Although written almost fifty years apart and by two authors from completely different backgrounds, Nella Larsen's novel Quicksand and Henrik Ibsen's play A Doll's House ( also known as A Doll House) address similar issues. concerning the oppression of women by society, and particularly by the institution of marriage. The paths followed by Quicksand's Helga Crane and A Doll's House's Nora Torvald throughout their respective works are related in theme but vary depending on the events. However, each travels the other's path backwards. Nora lives most of her life under the control of her husband but leaves him at the end of the play to seek a free life, while Helga begins the novel by deserting Naxos for a free life, eventually ending in a even worse oppression as a man's wife. minister in Alabama. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on “Why Violent Video Games Should Not Be Banned”? Get an original essay It's hard to imagine that these two women could have anything in common when you consider their backgrounds. Nora is a pampered Norwegian housewife, married to a successful banker and mother of three children. She first appears as a light-hearted and inexperienced child. “What does boring society matter?” she asks Dr. Rank in the first act (Ibsen 134). Although she doesn't seem to mind the way her husband Torvald condescends to her, guiding and teasing her like a father would a silly child ("Look, Nora, in a lot of things you're still a child .I'm older than in many ways and have a little more experience” [Ibsen 184]), she tries to rebel in small and meaningful ways, like eating macaroons, even though he has them. forbidden, and admit: “I have the most extraordinary desire to say: “Damn! » » Although she may not initially realize the weight of her actions, Nora also rebelled in a major way by taking pride in how she had illegally obtained the money for the family's trip to Italy, and how hard she worked to pay for it (two things Torvald considers disgusting and unfeminine, respectively). "It was great fun to be there, working and making money. It was almost like being a man." (Ibsen 162) As the play progresses and Nora becomes more aware of the injustice she experiences with Torvald, she reveals that she is much more than the frivolous outward persona she projects when she finds the courage to face him and leave him. "But you don't speak or think like the man I could become attached to... I was simply your little songbird, your doll, and from now on you would handle her more gently than ever, she was so delicate and fragile .. I realized that for eight years I had been living with a strange man and had given him three children Oh, I can't bear to think about it, I could tear myself into little pieces (Ibsen 320) Helga! Crane, however, is first introduced as a teacher at Naxos, a school for black Americans devoted to racial upliftment based on the Tuskegee Institute. Helga comes from a modest background, with an absent black father and a white mother. deceased Unlike Nora, she begins her novel relatively free as a single woman, becoming even more independent when she leaves Naxos due to its regressive philosophy “This great community, Helga thought, was no longer a school. It was now a place of spectacle for the black belt, an example of the magnanimity of the white man, a refutation of the ineffectiveness of the black man" (Larsen 4). She is also much more experienced and "modern"than Nora, having the ability to travel to other cities and states – even other countries – and she knows more people than Nora is allowed to in her sheltered life. Helga, however, travels because she feels she doesn't belong in any of these places. When she arrives in Harlem, she first feels "this magical feeling of having come home" (Larsen 43), but it eventually fades and she leaves again, this time for Copenhagen (where she does not find no longer happiness). Even the feeling of "a simple happiness, a happiness free from the complexities of the lives she has known" (Larsen 114), she feels lost during her "conversion" as she longs to escape "oppression, the degradation her life [has] become” ( Larsen 135) as the almost literally barefoot and pregnant wife of a minister. Both Nora and Helga are oppressed, one could argue, primarily because they are women in a man's world, although the factors complicating their lives are different: in A Doll's House, it's money , in Quicksand, it's race. However, after a careful reading of both works, one can clearly see parallels between Nora and Helga. They are both intelligent, ambitious, and determined to achieve their goals (even if Nora must achieve hers in secret). They both feel the need to rebel against their oppressive circumstances; Nora's need for rebellion and freedom grows: she first imagines freedom as freedom from Krogstad's debt. "To be free, absolutely free. To spend time playing with the children. To have a clean and beautiful house, the way Torvald likes it" (Ibsen 163). But as the play progresses, she realizes that true freedom is more than free time, it's a chance to live her life as her own. Helga, on the other hand, changes her definition of freedom by trying to feel comfortable in different situations, but her need for rebellion is still present, especially when she is dissatisfied, even if it comes more from a feeling of not belonging anywhere. Rather than direct oppression from a certain person (like Nora and her husband), almost everyone Helga encounters attempts to control and manipulate her. "This knowledge, the certainty of the division of one's life into two parts in two countries, between physical freedom in Europe and spiritual freedom in America, was unfortunate, impractical, costly... and mentally, it caricatured itself by moving like a shuttle from the continent to the continent. (Larsen 96) Both women, however, are exploited by specific people, particularly men. Nora is patronized and pampered by Torvald and then blackmailed by Krogstad; Helga is manipulated by men like James Vayle and Doctor Anderson, and disrespected by Alex Olsen. While Nora is forced to “play tricks” (Ibsen 181) for Torvald, Helga is presented as “attractive, unusual, in an exotic way, almost wild” (Larsen 70) by her Danish relatives. There are also similarities between them: both women have absent fathers who have affected their lives in negative ways. Nora “was Papa’s doll” (Ibsen 186); Helga's lack of family "[is] the crux of the whole problem. For Helga, it explained everything, her failure here in Naxos, her former loneliness in Nashville." (Larsen 8) They are also both very concerned with appearances, which deteriorate through their respective works: Nora's personality, like her Christmas tree, starts out impeccably groomed but slowly becomes disheveled, and Helga, who is seen for first time in her ornate personal chambers in Naxos is, by the end of the novel, stuck in the small Alabama town. But the most parallels.