Realism in Uncle Vanya and A Doll's HouseA play serves as a tool for the author to criticize society. We rarely encounter the ability to transcend accepted social beliefs. These plays reflect controversial issues that audiences can relate to because they interact in the same situations every day. By highlighting the faults of humanity, the playwrights of the late 19th century also provided a response to the controversy. Unknowingly, the hero or heroine solves the problem at the end of the play and indirectly sends a message to the audience about how to solve their own problem. Both Henrik Ibsen and Anton Chekov provide unique analysis on issues that their culture has never considered evil. In the play A Doll's House, Ibsen considers women's rights to be an important neglected issue. In his play, he acknowledges that in 19th-century European life, women's role was to stay at home, raise children, and care for their husbands. Chekov illustrates the role of a dysfunctional family and how its members are affected. The two problems mentioned above are resolved through the playwrights' recommendations and the actions of the characters. In the plays A Doll's House and Uncle Vanya, the authors use realism to present a problem and a solution to controversial societal issues. Although both plays primarily focus on the negative aspects of culture, the playwrights explore positive facets. In A Doll's House, Henrik Ibsen focuses on the lack of power and authority afforded to women, but through Nora we also see the strength and will masked by her husband Torvald. To save her husband's life, Nora secretly forges her father's signature and obtains a loan to finance a trip to the seaside. Nora...... middle of paper ....... Chekhov plays a short film London: Oxford UP, 1969 Durbach, Errol. A Doll's House: Ibsen's Myth of Transformation. Boston: Twayne, 1991. Chamberlain, John S. Ibsen: The Open Vision. 1982. Hahn, Beverly. Chekhov: a study of the principal stories and plays. Cambridge: University of Cambridge, 1977. Ibsen, Henrik. A doll's house (1879). Trans. Rolf Fjelde. Rep. in Michael Meyer, ed. Bedford's Introduction to Literature. 5th edition. Boston and New York: Bedford/St. Martin's Press, 1999. 1564-1612. Jackson, Robert Louis. Chekhov: a collection of critical essays. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice, 1976Peace, Richard Arthur. Chekhov: a study of the four major plays. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1983 Templeton, Joan. "The Doll's House Backlash: Criticism, Feminism and Ibsen." PMLA (January 1989): 28-40.