Parallels and Contrasts between Shaw‘s ―Pygmalion‖ Ibsen‘s ―A Doll’s House‖

Parallels and Contrasts between Shaw‘s ―Pygmalion‖ Ibsen‘s ―A Doll’s House‖

Gokaj, Rregjina

Literary works are wide opened for discussions and points of view. Since its beginnings literature offered to its reader new ideas and thoughts; it affected society in many manners: way of living, communication, thinking and re-thinking. Modern Period brought about many radical changes in economy, politics, sociology, technology and sciences etc. which were reflected in literature as well. Writers expanded their way of thinking and writing by giving social characters whose private behavior was greatly affected by an atmosphere of moral perplexity in their works. Modern Literature considered the man as constituting simply a part of the natural world. This birth of Modernism was reflected even in drama which is the focus of this paper. Two important dramatists who paved the path to Modern Drama will be synthesized and contrasted focusing in two of their most famous plays. The Norwegian playwright Henrik Ibsen and his declared following British one, George Bernard Shaw will be considered through their famous respective plays ―A Doll‘s House‖ and ―Pygmalion‖. Their dramas came to the public in a very appropriate climate where other playwrights around Europe witnessed a remarkable resurgence and brought a relatively new spirit and a new life to the almost moribund theatre of the nineteenth century. Shaw‘s Pygmalion and Ibsen‘s A Doll's House illustrate the kind of drama in which both writers excelled. Both plays, also called ‗problem plays‘, deal with the common theme of transformation of individuals focused in the two protagonists, Nora and Eliza. Both come alive from their inanimate existence to life, Eliza from the oppressions of her class and Nora from her life under patriarchy. These and other issues will be browsed within this paper.

Conference or Workshop Item
PeerReviewed

2011-05

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