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 twit...