A Doll's House and the Dilemma of Chinese Female Intellectuals in the 1920s and 1930s

Abstract

Ibsen's A Doll's House was introduced to China by Chunliu Society in the 1920s, sparking a wave of domestic women going out of their homes. Later, Mr. Lu Xun gave a speech entitled What Happens After Nora Leaves at the Literature and Art Conference of Beijing Women's Higher Normal school on December 26, 1923, discussing the exodus caused by the play and what the result was in China at that time. The speech was delivered about four years after the May Fourth Movement. This time period is the transition period when the female students who left the impression of "A Doll's House" became female graduates who faced problems with their way out. This article not only selects representative female writers from the 1920s and 1930s in China to explore the way out for female intellectuals from their biographies and works, but also analyzes the outcome of the choices made by female intellectuals in this era through the combination of works such as "The Doll's House" and "What Happens After Nora Runs Away". It further reveals that the difficulties faced by female intellectuals in China in the 1920s and 1930s are all due to the constraints of the times and destiny.