Against Roland Barthes. Why Ibsen's 'A Doll's House' is Not a Feminist Text, but a Humanist one

Polemic Paper from the year 2016 in the subject Theater Studies, Dance, , language: English, abstract: Right from its first performance Ibsen's play has been misunderstood. From early on, 'A Doll's House' until recently, (when it began to be used mostly as a vehicle for feminism and what had been called the 'woman question'), has not always been popular and a number of criticisms and misunderstandings have plagued it. Many had commented on the fact that within the society, during the time the play was set, that women were made to stay home and take care of the children and support their husbands and that it would be a travesty if they left all of this in order to pursue self-fulfillment. Yet more recently, its popularity has seemed to have steadily increased. Today, copiously commensurate with Roland Barthes's 1967 dictum and theory that the author is dead,-(heralding the fact that real fixed 'meaning' itself is dead and that texts are constructed out of precariously grouped citations which therefore allow unlimited and arbitrary open-ended interpretations to proliferate in spite of the author of the work's original intent), today's unfitting feminism has taken this up in further attempts to achieve greater power and freedom. The problem is that although Ibsen stated that he wrote the play to reflect humanist issues, in much of today's culture, unfitting feminist interpretations which aim to rewrite the meaning of the play still abound.

Cyrus Manasseh is a guitarist, philosopher and musicologist. He teaches in universities and privately as a higher education consultant. Prof. Cyrus Manasseh PhD is also a Freelance Researcher and author of the books 'The Lead Guitarist'; 'The Island Library'; and 'The Problematic of Video Art in the Museum 1968-90'. He is an international scholar and has presented his ideas in a number of countries. He is author of numerous essays and scientific articles in the field of art history, film, music. architecture, video, museums, evolving media and theatre-drama. His published essays and articles include: 'The Words of Gandhi and How the Libertarian Collectivist Anti-individualistic Post-Modern Turn has Shaped our World,' 'Against Roland Barthes. Why Ibsen's "A Doll's House" is Not a Feminist Text, but a Humanist one,' 'Revising Animation Genres: Jan Svankmajer, Tim Burton and James Cameron and the Study of Myth,' 'Cinema and Mass Media in Modernity. Walter Benjamin and the Reproducible Image,' 'The Problem with the Influence of the Moving Image in Society Today, the Alter-Modern and the Disappearance of a Focus on the Internal', The Art Museum in the 19th Century J. J. Winckelmann's Influence on the Establishing of the Classical Paradigm of the Art Museum; Art without the Aesthetic? Defining Conceptual & Post-Conceptual Practices'; 'Art, Language & Machines: Marcel Duchamp, Francis Picabia & Raymond Roussel' and many others. He has presented his research at international academic forums in London, Sydney, Perth, Venice, Prague and Harvard where he was session chair and has lectured and has taught extensively in Italian, Irish and Australian Universities and Colleges. He was a finalist for the International Award for Excellence in the Constructed Environment Journal Writers Award Annual Prize for the academic essay 'An Inquiry into the Design and the Aesthetics of the Venice Biennale Pavilions and Film'. He is particularly focused on the problematic of post-modernism for culture and society. His novels 'The Lead Guitarist' and 'The Island Library' are currently available.