Sample Solution

Ostensibly, Henrik Ibsen’s A Doll’s House and Rabindranath Tagore’s The Home and The World are two texts that are disparate in form and subject matter, each dealing with the consequences of a rapidly changing world in different ways. However, both texts share a concern with exploring the diametric relationship between the home and the outside world. This piece aims to demonstrate how the distance between the two spaces is gradually corroded by the influence of external forces. In order to achieve this, there will first be a focus on the initial harmony of the household in each text. By comparing both Bimala and Nora’s domestic spaces it will be emphasised that Ibsen’s doll house, unlike Bimala’s marital home, bears the marks of capitalism and financial consciousness from the outset. The discussion will then branch towards exploring the roles of Sandip and Krogstad as invasive forces that corrupt the interior of the household by introducing foreign ideas and concepts to both women. This segment will focus specifically on the ideological corruption levelled at Bimala, and the introduction of capitalist ideals that reduce Nora’s private household to a public spectacle. At this point, the essay will turn towards assessing Nora and Bimala’s situations at the end of each text. It will reveal that they are dislodged from the sanctity of the household and must attempt to reconcile with the perils of the outside world alone. This conclusion will ultimately assert that the divide between the home and the outside world is corroded as an irreversible process of modernity.

At the outset of each text, Bimala and Nora are firmly grounded in the domestic sphere. Both women are positioned as housewives whose concerns do not extend beyond the narrow frame of their household “I would cautiously and silently get up take the dust off my husband’s feet without waking him.” (Tagore 18). This effectively removes each woman from matters of the outside world and suggests that there is a sense of privacy and security attached to the domestic household. In doing so, a distinct divide is created between the outside and inside spaces in both texts. This can be seen explicitly in Ibsen’s choice of setting for A Doll’s House, “A comfortably and tastefully, though not expensively, furnished room.” (109), which is clear in its exclusive focus on the middle-class, bourgeoise household. This claustrophobic setting is overt in its marked isolation. It is, at first glance, untouched by the influence of the outside w