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HOW DRAMATIC CHRACTERS ARE SHAPED BY THEIR SOCIETY.
Term Paper ID:30120
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Essay Subject:
Examines behavior of female characters, all named Nora, in different plays.... More...
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8 Pages / 1800 Words
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Paper Abstract:
Examines behavior of female characters, all named Nora, in diffeent plays. Conflict between their psychology & personality and the demands & strictures of their society. Plays discussed are Isben's A DOLL'S HOUSE, Sean O'Casey's THE PLOUGH AND THE STARS, John Synge's IN THE SHADOW OF THE GLEN & George Bernard Shaw's JOHN BULL'S OTHER IRELAND.
Paper Introduction:
Dramatists often criticize society through the characters and situations they depict on stage. When the playwrights do so, they may approach the subject by looking through the world in which they live to what they believe the world should be. They may be writing at a turning point, an era in which social change is in the offing but which is being resisted by the dominant order. They may merely be commenting on aspects of the human condition, which persist into their age and which they see as detrimental to society. Whatever their particular situation may be, playwrights criticize society by having characters who represent some social class or ideological position and by using symbolism as well as direct statement to make the audience see something they believe to be wrong. The characters are shaped by the society in which they live and then behave in certain
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In his play, it is Nora Burke who faces aproblem imposed by the combination of a husband and social pressures, butin her case, she has married an older man she does not love because societyhas pressured her into it. Is your home goin' to be only a place to rest in? Nora does fight some of the attitudes she encounters from Englishmen,believing that the Irish look at women and men differently, as she says toBroadbent: In Ireland nobody'd mind what a man'd say in fun, nor take advantage of what a woman might say in answer to it. Tom Broadbent sees her as "an attractive woman, whom he would evencall ethereal" (Shaw 531), while Larry Doyle sees her as "an everyday womanfit only for the eighteenth century, helpless, useless, almost sexless, aninvalid without the excuse of disease, an incarnation of everything inIreland that drove him out of it" (Shaw 531). Dramatists often criticize society through the characters andsituations they depict on stage. Shemay be a victim of her society, but she is a victim who now knows she canfight back and change her situation. Ibsen develops a type of dramatic realism andcreates a pattern of dialogue which combines the ease of daily speech withthe urgency of the drama. Works CitedGerstenberger, Dona. This Nora has not been married long, and she and herhusband are beginning to quarrel. It can also be seen as a summary and a climax to the totality,with a theme that involves the sins of pride, envy, lust, wrath, and thevirtue of charity. The city of Dublin and the people of that city are the focus ofthese stories and serve as a representation of all Ireland. They may merely be commenting on aspectsof the human condition, which persist into their age and which they see asdetrimental to society. They may be writing at a turningpoint, an era in which social change is in the offing but which is beingresisted by the dominant order. Nora is a woman who has anunderstanding that extends beyond the limited education she has beenallowed to have by her father and husband. This is not unlike the demand made by Torvald in ADoll's House. New York: Vintage, 1935.Shaw, Bernard. Boston: Twayne, 199 .Joyce, James. But Mrs. Tom Broadbent will be a person of very considerable consequence indeed (Shaw 6 ).For Doyle, this is both a social and national distinction--Nora's new lifewill be wonderful because it will be British, not Irish and "it will beworth the effort" (Shaw 6 1). Shaw describes Nora as a weak woman and a charming onewho does not show the strain of hard work. Sean O'Casey wanted to be a voice for a new Ireland, but after ThePlough and the Stars was rejected by the very audience for which it waswritten because of its unsympathetic portrayal of those involved in theEaster Rebellion, O'Casey left Ireland for Britain. Clitheroe is from a different social class andis not upholding his own social position other than the idea of a freeIreland, although, the women are expected to stand by and offer support. The play represents the state of relationsbetween men and women in the nineteenth century, with the males clearly ina dominant position and the women serving as adjuncts to their fathers andhusbands. In John Bull's Other Island, George Bernard Shaw offers a politicalplay analyzing questions of capitalism and imperialism and their effects oncolonized people as well as on the colonizers themselves. In O'Casey's Ireland, social stratification decided manythings about how one conducted one's life and what one could expect out oflife. Torvaldis a staid and pompous man more concerned with what society thinks thanwith caring for his wife. Collected Plays. (O'Casey 189).The demands made on women in this time and place seem different from thoseplaced on Ibsen's Nora, but in some ways they are the same. Interestingly, theplay has become one of those most performed in Ireland since that time.The 1916 rebellion is the background for the play, and it was a period ofdisturbance in Irish history. "The Dead" wasadded to later editions and sums up much of what is offered in the otherstories. Synge, George Bernard Shaw, and Sean O'Casey, and a real-life Nora whoserved as model for the character of Gretta Conroy in James Joyce's "TheDead." All might be compared to the prototypical middle-class womanemerging from her cocoon, Nora in A Doll's House by Henrik Ibsen. The characters are shaped by the society in which they live andthen behave in certain ways because of the conflict that develops betweentheir psychology and their personality on the one hand and the demands andstrictures of the society in which they live on the other. Whatever their particular situation may be,playwrights criticize society by having characters who represent somesocial class or ideological position and by using symbolism as well asdirect statement to make the audience see something they believe to bewrong. In A Doll's House, Ibsen challenges theassumptions about the place of women in society and finds that theconfinement of women has produced a situation under which men also cannotbe truly free, though they may not realize it. Her love forDoyle is unrequited, though she has believed him when he says otherwise.The world in which she lives is one much criticized in this play by Shaw,who sees a divided Ireland as a foolish exercise in nationalism andreligious conflict. John Millington Synge. In her own home at last, Nora is set against the demands of theCitizen Army, and she believes her husband is ignoring his duty to her infavor of his duty to his vision of Ireland: Is General Connolly an' th' Citizen Army goin' to be your only care? Critic Donna Gerstenberger says of this Nora that "she has become acreature of unfulfilled potentiality, a person who, by her dissatisfaction,questions the standards of a society that would say that a sound house, amarriage, and a source of income are enough for humankind" (Gerstenberger28). Synge's Nora has awakened to the realityof her world and to the inadequacies of her society simply because of thenature of her marriage and her own ability to see the world around her. Gretta is a woman who bowed to the social conventions and, after alove affair, allowed herself to be sent away to a convent. The same istrue of novelists and fiction writers. Nora is actually a woman with higher ambitions who would like to riseabove her station, but O'Casey often shows such women encounteringopposition from all sides, including from other women. The Complete Plays. Nora Reilly is the young Irishwomanin the play, and she is more naive than Synge's Nora is. Her childish innocence turns toresolve by the end of the play. This Nora is not afraid to express herself and to tell the world whatshe really wants: It's in a lonely place you do have to be talking with some one, and looking for some one, in the evening of the day, and it's a power of men I'm after knowing they were fine men, for I was a hard child to please, and a hard girl to please, and it's a hard woman I am to please to this day, Michael Dara, and it's no lie I'm telling you (Synge 111-112).In addition to knowing that she wants more out of life than she has, Noraalso realizes how short life is: You'll be getting old and I'll be getting old, and in a little while I'm telling you, you'll be sitting up in your bed--the way himself was sitting--with a shake in your face, and your teeth falling, and the white hair sticking out around you like an old bush where sheep do be leaping a gap (Synge 114).She always has a sense of possibilities she is not realizing as she remainstrapped "in the shadow of the glen" with Dan Burke and others who tendtheir business and think no further than the next profit. She is discontented in a way that Ibsen's Norawas not, and the reason for her discontent differ from those of O'Casey'sNora. Joyce is not entirely hopeless in his view of the people of Dublinand thus of the world, and he does believe that some will be able to find away to escape from the paralysis of society and of their own societally-developed souls to achieve a higher level. New York: Dodd Mead & Company, 1898, Shaw contrastsBritain and Ireland at the same time. In Ibsen, the modern tragic hero and the modern tragic conflict areto be found in the bourgeois individual--often a woman--who rebels againstsociety and tradition. She is unhappy living in a tenementhouse and would also like to dress in better clothing than Jack can afford. This marriage is not the false ideal seen in Ibsen, and this Nora is farmore outspoken and demanding at the same time than Ibsen's Nora is. The play suggests that the prevailing situation can be changed,and at the end of the play Nora stands as an example to other women. Ibsen criticizes the view expressed by Torvald in the playthat women should sacrifice themselves to their family and should upholdthe highest moral position as a way of protecting their husbands. Ibsen's Nora comes to ask some of the same questions, but she mighthave been content with this litany of possessions if her husband had notfailed her in her hour of need. Synge's one-act "In the Shadow of the Glen" received almost ashostile a reaction from its audience as O=Casey's play would later.Ireland has had a history of being antagonistic to those who would becomeits greatest literary artists. London: Macmillan, 1957.Synge, John M. The process can be seen withreference to several women coincidentally named Nora, three in plays byJ.M. The pity is that so few haveeven tried. When the playwrights do so, they mayapproach the subject by looking through the world in which they live towhat they believe the world should be. If a woman couldn't talk to a man for two minutes at their first meeting without being treated the way you're treating me, no decent woman would ever talk to a man at all (Shaw 545).Doyle sees her as a social climber, and her marriage to Tom Broadbent isdescribed in this light: Nora Reilly was a person of very little consequence to me or anyone else outside this miserable little hole. Am I goin' to be only somethin' to provide merry-makin' at night for you? Mrs.Gogan describes how the couple started out: "The pair o' them used to belike two turtle doves always billin' an' cooin'" (O'Casey 164). O'Casey's Norais supposed to support her male for the glory of Ireland and to sublimateher own needs and desires in favor of the prevailing vision of what Irelandcould and should be. This "Nora" is one who has accepted the sociallimitations and overcome them in some way and who has achieved a moremature acceptance of herself and her social standing than the other Noras.For one thing, she is older than any of the others, but she stands abovemost of the people in her society for the very reason noted above--she hasachieved a higher level while they are not trying to do so. In Ibsen's world,social status was important, but the hierarchy of man over woman was evenmore important. Nora and Clitheroe are introduced by Fluther Goodand Mrs. Gogan. Of course, this reaction isdirected more at the country than the woman, but the effect is much thesame. Synge'sNora has much in common with Ibsen's Nora: Synge's understanding of the difficult situation of women in Ireland, forced by economic necessity to make loveless marriages, is clear in his portrayal of Nora, who essentially is passive, unable to experience personal growth or satisfaction until she is forced by her aged husband to leave the tomb that is the house in the dark shadow of the glen (Gerstenberger 32). New York: Bantam, 199 .O'Casey, Sean. Selected Plays. Mrs. Goganthinks that Clitheroe has become disenchanted with having a woman about. Gabriel has an epiphany paralleling those of othercharacters in this collection of stories, an epiphany that offers him arevelation about himself on which he may be able to build for a future.For others, such a revelation may mean that they see they have no way outat all. She has the now dead old man or the greedy young man,neither of which fits her vision of the way people should live. The play begins in 1915 and prepares for thetragedy to come in 1916. Dubliners. The way the men view her showsthe problem women have of being accepted on any but the most stereotypedways. She lovedMichael Furey with great passion in her youth, and if her marriage toGabriel is less passionate, it is not necessarily any less real or any lessfulfilling for her now. Nora's choiceshere are limited. The collection of short stories called Dubliners describes what authorJames Joyce considered the "moral paralysis" of a nation, a paralysismanifested in the degree to which the people had given over their politicalrights to the clergy and had allowed their country to be subjected totyranny both from the English and from the people's own dedication to theirpast.
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