A Doll’s House: Development of Nora’s Character

He [papa] called me his doll-child, …I was simply transferred from papa's hands into yours. […] You and papa have committed a great sin against me. It is your fault that I have made nothing of my life.

This is a revolting statement of Nora, the protagonist of Henrik Ibsen’s A Doll’s House. Though at first she appears as an ordinary housewife, through her bitter experience in the patriarchal society, finally she turns into a revolting modern woman. Thus, Shuei-may Chang(2004: 18-19) comments,

“The character Nora became a representative of the new woman or the modern woman…. Nora’s action of leaving home became a literary motif in writing.”

At the beginning of A Doll’s House, Nora seems like a bit of a ditz and completely happy with her family affairs. She does not to mind her doll-like existence, in which she is coddled, pampered, and patronized; in which her husband, Torvald, address her,

          Is that my little lark twittering out there?

and

          Is it my little squirrel bustling about?

and, worst of all, a "featherhead". Even we the audiences are somehow inclined to agree with her position.

But in the course of the play, Nora reveals that she is not just a “silly girl,” as Torvald calls her. Her taking out a loan in her own accord to preserve Torvald’s health, her secret labor undertaken to pay off her debt, her willingness to break the law in order to ensure Torvald’s health shows her intention, determination and courage. Even “it was a tremendous pleasure” to her to work and earn money for her husband. She feels like modern women equal to men,

“It was like being a man.”

         

Though Nora does more than what is expected according to the gender roles attributed by the cultural practices to the males and the females, she is not matured enough to understand the ways of the real world. She lives in a dream world, a child fantasy, where everything is perfect. She reacts passionately to Krogstad’s idea of punishment of her signing of her father’s signature.

"This I refuse to believe. A daughter hasn't a right to protect her dying father from anxiety and care? A wife hasn't a right to save her husband's life?”

However, Nora gets the necessary wisdom and support to grow up from Kristine, her childhood friend who has been in the real world, unlike other housewives. With Kristine, Nora can share her everything. She confides her secret to her:

“What if Torvald heard? He mustn't, for anything in the world. Nobody must know Kristine, no one but you".

Their open friendship makes her feel liberated, open minded, and comfortable to be honest to express herself freely to Torvalt.

          Nora, like most of the women in the patriarchal societies, feels contented to be supported and protected in difficult situation of life by her husband. To enhance her husband’s love for her in later years of life she keeps it secret that

          “It was I who saved Torvald's life”

She says to Kristine

“…after many years, when I am no longer as nice-looking as I am now. […] then it may be a good thing to have something in reserve—“

Furthermore, she feels proud of her husband’s assurance,

“Nora, I have often wished that you might be threatened by some great danger, so that I might risk my life's blood, and everything, for your sake.”

But when the secret comes out, and when Torvald reveals himself a different man falsifying her desire, she gets shocked:

“I was so absolutely certain, you would come forward and take everything upon yourself, and say: I am the guilty one.”

Rather, he stoops to Krogstad’s “conditions” and calls her, “a hypocrite, a liar--worse, worse--a criminal”, Nora becomes frustrated because her long cherished ‘miracle’ or “wonderful” thing doesn’t happen. This observation of Nora is the final catalyst for Nora’s awakening into a new person.

Having observed that the male dominated society considers that the roles of man and woman are different, the transformed Nora realizes through epiphany that

“I believe that before all else I am a reasonable human being.”

not only “a wife and a mother”.

A man in that society can do many things for his beloved, but, as Torvald says,

“no man would sacrifice his honour for the one he loves”

On the contrary, Kristine sacrifices her love for the sake of her family; Nora also sacrifices her everything for her husband and in general

          “It is a thing hundreds of thousands of women have done.”

Realizing such things, Nora walks out, leaving everything … behind, “to understand” herself and everything about her properly, “to educate” herself, and to be a true human being and,

“to see if I can make out who is right, the world or I”

Hence, Theresa Hyun(2004:57) comments on Nora,

“A Doll’s House portrayed the anguish of a woman who sought to be liberated from the traditional family system so that she could live a more fully human life.”

Though, the playwright, Henrik Ibsen, denied that he had intentionally written a feminist play, preferring to think of it as humanist, still Nora has often been painted as one of modern drama's first feminist heroines. Over the course of the play, she becomes, like a feminist, suspicious of the role of tradition, religion, morality in the patriarchal society, and breaks away from all sorts of domination.

I do not exactly know what religion is.

The thing [moral sense] perplexes me altogether.

         

          To conclude our discussion, the character of Nora is a courageous depiction of Ibsen. Early on in the text, the home is seen as a thing of joy, a place of comfort and shelter, a place of a happy family. But, towards the play's conclusion, Nora realizes that home is revealed as a doll's house, a prison where she has no self-identity. Therefore, Nora has transgresses the traditional stereotype of womanhood. She has been such an influential modern character that, Theresa Hyun(2004:148) comments,

“Nora [is] adopted as a symbol of women’s struggles in many countries.”

Works Cited:

Chang, Shuei-may Casting off the shackles of family: Ibsen's Nora figure in modern Chinese literature. Peter Lang, 2004

Hyun, Theresa. Writing women in Korea: translation and feminism in the colonial period. University of Hawaii Press, 2004