World Lit One

From Property to Individual:
Oppression in A Doll House and Medea
By: Jessica Borchers
Word Count: 1,122






























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In the dramas Medea, by Euripides and A Doll House, by Henrik Ibsen, the lead female protagonists, Nora and Medea, share the feeling of being heavily weighted down either mentally or physically, by trouble or of being oppressed; placed upon by their not-so-loving husbands. The husbands seem to objectify their wives as property, made to be flaunted about being seen and not heard or simply used to birth the future heirs. However when these women bring it upon themselves to right wrongs by going behind their spouse’s back and do inconceivable acts to/for them, they release themselves from the need for their husbands and grow from property into independent thinkers.
It was a common trend one hundred years ago, for Nora’s Norwegian culture to view their women as mere objects. It can be seen in her story she, herself, is just another woman forced to live under the stern yet gentle hands of her father and husband.
Whereas in Medea’s Barbarian culture, the women are free to have their own thoughts and feeling. They are able to express them without worry of male domination. However, when Medea transitioned from her Barbarian culture and was assimilated into the Athenian culture she was forced to forget the freedoms of public opinion and conform to the standards of being seen and never heard.
For the character Nora, oppression began as a child, “When I was home with Daddy, he told me all his opinions, and so they became my opinions too. If I disagreed with him I kept it to myself, for he wouldn’t have liked that. He called me his doll-child, and he played with me just as I used to play with my dolls.” She’s obligated, by birth and because she is a beautiful girl, to agree with the dominate male in her life. She is never to have her own thoughts or opinions. “I was simply transferred from papa's hands into
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yours (Torvald’s). You arranged everything according to your own taste, and so I got the same tastes as you—or else I pretended to, I am really not quite sure which—I think sometimes the one and sometimes the other...... I have been your doll-wife, just as at home I was papa's doll-child” While Nora had the benefit of insolence, Medea was aware of her own oppression from the moment she married Jason. “Greek women especially in Athens had very few legal rights and always had to be represented by a guardian, normally the father or husband” (21). In the Greek culture, a marriage would consist of the groom shaking hands with the bride’s father. “Medea’s active participation in the wedding shows that she is more than an ordinary woman and considers herself Jason’s equal” (14). However, Medea was willingly oppressed by Athenian society in order to conform for the man whom she desired, but in giving up her freedoms she gave up a part of her self. This act of betrayal to his wife is looked down upon by the gods and yet he still feels nothing is wrong with this extra marriage. He only married the princess so, “that I might be the father of brothers for the children thou hast borne, and raise these to the same high rank, uniting the family in one,-to my lasting bliss. Thou, indeed, hast no need of more children, but me it profits to help my present family by that which is to be.”(31)
However, when Nora comes to the realization that she is nothing but a toy, she wants to evolve from a mere child’s plaything into a real person with thoughts and feelings of her own. In order to do this she leaves her husband and children. This releases Torvald from the doll protection program and the marriage and leaves the responsibility of taking care of the children to the Nurse. She is tired of being seen as a precious china doll that’s just in existence to be beautiful.
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Jason’s double-crossing of Medea evokes no sympathy. Even as he influences the exile of Medea, out fear for his, his new-bride, and the king’s safety, he feels nothing. He offers to help, aid financially and such, only because she is the mother of his children.
This unlocks her treachery. She makes a dress and crown lined with poison for Jason’s bride. Giving them to her sons to take to the princess as gifts, in hopes of acceptance as her sons, and then die “tragically”. They are accepted as part of her family, but not an hour later is the new bride dead. Soon after when the children return home they are slain by their mother. They are slain in order to enrage their father and make him feel guilty. For it was his dastardly decision to marry another that provoked Medea into her homicidal tendencies.
The slaughter of the sons is justified through the hardships and the embarrassment that Jason inflicted upon Medea. He provoked her to kill their sons by choosing to marry another person rather than talk to his spouse. If he would have allowed Medea and himself the chance to talk out their relationship issues maybe she wouldn’t have killed her children. “After dishonoring my bed, you weren’t about to live happy life, laughing at me, nor the princess; nor would he who made the match, Creon, exile me from his land unpunished. For this, if you wish call me a lioness, or Scylla who lives on the Etruscan land. I’ve snatches your heart as was necessary.”(59) She refused to allow Jason a proper good-bye to his sons. In order to evoke as much pain and anger that had festered within her heart. She sacrificed her freedom in order to satisfy the Athenian culture’s need to control women. However, she refused to be objectified as a mere child bearer and wife to an ungrateful husband. She was an active participant in her own life and chose to sacrifice her sons to make her unfaithful husband suffer.
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These dramas show the audiences how women can be objectified. Living with this stereotype until finally they have the desire to overcome this typecast of women as objects and become something more. Women need to be respected and treated with kindness just as much as males. They need to be talked to as if they are of importance and will offer some new thought to the table. They are not toys or breeders of the heirs, they are the ones who will prove their love through their actions as well as words. However, if provoked, they will use these skills of speech and action in order to create for their husbands their own personal hell and diminish their spouses’ chances at happiness