The world responds to art, in the shapes of critic, analysis, and sparked ideas. In turn, as viewers, we respond to art. In a class, our study of late 19th century humanities, a screenplay by Henrik Ibsen came up. My teacher played a clip that I cannot stop thinking about. The play was radical for its time, and it still is, if you consider the historical context and controversy that came of it. The final scene depicts Nora Helmer telling her husband that she is leaving to find herself. Not asking, she has it all planned out, but wants his blessing if she can get it. It is not forever, but she explains that she needs space to find who she is without him or anyone else. She even says that she needs to figure out her own religious beliefs because she only knows what she has been told to think. These are not things women were socially acceptable, as well as often financially possible, at the time. And here is a play with a woman talking about it. She says that she needs to figure out her own opinions of the world, all her life all she has ever had was her fathers and now her husbands, but never her own. They do have children, and the husband says that she is forgetting her “sacred duties” of caring for them. He says, “Before all else, you are a wife and a mother.” I love her response, “I believe that before all else I am a reasonable human being, just as you are--or, at all events, that I must try and become one.” It is a powerful message.
In you have a moment, here is a clip from that last scene and the script for it. Video of “A Doll’s House” (1992), film directed by David Thacker. Actors shown: Juliet Stevenson (as Nora helmer) and Trevor Eve (as Torvald Helmer).
And that’s how it ends. She closes the door and the rest of her life is only known in whatever world stories live in.
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Who Am I?Hi there! I'm Whit, my pronouns are they/them, and I write a lot.
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Painting by Whit Acrylics on masonite April 20th, 2019 Words are a Quaker saying. George Fox? |