Man’s Best Friend
... and does as she pleases; only leaving an image of perfection. When questioned about something so simple as her sweet tooth, she lies through it, “No, I assure you, Torvald …No, not at all…No Torvald, I assure you, really…You know I could never think of going against you” (1571). Loyalty may be considered hand in hand with obedience in now out-of-date times, but they are quite different. The men of Trifles and A Doll House thought that they had loyalty as well as obedience. While obedience is something that nobody has, loyalty is something that the County Attorney, Henry Peters and Lewis Hale of Trifles have. Mrs. Hale and Mrs. Peters are both loyal to their men, despite being a little disobedient. They continue to respect their husbands and are loyal to them. Despite the crime that affects them all and the fact that the men and women have different views on the crime, they remain loyal to each other. Nora isn’t quite so perfect. She is both disobedient and disloyal to Torvald. Throughout A Doll House she is the image of a perfect wife and she decides quite abruptly to simply throw it all away. With almost no warning Nora decides that she wants “…to leave right away. Kristine should put me up for the night” (1613). Years of building up her image and she threw it away and gave her husband the view of what an imperfect wife she really was. Explaining to Torvald that their marriage has been quite false “…and so I got the same taste as you – or I pretended to” (1613). In both Trifles and A Doll House there seems to be a common action toward wives. In both plays the husbands acted as though their wives were pastimes. Flirting with the wives as the men go about their business. In Trifles the three men conducting the investigation walk around the house, looking for clues to tie Mrs. Wright to the murder, as they pass through the kitchen on their way to other business. In A Doll House, Torvald, while working in his study, only speaks to his wife during breaks and only as needed. Her job in the household is to be pleasant with guests and to run the servants. There is an obvious similarity between the women of Trifles and Nora in A Doll House. They seem to be very similar to something of this day and age. Dogs are widely accepted as loyal, obedient and fun to play with. They remain so for the most part, and of course, on some occasions they bite you…once and a while they will snatch something off the counter-tops…and sometimes they simply aren’t all that much fun to play with. The men of Trifles see their wives as simple minded people whose role in life does not compare to their own. The men in Trifles see what their wives do when they’re not around as inconsequential to anything they are doing, because the women’s activities cannot possibly be as important, or have anything to do with things that are of importance. They spend their time quilting and gossiping, cooking and taking care of the household. Why would men wish to be bothered with such simple nonsense? Women keep themselves busy and devote themselves to their husbands when the husbands have the time for it. That is how it has always been. Torvald in A Doll House does treat his wife as a doll. Throughout the play he paid her no mind, gives her no serious thought. She is a fool when it comes to the world around her, a...