Henrik Isbens A Dolls House :: A Dolls House Essays

A Doll’s House Henrik Ibsen was born in 1828 on the coast of Norway into a middle class family. When he was 6 years of age, due to financial loss, his family were forced to move to a smaller house in the country and his education was disruppted. Ibsen had to work as an apprentice and study in the evening this alienated him from his family and he was never to reunite with them. In 1849 his first play was published and was a disaster. Ibsen altered his style of writing to accommodate the trend of the era which was romanticism. His second play the â€Å"The Warrior’s Borrow† was a success. Ibsen then acquired a job as â€Å"Dramatic Author† at the Norwegian Theatre which included all parts of the theatre production directing, designing sets and costumes as well as financial and business aspects. At this point in time, Ibsen was successful as light comedy, romanticism and melodrama were the main subjects he wrote about. By 1860 he was disillusioned with those and wanted to deal with real issues about everyday life in society, which his middle class audience could relate to. Being a socialist, Ibsen’s realistic for of writing made his audiences think and even examine their own life’s this made his realistic plays extremely successful with the public but the critics thought other wise. In 1877 â€Å"The Pillars of Society† was his naturalistic play but still contained a happy ending. Then only two years later â€Å"A Doll’s House† had a totally different ending which embraced women’s rights and was revolutionary causing a stir throughout Europe. Most of Ibsen’s realistic plays were based on events that had happened in his own life. The style at the time was Romanticism and melodrama this genre of theatre was known as â€Å"The Well Made Play†. The plays in this era consisted of your typical goodies vs. baddies battles which resulted in the goodies winning nearly all the time. A high percentage of the time these types of plays ended up with every thing falling into place nicely for instance, the man gets the women, the goodies win the battle and everyone lives â€Å"happily ever after†. As I stated earlier on Ibsen wanted to move away from this style and on to a different on. Ibsen helped develop a new genre of theatre along with Shaw called Naturalistic. This type of drama was classed as â€Å"The new theatre† which dealt with real life situations, morals and social issues. Some critics found this style of drama scandalous which dented its popularity in the early stages. The first play to generate positive remarks from the critics was Ibsen’s play â€Å"A Dolls House†.