Gender Roles and the Failing Institution of Marriage in Henrik Ibsen’s A Doll’s House

Abstract

This article examines the relationship between gender roles and the failure of marriage in Henrik Ibsen’s A Doll’s House, employing feminism and existentialism as complementary theoretical frameworks. Drawing particularly on Simone de Beauvoir’s conception of woman as “Other” and her distinction between immanence and transcendence, Judith Butler’s theory of gender performativity, and Jean-Paul Sartre’s concepts of freedom, choice, responsibility, and bad faith, the study argues that Ibsen presents marriage as a social institution shaped by unequal gender expectations, economic dependence, patriarchal authority, and the performance of respectability. Through close textual analysis of dialogue, characterisation, symbolism, dramatic structure, and domestic space, the article demonstrates that Nora Helmer’s apparently comfortable marriage depends upon her performance as obedient wife, devoted mother, attractive companion, and dependent consumer, while Torvald Helmer performs the complementary roles of provider, protector, moral authority, and patriarchal husband. The crisis surrounding Nora’s secret loan and forgery exposes the fragility of these performances and reveals the absence of genuine mutual recognition within the marriage. Nora’s eventual decision to leave her husband and children constitutes an attempt to move from socially prescribed identity towards autonomous self-definition. Torvald’s inability to recognise this emerging self also exposes the restrictive consequences of patriarchal masculinity. The article concludes that the Helmer marriage fails not simply because of Nora’s secret but because its foundation is inequality rather than reciprocal recognition. Ibsen’s drama consequently raises enduring questions about whether marriage can remain meaningful when the identities of its participants are determined more by social expectations than by freely negotiated human relationships.