Question

Read the passage from A Doll’s House.

Helmer: To desert your home, your husband and your children! And you don't consider what people will say!

Nora: I cannot consider that at all. I only know that it is necessary for me.

Helmer: It's shocking. This is how you would neglect your most sacred duties.

Read the passage from A Room of One’s Own.

That refuge she would have sought certainly. It was the relic of the sense of chastity that dictated anonymity to women even so late as the nineteenth century. Currer Bell, George Eliot, George Sand, all the victims of inner strife as their writings prove, sought ineffectively to veil themselves by using the name of a man. Thus they did homage to the convention, which if not implanted by the other sex was liberally encouraged by them (the chief glory of a woman is not to be talked of, said Pericles, himself a much-talked-of man), that publicity in women is detestable.

What theme is explored in both passages?

Women are strong and do need the support of men.
Raising children is a woman’s most important job.
Women are expected to be invisible in society.
Women should take pride in caring for children

Answer 1

Women are expected to be invisible in society.

Both passages show societal pressure on women to remain private and confined to traditional roles: Helmer criticizes Nora for leaving home and worries about public opinion, while Woolf describes how women hid their identities and were discouraged from public visibility.