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A Doll's House Research Paper

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Love: Love Based on Reality vs Love Based on Illusions Different types of love have always been a common theme illustrated in plays; many great playwrights, such as William Shakespeare, have given their opinions on Love’s many differing forms and Henrik Ibsen shares his opinion with readers of Love’s many forms in his 1879 play A Doll’s House. In A Doll’s House, Ibsen presents readers with two couples, each of which possessing a different style of love that defines their relationship. These two couples are Nora and Torvald Helmer, and Kristine Linde and Nils Krogstad. Each couple has different personalities, roles and expectations within their relationship that define the relationship, and Ibsen juxtaposes the relationship between Nora and …show more content…

Nora is able to get Kristine employment at the bank, now that Torvald is manager, and thanks Nora. Kristine doesn’t know, however, that the job that she is taking at the bank belongs to Nils. Nils knows that with Torvald gaining the position of manager at the bank, his job there is now in jeopardy and decides that the only way for him to keep his job there is to blackmail Nora. Nora tells Kristine about her problem with Nils and Kristine says that she will help Nora since she and Nils are acquainted, and that, “there was a time that he would have done anything for [her]” (Ibsen 56). Finally, when Kristine and Nils encounter one another after years apart they talk about their previous relationship. Nils was a little bitter about the way that Kristine left him for someone, “more profitable” but Kristine states that deciding to leave Nils was not easy that she had to because of her duty to support her family. Nils describes himself as, “a broken man clinging to the wreckage of his life” (Ibsen 64) while Kristine says that she is a broken woman doing the same, and suggests that both cling to one together wreck instead. Kristine goes on to say that she has been alone for quite some time and she needs “someone to mother and [Nils’s] children need a mother” (Ibsen 65) to which Nils agrees and is overjoyed by the thought of them being together

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