The Roots of Oppression: How and Why Some Men are so Possessive

Nora Helmer is an object. There, I said it. Women are objects…sometimes. To certain people. Like Torvald Helmer, for example. 

A Doll’s House, a groundbreaking work by Henrik Ibsen, known as “the Big Daddy of theatrical realism” on Shmoop, explores the life of Nora Helmer—a married woman with seemingly the worst husband on the planet. I say seemingly not to belittle his horrible, possessive nature, but rather to explore the psychology behind it. To the female audience, this may come as a shock, but Torvald Helmer is just a more apparent version of the inner feelings of a large group of men. No, this doesn’t mean I or most others hold his patriarchal—and rather sickening—views on women. I’m simply saying that maybe his way of thinking is more biological than the average reader may know.

Throwing it back to prehistoric times, men were the primary meat-winners. This isn’t a sex joke, but rather a knock on the hunter-gatherer way of living: it requires physical prowess that frankly many women don’t possess. No, this doesn’t mean I wouldn’t get my ass clapped in a fight with Amanda Nunes, but rather that generally, men were more physically capable of killing an animal with their bare hands—or a rock—than women. Anyway, this inherent physical ability caused men to be the primary meat-winners (again, not a sex joke) who were completely depended on for survival. In this need for survival, women were essentially objects for men to keep alive, like a dog, cat, or pet tarantula. This dependence on men from prehistoric times caused, through evolution, a horrible effect: toxically possessive men in modern times. 

But instead of jumping to modern times, let’s instead look at 1879 in Norway (this is the setting of A Doll’s House, not a random time and place I pulled out of my ass). Women are still dependent on men for meat-winning (which is now termed breadwinning) but why? By this time, women can work, yet only about 15% of them actually had jobs outside of the home. Women are still thrown into the role of dependence, but are perfectly capable of being valuable in a now-capitalist market economy. Yet men, with their possessive and egotistic nature, keep them in the home. Women are so used to this by now they might as well just concede…so generally, they do. Nora’s attitude before ending her relationship with Torvald is one of ditzy happiness. Nora is a total airhead—she can think of no better thing to do than spend Torvald’s money, set up a beautiful Christmas tree, or be Torvald’s lark (ew). She is Torvald’s object of obsession and possession yet is perfectly happy as just that—an object. 

Being an object does get rather boring, historically and for Nora, so eventually both society as a whole and Nora moved away from this possessive attitude. Now, women are commonly in the workforce, commonly breadwinners, and usually (well, sometimes) don’t date assholes who treat them as objects, just as Nora did in 1879. What’s important to understand is the psychology on both sides hasn’t necessarily changed. Most women still want to be showered with attention, something simply unrealistic to expect of a significant other. Even more egregious, however, is the inherent possessiveness of women hasn’t left either. Jealousy permeates men who watch their girlfriends go to someone else, even months after a breakup. Some men are incredibly controlling, not allowing their significant other to mingle with other males for fear of abandonment. Even worse are men like Torvald who expect Nora to, instead of be Nora, be Torvald’s version of Nora. 

Society may have moved away from the outward oppressive nature women once faced, but it still lingers in relationships and it’s paramount that those in relationships realize these evolutionary tendencies and move away from them to experience unadulterated love.