Christmas Tree Analysis

Nora is eager to please her husband by objectifying herself and subjecting herself to his belittlement. As the play progresses, however, the tree falls into disrepair, reflecting Nora’s abandonment of preserving the façade in favor of gaining her freedom.The image of the masquerade costumes is also used by the author to reflect Nora’s faith on the control from social norms.

Nora starts off the play essentially as Torvalds toy. She is obedient, she is cute, she rarely goes against his wishes, and she is nothing without her “owner”, Torvald. The reader, however, discovers early on that all is not what it seems to be. Nora is actually a very rebellious woman who enjoys going against Torvald’s wishes. There are scenarios where she does this out of the sheer enjoyment she gets. Nora loves macaroons.

Henrik Ibsen’s play A Doll House is set in a small town in Norway during the 1870s. It revolves around a housewife named Nora and how she comes to understand that to escape her shallow life, she must leave her family and pursue her journey alone. Throughout the play, Ibsen uses the changing relationship between Nora and her husband Torvald as a metaphor for Nora’s personal search for her own identity.

It is parallel to Nora’s life when she tells Torvald that no one can see her in her dress until the evening of her tarantella dance. She is the tree that nobody can see until it is “dressed”. A life cycle of Christmas trees is that they are grown in their natural settings, then chopped down and moved into a house where the family decorates it while it is dying. This can be related to Nora’s life she no longer lives with her father and is taken out of her natural settings, in a sense decorated for

The conclusion of the play is where the audience may perceive the fullest development of Nora’s personality. Nora confronts Torvald and states “After eight years of marriage, this is the first real conversation we have had.” Nora makes the internal decision to leave Torvald and her children on her own. The resolution Nora makes, breaks free from her conformity towards Torvalds expectations and showcases her inward questioning through the

Ibsen’s character Nora in A Doll’s House, shows gradual development throughout the play to support his theme that above all else, you are human; even in marriage both parties should be given the equal opportunities, rights and respect. While Nora may at first seem happy with her life inside her “doll house”, she begins to recognize that she must find herself, and stop being a toy in the lives of men.

restricted to playing with the children, doing little housework, and working on her needlepoint. A problem with her responsibilities is that her most important obligation is to please Torvald, making her role similar to that of a slave. Torvald easily talks down to Nora saying things like: “…worries that you couldn’t possible help me with”, “Nora, Nora, just like a woman”, and “Mayn’t I look at my dearest treasure? At all the beauty that belongs to no one but me—that’s my very own?” as if she is considered his property.

The tree also symbolizes the mood of the play, in the sense that it represents celebration and happiness, but at some point it must all come to an end, and normal life must resume, and in Nora and Torvald’s case, this means accepting that their marriage is not a part of reality.

Nora obviously pretends that she does not know the steps of the dance, easily establishing Torvald’s dominance over her and her effortless submissiveness to him. “When you were dancing the tarantella, chasing, inviting--my blood was on fire; I couldn't stand it any longer—that’s why I brought you down so early. Leave me now, Torvald. Please! I don't want all this. What do you mean? You're only playing your little teasing bird game with me; aren't you, Nora? Don't want to? I'm your husband, aren't I?” Another portion of Nora’s hindrances stems from her naïve nature, especially emphasized when she is hoping for the “wonderful.” That being said, the “wonderful” was the hope that Torvald would defend and take up for Nora and her crime of forgery; but he instead lashes out at her in response seeing as his reputation was clearly at stake. In correlation, the enforcement of a patriarchal society shines through as Nora is subjected to treatment similar to that of a child; she is considered unable to make her own decisions, let alone be self-sufficient in a world where men are ultimately privileged and continue to reap the benefits of their

The two dominance figures not only deprived her the right to freely express her thoughts and carry out her own desires, but they also limited her contentment. Nora describes her feelings as "always merry, never happy" because her cheerfulness is only short term and partially artificial. The scene when Nora finally slams the door and leaves clearly represents that she is shutting Torvald out of her life. It also figuratively symbolizes her erasing her oppressive past, since it prevented her from developing into a mature

Like the marriage, the tree is center stage and requires the focus of the audience. While Torvald tells Nora how deceit poisons families, she is busy decorating the tree. Nora cannot believe she will destroy her family, poison her home (1582-1583). At the beginning of Act II, the tree is in the corner stripped of ornament with burned-downed candles littering the ragged branches (1583). Likewise, the Helmer's marriage is no longer an image of beauty, but just an illusion of beauty.

In Act I, Nora decorates the tree as a response to Krogstad’s threat. The Christmas season is symbolic of family happiness, and the Christmas tree, being a representation of the Christmas season, is an embodiment of such Christmas spirit. Her action of decorating the Christmas tree hence symbolizes the effort she puts into maintaining the happiness of her family by reinforcing the illusion of the marriage. This is explicitly shown through Nora’s emphasis that she would “do everything that [Torvald likes]” while decorating the tree, sustaining her performance as the ideal housewife, which is the foundation to the illusion of the perfect marriage. Nora’s efforts are shown spatially through the central position of the tree on-stage, which is the focal position in drama, and reveals Nora’s focus of attention being put onto her family. At the end of Act I, however, Torvald ironically equates Krogstad’s “poison[ous]” morality to Nora’s, which “contaminates” and “poisons” her home. In Nora’s mindset, his words imply that her efforts, past and future, are deemed useless in securing her family’s safety, prompting her to become hopeless and destroyed when faced with Krogstad’s threat and can no longer focus on her commitment to her family, reflected in the change of position of the Christmas tree from centre to “the corner” of the same

The maintenance of the couple’s image is represented by the Christmas tree, when Nora tells the maid to “hide the Christmas Tree,” Nora wants to keep the christmas tree disclosed and makes sure “children do not see it until this evening when it is dressed” (Ibsen 1). Nora’s reluctance to let her own children see the Christmas tree is not only symbolic of the fear of losing her prestigious image but also representative of the fear of having her children see the flawed relationship between their parents. She fears that revealing the truth of their relationship to the children is just as detrimental as revealing it to the society. In addition, the Christmas tree is bare and unattractive without any decorations, this is symbolic of the rough, ugly relationship characterized by lies, deceit and a lack of understanding the couple has. As the play progresses, it is revealed that Nora would “ shut herself up every evening, making ornaments for the Christmas Tree”( Ibsen 4). This shows Nora’s struggle to maintain the image of Torvald and her’s relationship and parallels to the difficulty she has keeping up with the lies she has told

The Christmas tree is symbolic and emphatic to Nora’s feelings. When the Christmas tree is lit up and full of ornaments she is happy and has no worries, but when the Christmas tree was stripped of its lights and ornaments she is said to have walked about the house uneasily. It is also emphatic in the sense of it being Christmas time which also means it is winter. The tree also helps emphasize in a metaphoric sense, Nora’s character in relation to her and every other woman’s role in the house and in society. She is there for decoration just as the tree is.

Here, Nora pulls together the tragic circumstances. She sees that she was never truly happy in the house, just content. Her father kept her as a child would a doll, and Torvald continued this when they were married. They formed her opinions for her, set expectations to which she was supposed to adhere, and wrote a vague script of how she was supposed to act. She was like a puppet, with no thoughts or actions of her own. When she finally realizes the injustice being done to her, she decides to free herself.