Ibsen, Henrik Subplots

Christine is an independent woman who has been out in the world and has held multiple jobs. Nora is seen as a child who does not have knowledge of how the world works because she is trapped in a “dollhouse”. Christine supports this idea when she calls Nora a child and says, “For you (Nora) know so little of the burdens and troubles of life.”(Act 1) When the reader learns what Nora did for Torvald, it shows that Nora is more intelligent than she seems which is a characteristic that Christine also possesses. In order for Nora to pay back the loan she took, Nora did repair work for extra money. Nora and Christine both had a sick parent who needed their help, which caused them to make a tough decision and they each chose the most important person to them.

Nora’s refusal to stay in the marriage, however, does not give us a sense of a liberated woman. By the end of the play we are concerned for Nora as she leaves the warmth of the family home for the cold outside as a single woman since we have seen Christine so desperate to get into the ‘warmth’. This ‘warmth’ can be defined as being a person being accepted for fulfilling the gender roles which society constructs for both men and women. Women appear to be reliant on the existence of a husband in their life in order to have a respected status within society and therefore feel fulfilled. Christine feels unfulfilled without anybody in her life: ‘I only feel my life unspeakably empty. No one to live for anymore’ (9). Christine is an independent woman but we can see that she is unhappy at the fact that she has not met the social stereotype for her gender. She functions to show how difficult it is for a woman to survive on her own. Christine realises she will be far more comfortable and regarded better by society with a husband and we believe that she feels that any husband will satisfy the expectations of her gender better than being single. This explains why she settles for a dubious moral character. Faced with only two possible decisions Christine settles for the lesser of two evils.

In Henrik Ibsen’s A Doll’s House, Nora Helmer is a traditional “angel in the house” she is a human being, but first and foremost a wife and a mother who is devoted to the care of her children, and the happiness of her husband. The play is influenced by the Victorian time period when the division of men and women was evident, and each gender had their own role to conform to. Ibsen’s views on these entrenched values is what lead to the A Doll’s House becoming so controversial as the main overarching theme of A Doll’s House is the fight for independence in an otherwise patriarchal society. This theme draws attention to how women are capable in their own rights, yet do not govern their own lives due to the lack of legal entitlement and

In Henrik Ibsen's A Doll's House, Christine Linde surprises Nora Helmer with a visit to her house. The two women were childhood friends and have not seen each other in many years. As both characters' qualities unfold during the play, it is easy to see how Mrs. Linde's character traits underscore those of Nora's. Mrs. Linde's serious, responsible nature amplifies Nora's playful, childlike personality; Mrs. Linde's taking care of her sick mother and two young brothers emphasizes Nora's abandonment of her dying father; and finally Mrs. Linde deciding to marry Krogstad heightens the ending of Nora's marriage.

In Henrik Ibsen’s play A Doll’s House, pointedly captures the reality of the Victorian Era within the play. Nora Helmer, the protagonist of the story, represents the typical women in society during that era. The audience’s first impression of Nora is a money obsessed, childish, obedient house wife to her husband, Torvald Helmer. However, as the play progresses one can see that Nora is far from being that typical ideal trophy wife, she is an impulsive liar who goes against society’s norm to be whom and what she wants. Her husband is illustrated as the stereotypical man during the 19th century, as he is the dominate breadwinner of the family, who too deserts his position as the play reaches its end. A key theme that is brought to light in A

Nora’s need to please her father and later her husband made her lose her true self and it is through the flow of events that she realizes that she needs to go and find her true self

Mistakes something that we all do. People are not perfect therefore we will all make mistakes many times in our life. But there are two types of people in the world's ones that will live up to their mistakes and accept that they did it so they can move on. And there are those that will never live up to the mistakes they made and they will never be able to move on. The only way to truly learn from a mistake is to accept that you made one. There have been many times in my life that I have messed up and made mistakes. Some very terrible some not so bad. But none of them never were as bad as this one but, what i learned from the mistake made it all worthwhile.

(Ibsen, 1879, p. 1110). By asking this I believe Mrs. Linde is implying that Nora can be independent, she just needs to overcome the idea that the male is superior or discover who she really is as a person rather than just a

Nora and Krogstad’s first encounter in Act One of Henrik Ibsen’s A Doll’s House, is significant to the plot as the main source of conflict is revealed whilst the central theme of deceit is enhanced through the use of dramatic irony. Throughout their conversation, Ibsen uses language devices to explore the characterisation and parallels between Nora and Krogstad and to foreshadow and detail Nora’s awakening at the end of the play.

Nora has never had the chance to grow as a person on her own, and as a result remains very erratic and irresponsible. In the very first scene, Nora pays the Porter hundred pence instead of fifty pence. Though it is not a significant amount of money, it shows how reckless and irresponsible she can be. Nora also has a disregard for others’ feelings and their welfare. An example of this is when Nora starts talking about her children, immediately after learning that Mrs. Linde did not have any children, without paying any attention to possibly hurting Mrs. Linde’s feelings. She blames Mrs. Linde for smuggling the forbidden macaroons into the house in an attempt to hide Nora’s crimes. Even though Nora insists that she had taken out the loan only for Torvald’s sake, she also says that once Torvald knows about the loan she wants him to appreciate and admire her for being more than just an ordinary housewife – which shows Nora’s actions were not as selfless as she made them appear.

The manipulative and twisted interaction between a man and a woman, what some considered a “marriage”, digs and buries the dominant and controlling nature of the superior into the obedient and submissive nature of the weaker, the man and the woman. In the case of Nora and Torvald, the chaotic and disorderly nature of their marriage is stimulated by the feeling that Nora is viewed as nothing more than a “plaything” or “doll” for all the men in her life, whether it be her father or her “husband”. With years of living like some toy for her husband’s entertainment there is a spark of realization within Nora, that she is not some object that is solely for her husband’s stimulation and transfixiation of perfection and subservience, but she is also a person, a human, and she has rights and she deserves to be respected as she is expected to respect her husband. With the realization of the wronging she has endured in part because of her commanding and persuasive husband and her controlling father, Nora flees from the responsibilities placed upon her by societal gender roles, and the roles deemed necessary for her to fulfill while her husband must work, this revelation and act of self justice is a deviation from what some deemed an inevitable tragedy for the family, in the aspect that this is not the tragedy they imagined. In Henrik Ibsen’s play A Doll’s House, the character Nora, often faced with the forced feminization of her doting father and dominant husband, reaches the point in

Once read a Doll’s House by Henrik Ibsen, myself was really impressed how Ibsen embraces women equality and power in society, conveying in a general theme of freedom in social life. This play was written in 1879 furthermore it aroused great controversy at that time. Many analysis about this book, locates the spotlight on to Mrs. Nora, which her main role concludes on her leaving his husband and kids completely defying the rules of society in that time. However people and critics reduce the importance of other characters in the play, in this case Mrs. Kristine Linde. While Mrs. Linde appears like a minor character and with a slight role in Nora’s transformation, she may have a fundamental part in Nora’s conversion in the play. Nora and Mrs. Linde move in opposite paths throughout the play. Mrs. Linde or Christine, starts as being a independent women not having any family obligations; On the other hand Nora has a devoted husband and several children. Whereas Mrs. Linde had a very problematic past, Nora has had it relatively easy. So, how did Mrs. Linde affected Nora’s transformation.

Later in the play things start getting complicated for Nora. Her husband Torvald had become Mr. Krogstad boss at work, and Torvald wanted to fire Mr. Krogstad. This is when Mr. Krogstad starts to blackmail Nora. He wants Nora to stop Torvald from firing him. If she does not, Mr. Krogstad was going to tell Torvald her secret. This should have been the perfect time for Nora to tell the truth to her husband, but she believed that telling Torvald the truth will ruin their relationship. Nora says to her friend Mrs. Linde “Torvald, with all his masculine pride – how painfully humiliating for him if he ever found out he was in debt to me. That would ruin our relationship. Our beautiful, happy home would never be the same” (Iben 802)

Henrik Ibsen’s A Doll’s House is based on Nora, a submissive and selfless woman who would go at any lengths for her husband and children. At one point in the play, Torvald, her husband, was ill. The doctor advised him to go seek treatment in Italy. Torvald was opposed to this because they did not have the money to do so. However, Nora insisted and she secretly forged her father’s signature to secure a loan from Krosgad who later blackmails her. Indeed, Krosgad’s actions causes trouble which leads Nora to discover how lost she is in her marriage. It breaks her heart that her husband is not whom she thought he was. Henrik Ibsen’s story is a mixture of situation irony, dramatic irony, conflict, and suspense. Readers believe that Ibsen based A Doll’s House on the theme of feminism, a movement that was beginning to gain ground in society in the 19th century. However, there are discrepancies that show double standards in marriage and the general societal morality standards. Therefore, this paper argues that Ibsen’s play goes against the traditional roles of men and women in marriage, morality and feminism.

Another woman, having a different role in society, such as Nora´s friend, Christine Linde, a childless widow, that proves to be an individual capable of surviving on her own, in a society who thought that a respectable women should be married and dependent of her husband. She once had been a “doll” like Nora. She also shows that she is a resourceful woman. When Nora tells Christine what is happening with Krogstad, Christine tells Nora not to worry that she will help her dissuade Krogstad (and she does), because she was once in love with him, but didn’t marry him since she needed money to help her sick