course, “The Raven”.

After reading several posts that included different opinions, interpretations and points of view on the poem “The Red Wheelbarrow” I have come to see this poem in a whole new way. While I was interpreting the poem in a symbolic way that was more…spiritual and philosophical, my classmate’s interpretations showed me a new side of the coin for this poem. They took it as an almost literal poem, or if not completely literal, they took it as something a little more…mundane. Earthly. What I’m trying to say is, that while I was interpreting colors and comparing them with fire, some others were thinking that the red wheelbarrow was probably what the author’s patient’s parents were using to take their daughter to the doctor, or to carry her to her bed. This had not occurred to me and now that I see the poem from this point of view, I can almost see the connections between the message and the circumstances in which the poem was written.

A Slumber Did My Spirit Seal

by William Wordsworth

A slumber did my spirit seal;
I had no human fears:
She seemed a thing that could not feel
The touch of earthly years.

No motion has she now, no force;
She neither hears nor sees;
Rolled round in earth’s diurnal course
With rocks, and stones, and trees.

I chose this poem because of its ethereal sort of atmosphere. In here, William Wordsworth talks about the death of a female, probably a lover. He explains and describes her death and how he sees her in that state. The first two lines tell us about the author, or the speaker, the poetic voice through which the author speaks. “A slumber did my spirit seal” could mean that the speaker was in some sort of a lethargic state, as if he wasn’t living in reality but rather in fantasy, or in a twisted dream. Saying that he had “no human fears” could mean that he was a brave man, even in moments of tragedy. It could also mean that he had once been a brave, strong man, one that could not be easily broken until tragedy struck in the form of this woman’s death. In the lines

“She seemed a thing that could not feel,
The touch of earthly years”

he is referring to how she seems like she doesn’t age. Those lines hint at us that the woman has died (she cannot age for she is dead). Her death is only implied throughout the poem, never addressed directly, however in the second stanza it becomes clearer and almost painfully obvious that he is describing his possible lover’s death. The eerie, cryptic atmosphere created by the description serves to show the pain and agony that the author was suffering when writing the poem, which may also be the reason why he does not address the matter directly. This might be interpreted as her death being far too overwhelming for him to even mention it in a direct manner.  The lines

“No motion has she now, no force;”

tell us how she is lying still, how she is now an inanimate object, devoid of life. It can subtly imply that she had once been an energetic person, not one to stay put in one place for long. Addressing her current lack of senses can also imply that the woman might have been one to live life fully, using all of her senses to enjoy each day. He emphasizes how she can no longer enjoy the world through sight or sound by stating that she can no longer see nor hear; he also mentions how she is part of  the earth now:

“She neither hears nor sees;
Rolled round in earth’s diurnal course
With rocks, and stones, and trees.”

The last two lines explain how her body has decomposed and has become one with earth, how she is now a part of nature. An interesting little detail in the last line is how he mentions “rocks” and “stones”, which are synonyms. Is it an intentional redundancy that emphasizes some aspect I’m missing? Maybe he wants to make it very clear that she is now as inanimate and lifeless as rocks are, for trees are inanimate but they are alive.

A very nice poem indeed, with a dark atmosphere, that somehow depicts beauty in a sort of creepy way.

I would like to add that the poem has been turned into an amazing song covered by the band Draconian. It might not suit all music tastes, however I believe it makes the poem justice with its Gothic darkness, for the poem is quite dark itself:

Prompt Number 3
The saying “The nail that sticks up gets hammered down”  is a Japanese saying used to encourage conformity.  In it’s original language it is written in the following manner.  “Deru kugi wa utareru” (Everything2, 2011).

1. Japan is said to be an extremely conformist society.  Much more so than the United States and Puerto Rico. To what extent do you feel that this saying applies to the character of Jack Smurch in the short story, “The Greatest Man in the World.”
2. To what extent does society’s social expectations and rules affect characters like Miss Emily in the short story “A Rose for Emily” and Miss Brill in “Miss Brill.”  How does Emily’s gender cause her to be trapped by first a domineering father and the gossip of the town’s people?  If Emily had been a man how might her life and actions been different?

“The nail that sticks up gets hammered down” says the old Japanese saying. Well Jack Smurch is definitely an example of this: he was a nail that “stuck up” and that the government eventually “hammered down”. His non-conformist attitude eventually brought upon himself a reaction of the people to whom this attitude was not convenient. Jack was being too loud, the government quieted him down –forever.

It’s actually very sad that this pretty much happens all the time in our day-to-day life. When we feel like we want to be something other than that which we’ve been told we should be, we get all sorts of warnings even threats (although maybe not to the extent of being murdered, like Jack Smurch, but dangerous all the same) if we dare try to go against conventionalism. Individuality is frowned upon, we are not encouraged to think for ourselves or come up with our own opinions about things. Even if we decided to live our own lives, without really caring about what others think, we would still be exiling ourselves to a life of discrimination and judgment.

For Miss Brill, I have to say, society maybe expected her to be a young, beautiful woman forever, which is humanly impossible, but unfortunately that’s how we think. This thought comes from the part in the story where the young couple insults her without having any real reason to, just because she is old. Well, what did they expect? People don’t stay young forever. They will not stay young forever either. Old people are still people, like everyone else. But apparently, we live in a society where “youth is beauty” and “beauty is everything” and old people, Miss Brill included, cannot be a part of it. It’s really sad.

For Emily Grierson, I believe what drove her mad and into her murderous rampage was the fact that society expected of her to be an elegant, pure young lady who would marry the perfect man. But time went by and she couldn’t find a husband, thanks to her father, and we all know what happens to slightly older women who aren’t married yet, right? They never marry. Why? Because society believes that only “young, beautiful women” can marry. We see the “youth is beauty” and “beauty is everything” concept again. This is male chauvinism at its best.

Anyhow, we all conform to these crazy ideas that have been implanted into our brains and we never dare question them. What’s sad is that the people who can actually see through that and try to break free from conformism’s binds get “hammered down”.

Well, my reaction to the poem does not change much now that I know this information, for I don’t think it’s that relative to the content. I mean, of course, it may give the poem a lot more depth. Maybe the whole meaning that I gave it when I read it the first time isn’t the same thing the author was trying to portray when he wrote those words. However, my first impression of the poem is already there and it is a lot harder for me now to make a connection between the circumstances in which the poem was written and the content of the poem in question.

However, I will try to make that connection and I will try to see what exactly moved the author to write this poem under the mentioned circumstances. Maybe the author was admiring the simple things in life, realizing how much beauty there is around us, even in the most common or unlikely objects. Maybe having a patient on the border of life and death made him see the world from a different perspective, it made him see how fragile life is and how beautiful and perfect everything that surrounds us is. Like maybe he finally saw that life depends on every little thing, that every little detail is important in order for us to exist, in order for life to move on.

Honestly, the poem “This is Just to Say” by William Carlos Williams strikes me as dry, boring, even supperficial. It may have some meaning, there may be thousands of interpretations that people might find depth in, but I personally cannot go any further than the thin surface of this poem. I can attempt to scratch it, though, and hope to find meaning hiding somewhere under its thin layer of substance, but I’m afraid it won’t get me too far. Anyhow, here is my interpretation of this poem.

It could be expressing guilt for something the author -or the poetic voice speaking for the author- did, an action he is feeling remorse for now and that he is symbolizing with eating the plums. Or maybe he is not expressing remorse at all, because at the end of the poem he says that they were “delicious, so sweet and so cold”. It could be that he feels guilt that he ate the plums, but he still enjoyed doing it. The plums in the ice box could symbolize something prohibited, or some sort of sweet temptation that he cannot help but fall into.

Then again, the author could have meant for the poem to be taken literally, and not as symbolic. Maybe what he is trying to portray through this literal representation of day-to-day life is the beauty of it. The beauty that lies hidden behind the simple, everyday things that happen. It could be that, or maybe I’m just looking in too deeply at the poem. For all I know it could mean nothing. But then again, it could mean anything.

On my personal opinion, I didn’t like the poem very much. I mean, it has a sort of refreshing imagery -the cold, sweet plums are quite a sight for my mind’s eye- but when it comes down to meaning and symbolism I’m just at a loss of what to say. All I have are theories and wild guesses, and maybe poetry is about creating theories and wild guesses, but this poem in particular doesn’t do it right. And I don’t know if there is a right way to tell a message in poetry, but I do know that this one little poem is not very appealing to me.