Deceit in A Doll's House & All My Sons

Consider and evaluate the different ways in which the writers of your chosen texts present different interactions within families. You should: “A Doll‘s House” was written by Henrik Ibsen in 1879, the play was set in the late 1800’s in Norway, and follows the marriage of Nora and Torvald Helmer “All My Sons” was written by Arthur Miller, and was completed and first performed in 1947. The play is set in the post-war USA, some years after the Wall Street Crash and Great Depression, and follows both the Keller and the Deever families.

Both respective playwrights were highly influenced by the times that they were writing in, and the social “norms”, expectations, and pressures that were placed on families The different family interactions within both plays center around the themes of marriage and romance, control and submission, and lies and deceit In “All My Sons“, two of the leading characters are Joe and Kate Keller, a well-respected married couple, During Act.

One and Two there is minimal interaction between them, although Joe often makes remarks about Kate whilst she is not present, suggesting that he is aware that she is in a fragile state of mind; this is also Miller’s way of potentially portraying that they are not a close couple.

Joe often appears to be pacifying Kate, “Listen, you do like I did and you‘ll be alright”- through this reassurance we can assume that Joe is the dominant figure within the relationship, and he expects Kate to lean on him for support.

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This is further emphasized by the ending of Act Two, where Joe attempts to justify his actions to Kate, “You wanted money, so I made money, What must I be forgiven for?”, Later on in the play, Chris says to his fiancé “0h Annie, Anniem I’m going to make a fortune for you!”

Through these two quotes, Miller shows the impact of the era of the American Dream Throughout the play he dramatises the belief of the post-Second World War society; that the acquisition of wealth and possessions was the embodiment of American power following the defeat of Eastern fascism. This responsibility lies solely with the husband, and we can see that this puts great pressure on marriages within the play; Joe sacrifices his morality in exchange for profit, and Jim Bayliss sacrifices his aspirational career in order to provide for his wife, generating feelings of resentment instead of love within both marriages. Later in the play Keller asks his wife “You lost your mind?” and she “smashes him across the face”, as the underlying resentment and anger within their marriage begins to surface. These ideas of resentment are highly consistent with post-war attitudes in America; many have had to sacrifice their loved ones during the war, and now the men must make sacrifices in order to uphold their family finances and honor.

In “A Doll’s House”, Torvald truly believes that he is in love with his wife, however in reality this love is distorted l-le favours an idea of Nora, as a pretty “doll” woman, a “possession” that he can play with, control, and protect. Towards the end of the play he reveals to Nora his vivid fantasies; “many’s the time I wish you were threatened by some terrible danger so I could risk everything, body and soul, for your sake”. This strange longing revealed to the audience allows Ibsen to expose Torvald’s love for Nora as a fictitious, and is based on Torvald’s delusions of his own strength, and his wife’s weakness. In contrast to this Chris’ love for Anne Deever in “All My Sons” seems genuine, and emerges from a true love for her as an individual, not as a “doll“ or plaything, however their love seems doomed to fail when surrounded by so marriages that have been poisoned by “The American Dream”.

Another type of family interaction which overlaps with the themes of marriage and relationships, is ideas of control and submission. Throughout the play “A Doll‘s House” we see that Nora has no control over her own identity, she is shaped by the way that others speak and interact with her, specifically Torvald. Ibsen uses the interactions between Nora and Torvald in “A Doll’s House” as a tool to portray the dynamic of their relationship to the audience. Torvald consistently talks down to Nora; he nearly always speaks in the imperative voice, with demands such as “Take that shawl off”, “Quiet!” and “Look me straight in the eye”, showing that he is the dominant personality within the marriage, and that he considers himself to have authority over her. This is reiterated by the paralinguistic features Ibsen uses within the stage directions, such as ”takes her by the ear” and “wagging his finger at her”, implying that Torvald feels he can assert authority over Nora physically, as well as vocally.

The lexis that Ibsen chooses to implement are used to signify Nora’s position within the relationship; Torvald refers to her using terms of endearment such as “my little squirrel” and “skylark”, signifying a playful aspect of their relationship, but also suggesting that he considers her to be naive, and a playthingi Words such as “spendthrift” and “featherhead” are also used freely to describe Nora, and these belittling terms symbolise to the audience that although Torvald may enjoy Nora’s company, ultimately he does not take her seriously, nor does he view her as an equal, but instead freely points out her flaws and tries to control her, In this way, Ibsen has crafted a character that embodies the traditional male of the late 1800’s. This patriarchal ideal was reinforced by a society where women had no real overt political, social or economic power — they were not considered to be independent or able to survive on their own, but were dependent in every way upon their husbands.

The only areas in which they had dominion were as mothers, where they were expected to take almost full responsibility. In the same way that mothers would be expected to teach and bring up the child, the husband would be expected to train his wife. This is reflected in the many lessons that Torvald tries to teach Nora, he happily offers up his opinion about the correct way to dance the Tarantella and says to Nora “play time’s over, now come’s lesson-time”. In this way Ibsen demonstrates to the audience that Helmer truly believes that as Nora’s husband, it is his duty to impart all of his great knowledge to his “helpless” wife, furthermore his speech to Mrs Linde about the merits of sewing over knitting suggests that perhaps he sees it as his duty not just to teach his wife, but all women in society. Despite this, Nora does have control over her husband In performing in exactly the way that Torvald desires, she fulfils is low expectations of her which satisfies his ego and often leads to her getting her own way.

This is exemplified by the quote “I‘ll sing for you; I’ll dance for you‘i Nora, although cunning and resourceful, presents herself as naive and self-indulgent before her husband 7 therefore she conceals her intelligence and personality from him in order to conform to customary gender roles, In “All My Son’s”, Miller reverses this submissive stereotype, and turns it on its head with the couple Sue and Jim Bayliss; a couple in which the man submits to his wife’s command in order to live up to both her expectations of him, and society’s Their vocal interactions often involve Jim telling his wife to be quiet when she oversteps, or physically leading her away from the Keller household when she becomes too interfering — although this suggests that he is in control, behind her husband’s back Sue tells Anne she does not want Chris getting involved in Jim’s aspirations, and through this secret rendezvous.

Miller demonstrates to the audience that really Sue pulls the strings within the marriage, Miller uses the character of Jim to expose the American Dream for what it really is, not liberating, but inhibiting. Sue reveals that Jim really would prefer a career in medical research, however, sue tells him “for ten dollars you could hold his hand”, when Jim expresses distaste at treating a supposedly sick patient This shows that the wife is often the opportunistic figure within the marriage, and that she may have to push her husband to stay on track to achieving the Golden Age dreamt Eventually Jim tells Kate “it’s even hard sometimes to remember the kind of man I wanted to be”, showing that through submitting to societal expectations and his wife‘s command, he has sacrificed his own aspirations. Ibsen writes “A Doll‘s House” in the form of la piece bien faite or “the well made play’fi This is where the play begins at a climatic point, and builds upon a secret known by the audience.

In this case the secret is that Nora has forged a signature in order to gain money to treat her husband’s illness — by crafting the play in this way, lbsen creates an immediate falsity to the interactions between Nora and Torvald, as we already know what she is concealing The very first interaction between them is when Nora lies to her husband about buying macaroons, in this way Ibsen sets up the relationship to be perceived as false and full of deceit by the audience from the very start. Ibsen employs use of syntactic parallelism in Torvald’s enquiries; “Didn’t go nibbling a macaroon? Didn‘t go sampling the preserves?” to demonstrate his relentless nature. The declarative “I would never dream of doing anything you wouldn’t want me to!” in Nora’ response shows her readiness to lie, and her capability to do so.

The fact that Nora takes such pleasure in concealing the macaroons from him and then lying about it after, shows that she relishes small acts of domestic rebellion, and this perhaps foreshadows the ultimate act of rebellion which is abandoning her family for her own sake. In Miller’s “All My Son’s”, again the whole play is centered around a single lie — that Joe Keller was not involved in the wartime racketeering of his business partner. Like Nora, Joe goes to great lengths to conceal this from his family, and creates false stories in order to keep up the pretense A key scene in the play is when he gets caught in a lie, stating “I‘ve never been sick a day in my life” when in fact it was sickness that was his alibi, which proved his innocence In this way Miller demonstrates the way in which Joe’s lies have becomes automatic, and become a part of both his and his family’s lives.

Like Nora, he lies freely, and even openly declares to his son “I didn’t kill anybody!”. Similarly, a key dramatisation of Nora’s deceit within “All My Sons” is when she frantically dances the tarantella in a desperate attempt to prevent Torvald from reading Krogstad’s letter and discovering her crimes When Torvald discovers what Nora has done, and she tries to leave him, he tries do is appeal to the bourgeois ideals that she now knows are false: religion, conventional morality, the duties of a wife and mother. in “All My Sons” when Chris discovers Joe‘s crimes, Joe also appeals to conventional ideas to justify his actions stating he did it “for a business, for you!”. These interactions within both families reinforce ideas of lies and deceit, and both Ibsen and Miller use deceit as a way of prolonging the truth within a play, before the eventual moment of anagnorisis.