And now, having my computer back, I can read this on a large screen and savor it.
Hooray!
I am inordinately happy that it's available on YouTube! I will definitely watch it. I've known *of* A Doll's House but never seen a production of it.
I've never seen another one! The Huntington Theatrea actually staged it in early 2017, but I missed it. I used to keep an eye out for a script of Hampton's translation when I visited used book stores—I never had any luck. I suppose I'll try again when it becomes safe to do so.
The tenacity of the brainwashing that teaches women to be mere things of one sort or another... it's sobering and depressing--and insidious.
It is deeply frustrating that it hasn't dated the play more. It is no longer so unusual for wives to leave their husbands, but Nora's reasons for leaving haven't gone out of style and in a hundred and forty-two years they really should have. I suppose the inability to see other people for themselves is timeless.
and that their unhappiness had been making her feel--until recently, until she started thinking about it--like a bad person... because her unexamined, unreflecting, burned-into-her upbringing implicitly stated that a woman who doesn't please isn't a good person.
That makes me think of this article, which makes the dismally credible point that the definition creep of self-care has managed to work the term around to reinforcing even more that women are never supposed to take time for themselves now that necessary actions like running an errand or eating a meal have been recast as "self-care."
So you get intelligent people who may even be working diligently "for good," but they aren't doing it from a place of mental freedom. It sounds like what Kristine realized earlier and what Nora is reaching for by the end of the play.
I think that's true. Kristine's had that chance to live on her own, to find out what sort of person she is when she isn't obliged to support a family or please a husband; when she tells Krogstad, "There's no happiness left in working for yourself," it doesn't sound like the party line of a woman who's been conditioned to make herself useful, it sounds like the plain truth from a woman who's been self-supporting for years. She and Krogstad are choosing one another—she makes the first move and waits to see if he'll answer in kind. It's so different from Nora's description of her marriage as the entrusting of a cherished object from father to son-in-law. It looks a hell of a lot healthier from here.
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Hooray!
I am inordinately happy that it's available on YouTube! I will definitely watch it. I've known *of* A Doll's House but never seen a production of it.
I've never seen another one! The Huntington Theatrea actually staged it in early 2017, but I missed it. I used to keep an eye out for a script of Hampton's translation when I visited used book stores—I never had any luck. I suppose I'll try again when it becomes safe to do so.
The tenacity of the brainwashing that teaches women to be mere things of one sort or another... it's sobering and depressing--and insidious.
It is deeply frustrating that it hasn't dated the play more. It is no longer so unusual for wives to leave their husbands, but Nora's reasons for leaving haven't gone out of style and in a hundred and forty-two years they really should have. I suppose the inability to see other people for themselves is timeless.
and that their unhappiness had been making her feel--until recently, until she started thinking about it--like a bad person... because her unexamined, unreflecting, burned-into-her upbringing implicitly stated that a woman who doesn't please isn't a good person.
That makes me think of this article, which makes the dismally credible point that the definition creep of self-care has managed to work the term around to reinforcing even more that women are never supposed to take time for themselves now that necessary actions like running an errand or eating a meal have been recast as "self-care."
So you get intelligent people who may even be working diligently "for good," but they aren't doing it from a place of mental freedom. It sounds like what Kristine realized earlier and what Nora is reaching for by the end of the play.
I think that's true. Kristine's had that chance to live on her own, to find out what sort of person she is when she isn't obliged to support a family or please a husband; when she tells Krogstad, "There's no happiness left in working for yourself," it doesn't sound like the party line of a woman who's been conditioned to make herself useful, it sounds like the plain truth from a woman who's been self-supporting for years. She and Krogstad are choosing one another—she makes the first move and waits to see if he'll answer in kind. It's so different from Nora's description of her marriage as the entrusting of a cherished object from father to son-in-law. It looks a hell of a lot healthier from here.