Option 1
Compare and contrast the play with significant aspects of Isben’s life. What influenced his writing of the play and what social or historical events or trends was he critiquing through the depictions of his play? Review the section on Biographical Criticism (1313-1315) in the Norton for more guidance. Also, refer to compare and contrast strategies that you encountered in 111, particularly a point-by-point one to help structure your analysis.
Option 2
Compare and contrast A Doll’s House to one of the following assigned readings from this semester:
Faulkner’s “A Rose for Emily”
Chopin “Story of an Hour”
Hemingway “Hills White Elephants”
Glaspell’s “Trifles”
Focus your attention towards gender and social roles, and how both works look into exploring and critiquing these notions. Refer to the Gender studies section in the Norton for more guidance (1325-1326), as well as to the compare and contrast sections on strategies that you encountered in 111, particularly a point-by-point one to help structure your analysis.
Option 3
If you have a topic of your own you wish to pursue, please email me for approval detailing what your aim and thesis is, as well as explaining why your topic would be suitable.
Option 4
Toward the end of the Norton is a section titled “Critical Approaches” detailing various methods toward analysis. These help provide critics (those who analyze literature, like the authors of the secondary sources you will find) a lens from which to explore meaning in a piece of writing, often called a text or work. Review ONE of the following via the Critical Approaches section at the end of the Norton and apply it toward an analysis of A Doll’s House:
Feminist
Marxist
Psychoanalytic; this is also broke down in three areas to focus.
Poststructuralist/Deconstruction
Feminist-Marxist (a combination of the two since many within these camps feel the at women are both a gender and a socio-economic class)
Approaches to Avoid
