Ibsen’s work also lightly deals with the syphilitic disease: Doctor Rank often talks about his sickness that is slowly decaying his body. He mentions that this comes from years of watching the infidelities on his father’s part. Clearly, while Rank calls this disease something equivalent to tuberculosis, viewers can deduce that the inherited disease is one of a sexually transmitted nature. Parental misdoing, as well as venereal disease then become other themes to examine.
In his “On Ibsen’s A Doll’s House,” Ian Johnson makes the following imperative points about the nature of society and its role in the play,

“The cruelty of that society is not simply economic, although that is the most obvious manifestation of what happens to outsiders, as we learn through Krogstad's situation. There is an important emotional component to their distress as well, for the isolation they must endure can leave them unable to create for themselves a meaningful relationship, to derive human significance from their interactions with others (the basis of Kristine's troubles). Those of whom society disapproves or who don't have a secure middle-class status are thus frozen out, literally frozen in that they have to fight for a subsistence, but also figuratively frozen by the impossibility of realizing a rich social existence. Kristine's experience here is important because when we first meet her she has what Nora chooses at the end of the play--independence from any immediate social responsibility--and she finds in it no satisfying living purpose. She wants to get back into the society. Her experience on the fringes has taught her that she must, if possible, live her life in society.” (http://www.mala.bc.ca/~johnstoi/introser/ibsen.htm)

A Doll’s House is an intricately painted picture of turn of the century feminism. Perhaps what is most intriguing is the fact that it was written by a man.

Can anyone think of works done by men that treat women's issues from around this time period that would be comparable to this selection?

I put my comment up on my personal blog. I hope that was the right thing to do.

Hooray, Rachel -- you got the "Trackback" to work properly. Notice that an excerpt from your blog has now been attached under the "Trackbacks" section? Students, if you want to comment on what Rachel said, do so on her blog.

I think you'll find it will be much easier to go in depth when you don't have to wade through dozens of unrelated comments.