IB English A1 SL World Literature Essay

The Influence of Torvald Helmer and Esteban Trueba as Dominating Male Characters in the Books A Dolls Houseby Henrik Ibsen and The House of the Spirits by Isabel Allende, respectively.

Candidate Name: Lay Majmudar Candidate Number: 002272- 027 School: Indus International School, Bangalore, India School Code: 2272

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Session: May 2009 Word Count: 1382

The Influence of Torvald Helmer and Esteban Trueba as Dominating Male Characters in the books A Dolls Houseby Henrik Ibsen and The House of the Spirits by Isabel Allende, respectively.

The novelists, in their works, often bring in varied concepts and ideas that pertain to their specific unique cultures and become successful in defining and portraying them through their characters. Male dominance is one such recurring idea that Henrik Ibsen and Isabel Allende have successful incorporated and highlighted in their books, A Dolls House and The House of the Spirits, respectively .What strikes the reader is the fact that this dominance does not only affect the characters directly associated with the dominating character but it also creates ripples that permeate throughout the society. The book A Dolls House was written during the 1800s, this time men were considered to be superior to the females. Henrik Ibsen once quoted saying A woman cannot be herself in the present day. Ibsen uses Torvald as a medium in his book to give an idea about the society during that time. Men were the ones who would earn for a living and take the major decisions for the family and the wife just had to follow everything the husband said and look after their children. 1Is that my little lark twittering out there? This line from A Dolls House tells us how Torvald calls Nora and treated her like a doll who was under his control. Nora is like a puppet that Torvald controls and Nora unwillingly ends up listening to him. 2Nora, you know what I think about that. No debt, no borrowing Torvald tells Nora about what he feels regarding borrowing money and thinks nothing can go right for a home which depends on borrowing. When
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A Doll's House. Page 1 A Doll's House. Page 2

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Nora secretly borrows money from Nils Krogstad to save Torvalds life, she does not tell anyone about it and keeps it a secret to protect his pride and also because she was scared how he will react to it. This shows a sense of fear in Nora towards Torvald. The House of the Spirits was again written during the time of male superiority. Even though it was written in the 1900s, the male were always considered to be superior. In this book, Allende shows the Latin American culture of that time where men were always seen as a higher superior authority in the house. Esteban is portrayed as one of the strongest and the most dominating male characters in the novel. He has a violent temper and as the book progresses, he sees the negative sides of it and finds himself very lonely at the end of the book. But this attitude also helps him to sustain and retain his position as a dominating patriarch in the Trueba family. One of the examples of his temper is when he throws a tantrum at Clara saying he is not 3some ninny whose wife could go around making a fool of him. In the book, during his childhood Esteban loved Rosa. In order to support her, he used to work in the mines and earn money. When he was away working, Rosa accidentally dies by poisoning. After this accident, Estebans life is changed and his attitude towards everyone is changed. This behaviour pushes everyone close to him away and also creates problems with his family. After Rosas death, he marries Clara and despite his cruel behaviour, he is completely devoted to his wife. His relationship with his daughter is not shown to be as strong as his relationship with his granddaughter, Alba. As Blanca was sent to a boarding school, she didnt have a very strong relationship with her father while Alba didnt have the need to go to school and spent her early childhood with her grandparents, being the only and much loved member of the family. While comparing the two books A Dolls House and The House of the Spirits, one finds that both Torvald and Esteban are the main dominating characters of the novels, respectively. Both of them have their similarities and their own differences. Estebans character compared to that of Torvald is more of a short tempered and cruel nature. Torvalds character is calmer and quieter but at the same time, also dominating.
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One of the examples where his dominant character is shown in the book is in Act 1 where Krogstad visits Nora to find out about Mrs Linde and Nora says 4 What right have you to question me, Mr Krogstad? You, one of my husbands subordinates! In this line, Nora throws a sudden tantrum at Krogstad and she backs this up with her husbands power. She tells him that he had no right to question her as he is her husbands subordinate. While in the other book The House of the Spirits we dont find such an incident of another character using Estebans power to overrule another character. Nora, one of the main characters in A Dolls House, borrows money from Krogstad to save her husbands life. During the 1800s women were always considered inferior to the men and werent allowed to work or earn money in any way possible. When Torvald opens the letter box and reads the letter Krogstad sent, he finds out about his wife borrowing money and lying to him that her father gave the money for his surgery but the truth was that she borrowed money from Krogstad. He suddenly bursts out throwing a tantrum at Nora calling her names like liar, a hypocrite without realising that Noras intentions were genuine and she did that to save his own life. He didnt consider her feelings for him but just bothered about what an outsider or any other person will say if they find out about this. It deflated his male ego to a great extent. Moments later, the maid arrives with Krogstads message which has his apology. Torvald then calms down and tells Nora 5Nora, I swear it; I have forgiven you everything. and 6I know you only did what you had to do because of your love for me. Soon after this incident, Nora starts realising that her role in their relationship didnt really matter. At this point, the reader for the first time in the book feels that Nora speaks up for herself and starts taking control over her life. She tells him that she is tired of being treated like a toy or a doll all her life. Her father also treated her that way and when she got married, Torvald continued it. She tells Torvald she is leaving him and does not want him to send her any letters or try to communicate to her in any way. Here, we find that the reason their relationship ended was because of his superiority over her.

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At the end of the book, The House the of Spirits we find Alba and the other prisoners singing songs together to try to avoid the pain of their being tortured. For an example, when Alba wanted to go to the bathroom, she asked Esteban Garcia 7I want to go to the bathroom, but she wasnt allowed to, until she told him where Miguel was, but she constantly refuses to answer that. Here again, we see females being inferior and the males taking advantage of that. Alba is physically and mentally hurt as she is constantly raped by the guards. This showed that the women had no sort of right to say anything to the guards even though they were scared. The sense of fear among the women also showed signs of how they were treated and what position they had in the society during the times. In conclusion, while comparing the two books, we have found that in both the books, the power of male domination has caused relationships to change and at times, end. In A Dolls House, towards the end, Nora speaks up for herself and utters 8It is no use forbidding me anything any longer. The writer effectively shows that the power of male seems to be going down as the play ends when She is gone. While in The House of the Spirits, because of the domination of Estaban Trueba, his family falls apart and at the end, the only person who is with him was his granddaughter, Alba. It is seen that both the overpowering male characters have brought about nothing but loneliness to their lives by playing the role of a dominating patriarch throughout.

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Bibliography

A Dolls House written by Henrik Ibsen, Translated by Philip Smith, Year of Publication 1992, Dover Edition, Publication City New York, ISBN 0486270628 The House of The Spirits written by Isabel Allende, Translated by Magda Bogin, Year of Publication 1993, Bantam Edition, Publication City New York, ISBN - 0553273914