Where Does the Responsibility Lay?

In what ways do you find Nora a victim? In what ways at fault?

Henrik Ibsen’s A Dolls House reveals a woman trapped in an unpleasant situation. Nora is a victim of circumstance, of society, and of her own misconceptions. She is married to a man who does not understand her as a person, who alternates between treating her as a child and treating her as a possession. She tries to do the right thing, to help her husband in his time of need and does not seek any sort of recognition for her actions. Rather, she is forced to hide her good deed, feeling only guilt for doing what needed to be done. The fact that she does not understand the real world and her role within it – she thinks she won’t be found guilty of fraud because she has a good reason – is not her fault. She has no real education and is denied the ability to handle financial transactions on her own. She transgresses society’s gender boundaries to save the life of her husband, the most subservient of acts, and yet she is vilified as a rebellious woman. Even her husband turns on her, rather than deal with Krogstad himself. Nora’s actions might have seemed to be sinful at the time, but the entire moral of the play is that the standards of the time were wrong. A woman was denounced for daring to do something a man would normally do. She attempts to save her husband’s life the only way she knows how and yet she is forced to feel guilty for it. Society tells her that she is wicked for acting boldly, seeking to experience things beyond the dollhouse that she has been confined to. She acts as a woman rather than a doll, and civilization simply tries to dehumanize her all over again. No, Nora is not guilty of much beyond dishonesty. Society must bear the blame in Ibsen’s play.
(332).

This is the Question

Hamlet finds himself in quite a moral quandary as he decides whether to avenge his father’s murder. He is able to dodge the question as long as he can doubt the word of the ghost, but following Claudius’s reaction to the play, Hamlet no longer has the luxury of debating his uncle’s culpability. Hence, we find Hamlet struggling to make himself act, unable to overcome his own hesitation. The entire rest of the play acts only to draw out Hamlet’s internal struggle and add more pressures to the already beleaguered young man.

Hamlet finds reasons to let Claudius off the hook repeatedly. First he cannot convince himself to believe his father’s ghost, then he “cannot bear” to have his uncle’s soul go to heaven. So he waits and hesitates. Once he has made up his mind, however, nothing will stop him. The inadvertent death of Polonius is no problem for Hamlet; in fact (in a scene that would be farcical if it weren’t for the death involved) Hamlet continues conversing with both his mother and his deceased father’s ghost while Polonius’s body lies next to him. After all of his vacillation, Hamlet comes to the conclusion that “my thoughts be bloody or be nothing worth!” He is no longer afraid to act and will stop at nothing – not the deaths of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, nor the alienation and insanity of Ophelia – to exact his retribution.

Once Hamlet gives himself permission to act, he acts decisively, dropping his pretenses and taking meaningful, if brash, action. However, even his charade of insanity was really exposing the truth. He used his “madness” to tell the truth boldly without having to manage the consequences of such words. It allowed him to get the deeper truth of the situation before he was forced to confront that truth.

Hamlet not only drops his personal pretenses, he permits no one else to hide behind theirs. Ophelia can no longer hide behind Polonius; she is forced to recognize that she chose her father over Hamlet. Hamlet compels her to live with that choice, something that proved impossible for her. Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, whom Hamlet already condemned for their deceit, are sentenced to death. Queen Gertrude is forced to recognize both her son’s murderous deeds and her own role in Claudius’s foul crime. Even Claudius is exposed as the coward and murderer he really is. Finally, Hamlet receives the recognition he deserves from the unlikely source of Fortinbras. His search for the truth led him to act, and his action ultimately led to his demise. Hamlet, while certainly flawed, did not hide from the difficult question posed to him. He met his duty head-on and performed admirably. (453).