Lifting Veils From the Faces of Marriage Both William Shakespeare and Henrik Ibsen have spun tales of marriage with deep complexities woven in, each having major objectives that are veiled from spouses. Sophocles Oedipus the King and Ibsen’s A Doll’s House provide readers with similar elements in the two plays. Oedipus the King and A Doll’s House are each a strong example of dramatic irony, providing the reader with a more detailed and comprehensive look at the characters and situations, more so than some characters know themselves. Focusing our attentions with an in-depth look and comparison of the similar aspects of these marriages and what they entail. Including common elements such as truth and honesty, naivety, parental effects on a
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And if I had any others, I kept them hidden… He called me his little doll-child, and he played with me like I played with my dolls. Then I came to your house//Now that I look back on it, I can see I’ve lived like a beggar in this house, from hand to mouth…You and Papa have created a great sin against me. It’s your fault that Ive become what I am (Ibs. 766) Oedipus too has familial issues, however they are much more deep seeded circumstances, but as with Nora they play a dramatic and prevalent role the individual outcomes of their lives. Oedipus arrives at his peak moment of clarity while speaking with the Shepherd after Jocasta has fled, “O god—all come true, all burst to light. O light—let me know look my last on you! I stand revealed at last—cursed in my birth, cursed in marriage, cursed in the lives I cut down with these hands” (Soph. 125-26).Further continuing on in a soliloquy “Marriages! O marriage, you gave me birth, and once you brought me into the world you brought my sperm rising back, springing to light… The blackest man a thing can do, I have done them all”(Soph. …show more content…
Jocasta cannot bear the circumstances of truth of their marriage holds. After she has fled the scene with Oedipus and the Messenger it is later announced that the “The Queen is dead” (Soph. 127), and the cause recognized “By her own hand…she wailed for Laius, dead so long, remembering how she bore his child long ago, the life that rose up to destroy him, leaving its mother to mother living creatures with the son she’d born” (Soph. 127). With his wife/mother gone, Oedipus must carry on alone, as do their three children. In A Doll’s House Nora frees herself from being a pet and toy to Torvald by simply walking right out the front door. She too, leaving her husband, along with multiple children. Taking reign of who she really was by acknowledging and deciding her own fate and informing him “Listen, Torvald; when a wife deserts her husbands house, as I’m doing now, I’ve heard that the law frees him from any responsibility to her. And anyway, I’m freeing you. From everything. Complete freedom on both sides “(Ibs. 769). Two women making a defining choice in both their lives and that of their
And if I had any others, I kept them hidden… He called me his little doll-child, and he played with me like I played with my dolls. Then I came to your house//Now that I look back on it, I can see I’ve lived like a beggar in this house, from hand to mouth…You and Papa have created a great sin against me. It’s your fault that Ive become what I am (Ibs. 766) Oedipus too has familial issues, however they are much more deep seeded circumstances, but as with Nora they play a dramatic and prevalent role the individual outcomes of their lives. Oedipus arrives at his peak moment of clarity while speaking with the Shepherd after Jocasta has fled, “O god—all come true, all burst to light. O light—let me know look my last on you! I stand revealed at last—cursed in my birth, cursed in marriage, cursed in the lives I cut down with these hands” (Soph. 125-26).Further continuing on in a soliloquy “Marriages! O marriage, you gave me birth, and once you brought me into the world you brought my sperm rising back, springing to light… The blackest man a thing can do, I have done them all”(Soph. …show more content…
Jocasta cannot bear the circumstances of truth of their marriage holds. After she has fled the scene with Oedipus and the Messenger it is later announced that the “The Queen is dead” (Soph. 127), and the cause recognized “By her own hand…she wailed for Laius, dead so long, remembering how she bore his child long ago, the life that rose up to destroy him, leaving its mother to mother living creatures with the son she’d born” (Soph. 127). With his wife/mother gone, Oedipus must carry on alone, as do their three children. In A Doll’s House Nora frees herself from being a pet and toy to Torvald by simply walking right out the front door. She too, leaving her husband, along with multiple children. Taking reign of who she really was by acknowledging and deciding her own fate and informing him “Listen, Torvald; when a wife deserts her husbands house, as I’m doing now, I’ve heard that the law frees him from any responsibility to her. And anyway, I’m freeing you. From everything. Complete freedom on both sides “(Ibs. 769). Two women making a defining choice in both their lives and that of their