A Doll House and Age of Innocence

There are many similarities between Henrik Ibsen’s A Doll House and Edith Wharton’s Age of Innocence. One of these similarities is the gender which holds the power in the relationships. In that society and time period men were generally known to hold more power, but in both works the authors depict women who subversively hold control. Both Nora and Ellen manipulated the men in their lives who unknowingly thought they were deciding their own fates.

In Wharton’s Age of Innocence May had “clear” eyes throughout the whole novel. While Archer always thought she was a young girl who needed to be enlightened and read to, she always understood and this led her to control her relationship without Archer knowing. The affair between Ellen and Archer was never a surprise to her and she manipulated the situation to fit her mold for a picture-perfect family. Ellen went away and May was left with a faithful husband and guiding father for her children. Her eyes “shone with victory” when she told Archer the news that she was pregnant because she knew that this would be the anchor to keep him from pursuing Ellen, which is what she always wanted. If she had approached her husband from the beginning, then he might have resented her, but instead she waited for an opportunity to arise that would make it seem like it was Archer’s decision to stay- even if he did not really have a choice.

Similarly, in Ibsen’s A Doll House, Nora manipulates Torvald into doing her will while he unknowingly plays along. She holds the control, and even his life, in her hands, yet she leads Torvald to believe that she is a helpless “little bird”. This playful façade led them both to be satisfied with their marriage, both Nora and Torvald thinking they were in control; however, as soon as Torvald proved to Nora that she was not in control and that he would not support her, she realized that the marriage was not what she thought it was. She lost the power struggle and this led her to realize that she needed to escape that “doll house” and regain control of her own life.

Both these works demonstrate women who control the men in their lives by means of manipulation and smug secrecy, yet the endings are very different. In A Doll House Nora leaves her husband and family in order to find herself and live a genuine life, while in Age of Innocence May and Archer live out the rest of their lives in this socially acceptable “doll house”. While Ibsen’s play finishes with a hopeful tone, Wharton ends the novel with a disappointing conclusion as Archer never finds true fulfillment in his life. The different endings depict the two options that the characters in the works had- they could either ignore reality, continuing to live seeking society’s acceptance, as May and Archer did, or they could rebel and search for true fulfillment in their lives like Nora.