A Doll's House vs A chaste maide in Cheapside

A Doll's House

Henrik Ibsen

1889

A Doll's House by Henrik Ibsen portrays Nora, the wife, as a "doll," beautiful, unsophisticated, childlike, well-meaning, but ignorant of the adult world and affairs. All of her friends see her as a doll. Her husband Torvald treats her as one, calling her childish names. He tries to control all of her behavior, not because he is mean, but because he loves her and he realizes that she is unable to do so. IN "A Doll's House, Torvald" tells Nora what to eat so that her teeth will not be spoiled from sugar and how much she should spend because she does not understand much about money. And it is the latter, the money, that gets Nora into trouble. Torvald was sick some years back and needed to travel and stay in a warmer climate for some months, but the couple had no money. She, out of childish but ignorant love, borrowed money from an unscrupulous man who insisted that she have her father countersign the loan. Her father was dying, so she forged his signature on the loan document. She was certain that this was not wrong because her intentions were pure, she wanted to save her husband's life. She did not tell her husband about the loan because she childishly wanted to surprise him someday in the future and show him that she acted wisely and that she, who he thought of as childlike, saved his life. She laughed about her cleverness often when she was alone. Now the unscrupulous lender is demanding something from Nora, or he will reveal the forgery to her husband and his employer, and this will affect her marriage and her husband will lose his job. The tragedy in Henrik Ibsen's "The Doll's House" probably would not have occured if the people would have treated women properly as human beings rather than dolls.

A chaste maide in Cheapside

Thomas Middleton

1630

Written for the adult players at the open-air Swan theatre in 1613, this master-piece of Jacobean city comedy signals its ironic natureeven in the title: chaste maids, like most other goods and people inLondon's busiest commercial area, are likely to be fake. Money is moreimportant than either happiness or honour; and the most covetedcommodities to be bought with it are sex and social prestige. Middletoninterweaves the fortunes of four families, who either seek to marrytheir children off as profitably as possible, to stop having any morefor fear of poverty, or to acquire some in order to keep their propertyin the family. Most prosperous is the husband who pimps his wife to arich knight and lets him support the household with his alimony. Likemany early modern critics of London's enormous growth, this playwarned: the city is a monster that lives off the money the countryproduces.