Craving for Individual Female Identity: A Comparative Study on Ibsen’s A Doll’s House and Rokeya’s Sultana’s Dream

Umme Rabeya Mili

Abstract

The craving for self is innate in every human being. It is also true from a feminist perspective. The subordinate role of women and the conformity to the expectation of society compels them to conceal their real self. As the self has long been a salient topic in feminist philosophy, it is pivotal to question personal identity. For a long time, women’s selfhood or self-identity has been systematically subordinated, diminished, and belittled by giving men as “Subject” positions and women as “Other”. This paper presents how women have been identified as mere reflections of men or as their opposite and characterized through the different perceptions of men as well as the subordination as a result of them. And for this study, two prominent feminist texts of literature have been chosen of which – one is Henrik Ibsen’s A Doll’s House and another is Begum Rokeya’s Sultana’s Dream. By comparing these two texts, it is attempted to exhibit how female “Other’s” individual identity has been overshadowed by the presence of dominant male “Subject” and how their necessity of individual female identity led themselves to protest against the typical roles of patriarchy. Both of the authors try to portray the root causes of women’s unspeakable misery for which women are looking forward to shaping their own personal identity. 

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