Notesale: Turn your study into money

Document Preview

Extracts from the notes are below, to see the PDF you'll receive please use the links above

---

The impact of public scandal leads the protagonists on to “the path to selfknowledge” (K McLeish, 1994) How far do Henrik Ibsen and GB Shaw develop their
characters on stage in the light of this critical view?

Public scandal, for either a man or a woman during the Victorian period of 1837 to 1901,
could lead to ruin both socially and financially
...

The idea of a good society dominates both ‘A Doll’s House’ and ‘Mrs Warren’s Profession’
...
However, Shaw demonstrates
through ‘Mrs Warren’s Profession’ that the men who condemn the acts of prostitution are the
ones who are using the brothels and the prostitutes, showing that society- though
supposedly rigid and correctly structured- was duplicitous in its self because women had a
limited range of options when poor, but one was condemned by society and one was
condemned by themselves
...
However, they could choose
prostitution that, though frowned upon by society, gave them considerably more money and
in this way, they could better themselves but would be convicted to scandal even though the
leaders of the society, whether in government or religion, relied on the women-of-the-night
for their own satisfaction whilst condemning their actions- this is the hypocrisy shown in
Shaw’s play through the character of Mrs Warren
...
In the
play, Nora’s future life could possibly be ruined when society (and her husband) find out that
she has been paying a secret debt: a woman was owned by her husband and the idea that
she would go behind his back concerning money would have been scandalous because it
shows the woman to be going against her husband’s wishes and is a demonstration of
disobedience
...
It is in these two texts, Shaw’s ‘Mrs Warren’s
Profession’ and Ibsen’s ‘A Doll’s House’, that you find two women who are lead to selfknowledge by the reflection of their own society in which they are a part of
...
It could be argued that there is a
natural human instinct to improve oneself and keep oneself, and that Mrs Warren’s natural
instinct was to improve herself too, and the only way that she could do that proficiently was
to go into the profession of prostitution, as it paid well
...

Without the corruption of men in the society, Mrs Warren would not had earnt enough money

to support herself as a prostate, but the men that pay for her condemned her as immoral,
when truly it is them who are immoral
...
Nora has
gotten into debt by paying for trips to improve her husband’s health: she decides to pay off
the debt by herself, however, the fact that Torvald, her husband, would criticise her for talking
out the loan, regardless of whether it was for him or not, makes him hypocritical, just like the
men at the top of Mrs Warren’s society in ‘Mrs Warren’s Profession’
...
Through being restricted, Nora finds her own
way to pay off the debt, saving the ‘pennies’ Torvald gives her in secret, and it is this way
that she has enough money to pay off the debt

---