A Doll's House vs. The Visit

She is the submissive wife of Torvald and a distant mother to her children. However, the audience is made aware of her capability to break the norm when the audience discovers that she has been working in secret and also paid for Torvald's trip responsible for saving his life. In the resolution of the play, she fights against the stereotype and manages to transform into a self-assured woman, leaving her husband and choosing to fend for herself in the world. In A Doll's House, Ibsen uses the technique of fazade to allow himself to create the climactic ending that the play calls for.
             Durrenmatt's The Visit not only fashions a fazade around the main characters, Ill and Claire, but around the entire population of the small town of Gullen as well. While the townspeople of Gullen appear to be decent people, they mask their genuine intent and, in some cases, their actual personalities. Take, for instance, the townspeople. Despite what the townspeople claim "that they would sooner endure poverty than shed the blood of a beloved town friend "they conceal their true intent: to take the life of Ill in order to rise out of their poverty. They are not actively verbal in this, of course. Instead, they express these motives through simple actions as opposed to words. The audience catches glimpses of this when the townspeople are shown to be charging more things "to account- and their sudden improvement in their manner of dress. Ill, though seemingly different, puts up the same type of fazade. While he appears to be a good, wholesome citizen of the town, he is really covering up the sin that he had committed with Claire Zachanassian back in their teenage years. The turning point comes when Claire enters the play and reveals Ill for the philanderer he used to be. Even in the presence of the older Claire, he evades the consequences of fathering a bastard child by emphasizing, "It's over and done with, dead and buried!- (pp 38).