Vanity and Selfishness in A Dolls House Essay Example

Vanity and selfishness are two qualities that make a profound appearance within A Dolls House and drastically alter the plot of the play. The definition of vain is ‘having or showing an excessively high opinion of one’s appearance, abilities or worth.’ Selfishness (while mostly coming hand in hand with vanity) differs in meaning ‘to lack consideration for other people: concerned chiefly with one’s own personal profit or pleasure.’ Vanity is an outward preoccupation with what’s on show, selfishness is based around internal and personal priority. 

Both terms have negative connotations however surely nobody wishes to be a bad person? So, are these qualities learnt through life or with a person from birth, as the statement suggests. Being ‘naturally inclined’ towards a certain attitude or emotion is one aspect of Darwin’s theory of evolution (the process by which species of organisms arise from earlier life forms and undergo change over a long period through natural selection) which was becoming wildly popular around the time the novel is set. The theory of evolution was also highly favoured by drama practitioners who preferred using Naturalism. Naturalism is so rooted in Darwinism because in order to create a fully realised and natural scene you need to understand exactly what makes the character do a certain thing, this means going into a characters past and psyche to discover the reasoning behind every movement. In A Dolls House, Torvald makes it clear many times that Nora follows in her fathers’ footsteps of spending, recklessness and dramatics.

The concept of being formed from what has come before you, is not only rooted in evolution and being less an individual and more a species as a whole, is inherently restrictive. Ibsen said he wanted to portray humanity as it is (as opposed to a play about the liberation of women) and it certainly appears that Ibsen saw humanity as being twisted by the world into bad people. Ibsen's style of drama often saw an underlying political message and had themes considered taboo, such as Dr Ranks inherited illness from his promiscuous father. These ideas and concepts lead to the assumption that people are born as a product of what has come before them, and if that was bad then it was only due to what came before that and so on and so forth. It is a gloomy outlook on humanity but does seem to back up the statement that people are naturally inclined towards negative behaviour.