Exploration of Social Structures in "The Doll's House" by Katherine Mansfield: A Liberal Feminist Analysis

Abstract

The goal of this research paper is to analyse social roles depicted in Katherine Mansfield’s short story “The Doll’s House”. In the paper, Betty Friedan’s Liberal Feminist Theory forms the lens through which the researcher investigates the social roles present in the short story. The paper is a qualitative research paper based on a short story and seeks to analyze the text in details in order to make meaning out of it. The research focuses on the role of character relations and social expectations and norms tangent to the story to reinforce gender subordination. Using Friedan’s arguments on the “feminine mystique” and the call for the women’s liberation movement, the research aims at bringing out further aspects of gender relations and the lessons that can be gained from them for the study of the socially constructed structures. Besides enhancing the hermeneutics of Mansfield’s work, the current approach also affirms the significance of feminism in the scrutiny of literary material. In sum, it leads to the theories of post-1990s second-wave feminism and offers further analysis for Mansfield’s texts.