The Doll's House

Figurative language includes imagery, similes, metaphors, and figures of speech that create more impactful engagement with the text. In “The Doll’s House,” Mansfield uses figurative language to enrich the inner and outer worlds of the characters, providing access to different characters’ emotions.

Figurative language also deepens the text’s thematic focus on class divisions. As working-class outcasts, the Kelvey sisters are compared to animals: They follow Kezia “like two little stray cats” (11), get chased by Aunt Beryl “as if they were chickens” (12), and are described by Aunt Beryl as “those little rats of Kelveys” (12).

Free indirect discourse is a type of third-person narration. While most of “The Doll’s House” seems to be narrated by an omniscient, removed narrator, the narrative frequently merges with individuals’ consciousnesses, revealing the story through their perception and point of view. This allows the reader to gain a sense of variety in the characters’ interior worlds, which cannot be achieved in a strictly third-person narrative.

This rhetorical narrative technique enhances the theme of The Politics of Children, as well as their power, since the narrator dives into the consciousnesses of both children and adults without discriminating. It also provides both subjectivity and objectivity; the reader gains access to different characters’ interiorities, which affects and influences the reader’s interpretation of the events described. However, this technique provides more objectivity than if the narrative were told through a purely first-person technique or a limited omniscient third-person technique that was restricted to one character’s point of view. Through the alternation between perspectives, the reader views the world of “The Doll’s House” through several lenses.