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Is the work of Ibsen, A Doll’s House, an example of a traditional tragedy in literature? First, we must look at the classic definition of a tragedy in literature. According to Webster’s Dictionary, a tragedy is: medieval poem describing the fall of a great man and serious drama with a conflict between a protagonist and a superior force ending in sorrow or disaster that brings forth pity or terror. Our text and class lecture notes further and more specifically define a tragedy as needing to have a member of royalty as the heroes, not members of the middle class (Introduction to Literature, page 821), the tragic hero is put into an extraordinary position, the hero or heroine has a tragic flaw which leads to the downfall in the end, and the center of the overall conflict is a moral or ethical dilemma. Also, like most all other works in literature there are always protagonists and antagonists. I will analyze A Doll’s House in relation to the above traditional definition. Ibsen’s story does not fit the first part of the definition in that there is no royalty at all in the story. The closest thing would be in that one main character was a prominent businessman, Torvald Helmer, and the other main character, his wife, Nora. Neither of them could be classified as royalty in that they were members if common society even though they were financially well off. Other highly visible characters were a medical doctor and a lawyer.
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