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blazeofglory
09-27-2008, 11:20 AM
I want to start apologetically and particularly I feel extremely sorry if it hurts any women on the forum. Moreover I am not going to write it in the western context and it is entirely in the eastern and in point of fact in the South Asian in general and in the contexts of Nepal and India in particular.

The scaffolds of Nepali and Indian societies are predominately masculine and despite the fact that there were voices of social activists resounding everywhere they are simply puppets in these countries.

I had always that feeling and after reading Ibsen's famous and most popular drama A Doll's house everything became very clear to me.

I grew up in a male dominated social setup. My mother, grandmother, sisters, sister-in-laws were sheer commodities and they had no roles, no goals, no purposes, no personalities of their own. They were sheer comforters. There used to be tradeoffs between two families and girls are traded the way slaves used to be traded from Africa.

I am a male and has a spouse. She too is a puppet. This is a self confession of mine and I want to look at society through a different perspective now after reading the book.

In Nepal and India women have to part with their parents and parental properties and inheritances. They go to their husbands and live off the earnings or properties of their husbands. If they are educated and get jobs, in fact in most cases such things do not happen, they earn and live on their own otherwise they are dependents.

When a woman gets married she feels it is her Dharma to serve her husbands. She is taught to worship her husbands and fathers, mothers, sisters teach them to be subservient or submissive. She has to please her husband and even if he is wrong and wrongs her she has to be tolerant. She can not protest. She lives with a fear throughout her life, the fear that her husband can desert her if she can not please him. If her husband does not accept her she has nowhere to go, and even her parents are not ready to welcome her. She has no choice but to commit a suicide. The society she lives in does not allow a second marriage even if the law of the land does.

I suppose many know the fact that women in India burned to death. There are a few reasons why they get killed. In some cases if women do not bring in enough properties or dowries, in other cases if she does not beget babies or if she can not give birth to boys.

Even if India is getting modern and the wind of globalization is blowing there also, the malady like this is not over. Not only with poor and uneducated women such things happen, it happens pervasively in every social stratum in India. Even highly educated women also become very submissive in India and Nepal.

I do not think any change has take place basically, despite the fact that there are protests, and uproars or some activists are raising their voices loudly their strengths are like children who sulk and grumble temporarily but not strongly and effectively.

I apologize to all those who feel hurt. Of course in the European context it is quite different bu in our context this is rampant everywhere. I want people to give their thoughts.

RogerL
09-29-2008, 08:25 AM
If you read the play carefully or saw a good production, you may have noticed that the societal "role play" hurt everyone. Torvald was no less a victim of the prevailing attitudes toward women and the role of the husband than Nora. Christine sacrificed her chance at happiness and a loving marriage in order to fulfill her responsibilities to her mother and younger siblings. You may wish to discuss your lifestyle/marriagestyle with others who were raised in your culture, but who broke the molds. I know many Indian women who are very highly educated and have either married Western men or found a husband within their own culture who was enlightened enough to see that only by being himself and allowing his wife to be herself could they have a real marriage which allowed them both to grow. Ibsen was as radical to western thought when first written and performed as it is now to persons of some Asian cultures.

byquist
10-05-2008, 12:51 PM
I think this may be "the" most important play of modern times. Ibsen was privy to the meaning of freedom, and pushed for unquestionable equality.

blazeofglory
10-07-2008, 11:44 AM
In fact I have read the play a long time ago and then the drama appealed to me romantically.

Today I am under a different cirucmstance and matured into intellectuality and see things differently.

I am from Nepal, a country wherein there is much more predominance of males over females. We have grown to dominate women. They are still used as commodities in Nepal. If we make a survey in Nepal almost 90 % women are dominated by their counterpart males.

The whole social fabric in Nepal is flawed. That is why Ibsen is more appealing to me today than ever before.

After reading the play I was startled to find that the many circumstances Ibsen mentioned in his play speak of what is happening in Nepal today. I really felt like crying how we have brutally treated women.

As a male I felt ashamed. Our very pillars of society must be demolished today and we must re-fabricate a new social structure, a rational one.