Do They All Or The School For Lovers

How does Nowra use the opera Cosi fan Tutte to explore the play’s main ideas?

Torvald was ill and the only thing that could save him would be time spent away from the cold. Nora never tells Torvald about this loan because he doesn’t believe in borrowing. Toward the end of the play when Torvald finds out about the loan, his true colors come out and Nora finally gets to see what her husband is really like. This is what really causes Nora to leave her family and to try to find who she really is. This situation also causes Torvald to change a little as well. Near the end when Torvald finds out about the loan, he gets angry with Nora. Once he learns that she is going to leave him and the children, he begins to change his ways a little and starts treating her with a little more respect. He hopes this will make Nora stay, but she already has her mind set and finally has control for once in her life.

The need to please their parents and keep their feud alive set the two young lovers up for doom.

She gains her independence and saves her husband. However, her reputation is nearly destroyed after Torvald finds out she forged the letter. Nora asking, “It is indiscreet, to save your husband’s life,” knows that she sacrificed a lot to save Torvald (Ibsen 1029). Nora believes she saved Torvald’s life, she also believes that if he knew then their lives would never be the same. If Torvald knew Nora had taken out a loan, he would feel indebted to her and that would be humiliating to his masculinity, while disrupting their “happy” home life. However, Nora relinquished many of the things that meant a lot to her. Nora forged her father’s signature risking her and Torvald’s reputation. She also takes on all the debt herself, paying it off with her spending money. Nora will not be able to buy as much for herself with the debt revealing her willingness to sacrifice wealth for Torvald’s wellbeing. Just as Cyrano sacrifices his life to send letters to Roxane, Nora sacrifices her happiness and reputation to save Torvald. This shows Nora’s devotion and unconditional love towards Torvald. Both Cyrano and Nora are risking their lives for someone they love. As Cyrano repeatedly risks his life for Roxane, Nora feels as though her “duties to herself” are more valuable than her devotion to anyone else as she states, “aren’t they your duties to your husband and children?... Duties to myself…” (1076). Nora has gone through a kind

Since women were not able to borrow money without the consent of their husband or father, Nora faces trouble with the law when she illegally borrows money from her husband’s coworker, Nils Krogstad. Because her husband is a very proud man and would never borrow money in fear of damaging his reputation, Nora could not ask him to sign the loan even if the loan pays for the trip that would save his life. Nora did not want her dying father to worry about it so she broke a law and forged his signature onto the I.O.U. Afterwords she lied to Torvald and said she received the money from her father. She defends her crime by stating,

Nora intended to get the money to pay off the debt by getting a loan or by “borrowing” it from Dr. Rank. The reason why she intended to ask Dr. Rank for the money was because he was going to die soon, and if she had “borrowed” the money from him, there would be a high chance of him dying before she can pay him back, which means that she would have free money to pay off her debt. Before asking Dr. Rank for the money, Dr. Rank confessed to Nora that he has loved her for quite some time, which freaks Nora out and helps her realize how wrong it is. What this tells us about Nora is that she is sympathetic and has some sort of a moral compass. Also, she knows what the limit is, when and when to not ask for money from Dr. Rank.

Torvald told Nora “Don’t contradict me, Nora. Sweet Nora… Spendthrifts are sweet, but they spend an awful lot of money. You have no idea what it cost a man to feed these little birds.” (Ibsen 335). Instead of being the spendthrift that both Torvald and Christine blame her for, Nora is pretty dang thrifty. She has been secretly working odd jobs and not continually skimming cash from her allowance to pay back the loan. Later on we discover that Nora was so determined to save her spouse that she committed fraud just to do as such. This decision demonstrates that Nora is both brave and diligent. She values love over the law. When her little secret is uncovered one may realize that, underneath the silly character she plays for her spouse, there is an entire other very skilled Nora waiting to take place. This other, more competent Nora was eventually brought out away from any confining influence. The anguish of Krogstad 's blackmail begins the procedure, but yet the last blow is Torvald 's response when he figures out the truth. At the point when what Nora believes to be "the brilliant thing" doesn 't happen when Torvald

Also in Act II, Nora begins to question the law. When Krogstad comes to Nora, they speak of why she used the money. Nora says, “Hasn’t a daughter the right to shield her father from worry and anxiety when he’s old and dying? Hasn’t a wife the right to save her husband’s life? I don’t know much about the law, but there must be something somewhere that says that such things are allowed”(2,1). Nora doesn’t seem to question much, but her concern that she could not sign for a loan to take care of her family as a man could shows that she is now questioning the rights of a woman.

Firstly, Nora and Torvald have different opinions regarding money: he upholds that borrowing is never an alternative to financial problems, but acknowledges that Nora does not follow this rule. Torvald believes she cannot help her tendency of over-spending, describing it as a hereditary condition: "It is in the blood; for indeed it is true that you can inherit these things, Nora." (p 9). She has been content to maintain her secret of borrowing money from Krogstad without her husband’s consent. This allows her husband to think of her as a possession and an expense, as "One would hardly believe how expensive such little persons are." (p 8). This becomes the main source from which the play 's tension originates. This is essential, as Nora’s terror of Torvald uncovering this secret causes her to weave an increasingly unstable web of lies, which subsequently collapses around her

As Mrs. Linde and Nora continue with their conversation, Nora begins to question whether Torvald does love her. Nora begins to tell her story of how she was the one to raise the money for the trip to Italy and not Torvald. She reveals how she went to Krogstad and asked for a loan to help pay for the trip. When Mrs. Linde asked if Torvald knew any of this information Nora replied, "He's so strict on that subject ... with all his masculine pride how painfully humiliating for him if he ever found out he was in debt to me" (1194). Nora did not feel comfortable telling Torvald about the predicament because she did not want to offend him. Torvald is set on complying by his morals and the fact that Nora disobeyed them would dishonor her

Now Nora was not only bound to Torvald because she was his wife but she also has this debt because of him that she can not pay without him. She saved the money Torvald gave her to make the payments, which meant she could not spend hardly any on herself. She also had to do so without being obvious that it was going somewhere else. She was bound by this debt and when Torvald did not give her enough money to make the payments she had to pick up small jobs that she was not legally allowed to be

Torvald makes cruel jabs at her father’s character with mentions of his ‘public suspicious’ behaviour and he blame Nora’s father for her financial habits. It’s only mentioned until later on in the book about how her father actually treated her. His immediate reprimand whenever Nora had differing opinions from him, his choice of food was the same as her father’s, any individual quality that Nora had it was quickly washed away by her father. Due to how she was treated by Torvald and her father, it’s created within her a want of independence. She’s exercised that by her willingness to forge her father’s signature, her resourcefulness, and locking herself in a room to work tirelessly just to pay off the debt. She’s created that agreement between wanting to act independently and using that independence for the security of her family. It can be argued though that her want of independence overpowers the want of security for her family, it can also be argued that she’s done all of this to prove her worth and her ability to

ruined my whole future.?(Ibsen 916). Torvald has no compassion for her. He does not care that she took out the loan to save his life. Torvald just wants to order Nora around. His love is not true, but it is an angry petty obsession.

Previous to the opening of the play, Nora makes the decision to get a loan without Torvald's knowledge so that he can go to Italy and improve his health, showing compassion and love for her husband. Nora's aquiring the loan with her father as a guarantor, shows that she cared enough not to worry her husband with money problems at a time that he needed to heal. Forging her

Torvald also does not trust Nora with money, which exemplifies Torvald's treating Nora as a child. On the rare occasion when Torvald gives Nora some money, he is concerned that she will waste it on candy and pastry. In general, Nora’s duties are