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Question:This relates to Ibsen's 'A Doll's House'. I need to discuss this relationship but I'm unsure of what it means by 'sexuality'. Does this refer to the gender of the characters or the underlying sexual tones in the play? Any response from English experts would be a massive help!!


Best Answer - Chosen by Asker: This relates to Ibsen's 'A Doll's House'. I need to discuss this relationship but I'm unsure of what it means by 'sexuality'. Does this refer to the gender of the characters or the underlying sexual tones in the play? Any response from English experts would be a massive help!!

The first paragraph should interrogate the question and raise the duality of "sexuality", particularly in relation to the notion of "disguise". Next, discuss one aspect of the term (gender and disguise) and then the other (sexual tension and disguise), remembering to illustrate your answer with close reference to the play. Finally, return to the opening notion of the duality of sexuality (and the duality of disguise) and conclude by saying how Ibsen's play reminds us of the interplay between these aspects ...

OK I have a qualification in English Literature...but you are just as qualified as this question simply wants you to discuss YOUR idea of the relationship, there is no right and wrong interpretation. Sexuality being the practical ways you express your sexual appetite and interests.

they kind of pretend that everything is ok. nora hides away in her room every christmas - like a child - making "surprise" decorations, and torvald just "goes along "with it. they both disguise who the are. sexuality is based on the fact that she lays the dutiful wife to the tee, and he plays the "typical husband" - neither are satisfied and hide this fact so much so that even when the marriage is destroyed - they still can't quite see it.

sorry- it's been a few years since i read it so i'm hoping that's along the right lines.

The sexuality here implies the 'womanhood suppressed' and how it leaps to its freedom when confronted. By disguising one's true character one is tending to keep the sexuality neither expressed so well nor exposed truly to merit is what the whole play means to a reader.

Is it possible that they want you to discuss this in broader terms? The role of dress in,for example, religion.
There is ample evidence to show that the present day nun's garb is a linear descendant of that of the Vestal virgins of ancient Rome and that in a great number of shamanic religions the shaman's ritual wear is actually female,thus rendering the wearer 'invisible' to malign spirits as well as facilitating the shift into the 'otherworld' by consciously breaking with the mores and conventions of their everyday world. I could write more but I don't know how relevant it would be.