Ultimate Struggle for Liberation and Independence in the Patriarchal Norms and Values Presented in Henrik Ibsen's Selected Fiction

Abstract

This research attempts to analyze Ibsen’s new women in the liminal space in his works A Doll’s House and Hedda Gabler. The present researcher studies the condition of women and their ultimate struggle for liberation and independence in patriarchal norms and values. The whole research sees the struggle of protagonists as Nora and Hedda by Henrik Ibsen. They become conscious of their rights and struggle to achieve meaningful life but at the same time, it becomes problematic. Both protagonists are trying to come out from the utter domination of their husband or patriarchal hegemony for establishing their own identity or autonomous self but they fall into the liminal space. While representing the new women like Nora and Hedda in A Doll’s house and Hedda Gabler, Ibsen put them in the space of liminality where women like Nora and Hedda neither discard the familial values nor are ready to succumb to oppressive patriarchal values in the late nineteenth century. They do not value the formality of both marriage and divorce.