CASE DI BAMBOLE: IBSEN, MANSFIELD, ORTESE

Abstract

This essay examines the figure of the “doll’s house” as a critical construct in modern literature, through the works of Henrik Ibsen, Katherine Mansfield, and Anna Maria Ortese. From Nora’s act of rupture in Ibsen, to Mansfield’s subtle subversion of social hierarchies through the child’s gaze, and Ortese’s post-catastrophic reimagining of the domestic sphere, the doll’s house emerges as a shifting site of imaginative resistance. The analysis traces a trajectory linking these texts through the concepts of emancipation, fem ale solidarity, and insubordination, arguing that domestic space operates not as a neutral setting but as a contested threshold of meaning. The essay concludes by reframing the house as a precarious yet vital locus of shared imagination, shaped by fem ale literary and affective alliances, particularly in the epistolary dialogue between Ortese and her friend Mattia.