Bringin' Home the Bacon

Nora Helmer just wanted to provide for her husband. Unfortunately that was not a possibility back in "those days". These days however, its not common, but it is occasional that women are the primary providers of the family. For example my friend Chris's dad is now "retired" but I'm not sure, while his mom is a lawyer downtown and works for one of the major hospitals. However a lot of families are like my own were both parents now work. Like the previous posts, I asked the almighty google what it thought. Gave me an article from New York.http://nymag.com/nymetro/news/features/n_9495/ (p.s. sorry for any awkwardness that comes from the article it was the best I could find)
Apparently women are now becoming successful, but men are not welcoming the change as well. In most cases when the woman earns more, the woman loses respect for the man and the man feels emasculated, destroying any resemblance of the relationship. By switching the roles, the author points out that it causes an identity crisis for those in a relationship.
I found this really interesting.when you compare it to the saying, "You can't teach an old dog new tricks." Society has been so ingrained with stereotypes and traditions, that despite everyone's desires to change things, it will take a long time for things to change. " A Doll's House" was released in the early 20th century, that article comes from the 21st. There has been improvement, but we as a culture are far away from complete conversion.

Possessive nouns

Ok so this post has nothing to do with possessive nouns but since Nora is always reffered to as a pet or doll I figured I would google "women as possessions". Of course today I chose to "feel lucky", and I do get lucky as looky here, I stumbled upon another blog.http://cynjonnoah.blogspot.com/2010/02/women-are-possessions-or-gi-joe.html
Even though I'm now blogging, I felt this blogger was just complaining.
Yes, gi joe was a bad movie.
Yes, the army has a tradition of degrading men by calling them ladies. Has no one seen Full Metal Jacket? That movie spends the first have degrading a man until he goes postal.
Are you really going to call G.I. Joe sexist for that?
There is a difference between calling making your wife your pet or trying to lord over her, and saying poor story writing is sexist. Nora left Helmer cause he was a chauvenist, even if unintentionally. G.I. Joe was trying to be different by adding women into the mix other than the original G.I. Joe nurse. In fact they are making progress in the movie compared to the original G.I. Joes series.
I guess the point of this post is even though feminism has a role in modern day society, complete fanatics like this blogger don't always have to be right despite good intentions. While "A Doll's House" did a great job of showing the oppression of women, this blogger fails and just makes herself look like a bleeding heart that doesn't even take time to do her research.

Marriage and oppresion

So I went through and googled some more articles in order to get some more thoughts. Struck gold on the first one :). On an interesting website, divorceonline.com, I found an insightful relationship article. Ashton Applewhite, a divorced woman, made some reflective commentary  on the institution of marriage and the mechancics of a healthy relationship. I understand her to believe that the reason for most divorces is an unbalance in a relationship, and the unbalance comes from the fact men are given more power from society. While that may be a fact, she still believes that it isn't an automatic lose, but even though "The world is a sexist place... if each of us responds to it in a nonsexist way, society will accommodate us because it must: individual action sparks social change."
Nora's individual action is one that sparked change as seen by the influence Ibsen's play had on the world. Ever since then women's suffrage and equal rights has been on the move and improving society.
BUT does that mean Torvald was in the wrong?
Yes, he was a traditionalist. Yes, he reacted harshly. But the blame can't be laid on him only.

Blaming men for the sorry state of gender relations is as easy -- and unconstructuve -- as blaming marriage for the unfulfilling nature of many unions. The point is not that husbands are brutal and wives hapless, or women righteous and men inadequate; if men are self-centered, it is in large part because women are socialized to let them get away with it. Asking less of men is one way to reconcile differing expectations, but one that demeans both men and women. Because we are stuck with the very human tendency to get away with whatever we can

The failure of a relationship might be because of personal failures, but the real blame should be put on society. So yes, Torvald was wrong, only because society was wrong. As stated by Applewhite, and I'm just going to post the article cause it struck a chord with me, http://www.divorceonline.com/whats-new/2007/5/6/making-relationships-work-better.html, an infinite amount of things can be done to solve divorce on a case by case basis, he should do this, she should do that, but to end it completely, we need to make societies expectations of the genders equal. Over the last 2 post I've come to realize that while in my area and life experiences, I haven't ever seen women being opressed, based on the amount of articles, it still must be a problem some where. SO in conclusion, and this is a bad ending to a blog, sorry all who end up reading this, the world has just got to be more accepting and allow women to have the same oppurtunities and responsabilities of men, and hopefully that will make it easier on individuals and improve everyones relationships.

1st attempt

After reading " A Doll's House", I've got this strong sense that it was play arguing for the equality of men and women. In the modern day, people always talk about the inequality of men and women in the work force, but I quite don't understand what they mean other than the trend that men are often promoted and paid more then their women counterparts, put couldn't that just be explained by the greater number of men in the work force? Then you hear about the women in third world countries. When I think about those women, I think that is more a circumstantial thing, that there forced into traditional roles because it is what they need to do to survive. I realize that " A Doll's House" was written back in a time when women had to fight for an education and work opportunities, but in this modern day, how is it still applicable to me in the modern day North Shore? Ofcourse I turned to the answerer of all questions, the mighty google, and just typed in "women's suffrage in the twenty first century" to see what I could stumble upon.

I found an article, " Feminism and Women's Suffrage in the 21st Century" on associatedcontent.com. The author S.Rodriguez was a good writer, but after reading it twice, all I could get out of it was that feminism in a modern sense is a desire to be considered equal to men, and that means to be as well educated and considered as smart as men and that the real revolutionary idea is that its fighting what society dictates for women.
I guess that is similar to Nora, the female lead in "A Doll's House", who left her husband Helmer in order to explore the world, find happiness, and not live what she felt was a lie.
But then I looked back on Rodriguez's article.
I am confused as to the point she is now making.

"But didn't we, like, settle that issue like, a long time ago?" About 90 years ago, yes. That being said, women's suffrage is still being brought into question. Shocking, right? John Derbyshire of the National Review found it perfectly reasonable. He recently released the book "We Are Doomed: Reclaiming Conservative Pessimism," containing a section called "The Case Against Female Suffrage." In an interview, he agreed that the U.S. would be a better country if women could not vote, and stated that while he acknowledges it's "a hope I do not realistically nurse,"* he hopes female suffrage will someday be repealed."

To me that says "Women have all their rights, and they are only questioned by crazies." 
I understand that women still face more adversity in the work force and social life than men, but I am having a hard time relating Nora's story to the current status of women. Instead, I feel the story of ADH is more representitive of abusive or opressive marriages. I think my next blog will probably end up being on opressive relationships and divorce or similar subjects.