Torvald: Early In The Play

Throughout Nora’s whole life she has been controlled by whomever she has been close to. She has never had to chance to have her own experiences, to think her own thoughts and to try to make something of her life. She knows nothing but what her and her father let her. Nora admits to

In The Scarlet Letter, Hester has finally been released from prison. After she was released, she was able to leave Boston, but she decided against it. Because of her wrongdoings, the community has shunned her. Even though she is shunned, she still has the means to provide for herself and her daughter, Pearl, by her magnificent sewing skills. Pearl helps her get through all that she is going through. Because Pearl is the result of Hester's sin, everyone treats her differently.

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

Each time Nora finds herself unable to help herself the problem is easily directly traced back to her husband, her father, and to the overbearing dominance of the male society. She tries to save the life of the man she thinks she loves and in doing so sees how she has become a victim of her own ignorance which has been brought upon her by the men in her life.

Nora has been put down by her husband. Torvald says, “You can’t deny it, my little dear. It’s a sweet little spendthrift, but she uses up a deal of money.” (Ibsen, Page 6). He doesn’t take her seriously and he treats her like a child.

Nora and Helmer are introduced as a middle class couple from the time of the industrial revolution in Norway. Helmer uses many affectionate terms when referring to which indicates a dehumanizing aspect of his thoughts. It seems as if Nora is only a showpiece for his home and that Helmer has no sense of gender equality. Nora is introduced as a innocent wife, who only listens to her husband.

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

“What an odd little woman you are! Just like your father-always eager to get hold of money. But the moment you have it, it seems to slip through your fingers somehow; you never know how you got rid of it. Well, one must take you as you are. It’s in the blood. Yes, my dear Nora, you may say what you please, but things of that sort are inheritable.”

When I look back on it now, I seem to be living here like a beggar, on handouts.” Nora also thought that she had duties that were equally as valuable as being wife and mother, which was being able to think for herself and not have men think for her. She also believed that because she is also human, she must also be entitled to her own happiness and

In relation to today’s societal standards, it is easy to judge Torvald for how he treated Nora, however, his behavior is not very outrageous given the time period. Ibsen created Torvald in the image of a typical Victorian era male. Torvald is a product of his society, the same way Nora is. It can be argued he is equally as imprisoned. At the beginning the play, Nora seems completely happy. She encourages Torvald’s teasing, speaks with excitement about the extra

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.

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.

Since the love of money appears to be a strong characteristic in Nora, usually the decisions that she takes are on the base of the influence of getting economic benefits. Nora borrows money secretly and with forgery (by any mean) from someone in order to afford a trip to Italy to help Helmer when he was sick; she works hard to pay for the loan. Here, an evidence of a Marxist characteristic appears. While talking with Kristine about the consequences of the allowance she has and the trip, Nora says, “How lovely to think of that, Kristine! Carefree! To know that you are carefree, utterly carefree (. . .) it is so marvelous to live and be happy! (Ibsen 1718). It is evident that Nora associates the acquisition of wealth with freedom and the only way to be happy. In addition, it gives the Helmers another status within the social order since they did not have enough money at the beginning. At this point of the play, she thinks that money can make her happy, but at the

Her final goal was so important to her, protecting her family, she knew she had to do whatever was necessary, even if that meant not being true to her husband or society. In the end, she realizes that it was more important to her husband his reputation, than what it had meant to Nora, all she had done for the love of her family, concluding to the raw truth that her husband didn´t really love her: he loved what she represented before society, a loving, faithful wife that compelled to all his expectations. She knew that to love her children, she needed first to understand and love herself, a thought way beyond and ahead of time, for a woman in the late 1800´s.

Nora gets blackmailed for forging a signature, and for this she gets disowned by her husband. But, when her husband finds that the blackmail will be dropped, and will no longer affect their lives, he tells Nora that everything is okay and they both can presume living like normal. This opens Nora’s eyes fully for the first time, before she had only glimpses of the wrongness in her identity, but now she knew. Nora had been living a false identity, she had been a ‘toy doll’, and at the end of the play she decides to want so much more than to be what others thought she should be. In the end of Act three, Nora states ”I must think things out for myself and try to get clear about them” (Ibsen 199). Nora is now going to decided who she is and what she really believes, she is going to discover her own identity. In an article on women working in World War II, it states, “While patriotism did influence women, ultimately it was the economic incentives that convinced them to work. Once at work, they discovered the nonmaterial benefits of working like... contributing to the public good, and proving themselves in jobs once thought of as only men’s work” (“Rosie Riveter: Women”). Women before World War II were thought of as simply housewifes for the most part, similar to Nora. The circumstances of World War II brought about need for women in the workplace, this started a domino effect of women taking up an identity similar to males the sense that they could now