A Doll’s House is all about Nora’s discovering her real self

A Doll’s House is all about Nora’s discovering her real self. Do you agree?


A Doll’s House is all about Nora’s discovering her real self. I agree with this statement. We see at the beginning of Ibsen’s A Doll’s House, Nora is a content housewife who fills the social roles accepted of Victorian women. First as a daughter, and then as a mother and a wife, Nora performs the roles her society assigns to women. Yet the loan that she has fraudulently negotiated ultimately takes her out of roles and brings her into conflict with reality. Through numerous attempts to keep the loan a secret, Nora steps into unfamiliar territory and discovers the real world as her problems with the loan becomes worse. As a result, Nora becomes alienated from her patriarchal society, beginning to question its values and to determine her values for herself.
In A Doll’s House’s patriarchal society, daughters are valued for accepting the values of their fathers. Thus the father moulds his daughter, as Nora’s relationship with her father demonstrates. In the opening moments of Act I, Torvald claims that Nora is “exactly the way” her father was. Heavily influenced by her father as a child, she carries many of his traits. Nora has absorbed “all his opinions” and as a result, she has “the same ones too”. In this way, society manages to limit the independence of daughters.
As the dominant male of the family, the father also imposes rules on his daughter in order for her to grow up according to his vision. In the opening scene of Act II (a critical stage of the play as Nora undergoes her transformation), Nora tells the nurse, Anne-Marie, that when she was living with her father, it was always “so much fun” to sneak into the maids’ quarters because none of the maids would try to “improve” her. Clearly, the patriarchal sense of control did not exist in the maids’ quarters, and Nora finds that in escaping there she gets a break from having to live up to her father’s rules.
Ibsen emphasizes the society’s influence over women – particularly daughters – by the usage of the word “doll”. Nearing the end of Act III, Nora realizes that she is simply her father’s “doll-child”. Dolls have no intuition of their own, and are completely at the hands of their owners. As a “doll-child”, Nora was shaped by her father with his opinions, and had little choice but to accept his influence.
His influence continues to affect Nora as she fulfills the duties of a mother by taking care of her three small children. She finds it “fun” to play with her children. However, we might ask whether Nora has read influence over her children as their mother. In another important part of the play that contributes to Nora’s overall transformation, Torvald says that it is usually the mother’s influence on the children that is “dominant”. Though, in reality, mothers are expected to be an extension of the father’s influence. When the daughter marries, she does not have opinions and personal influence over her children. For that reason, Nora’s motherly role is to primarily care for the children and pass on the influence of her father and husband.
One of the most significant roles Nora has to take on is that of the wife. Her society values wives who accept their husbands’ dominance of the family – as the daughter accepts the dominance of her father – and who care for their husbands’ well-being, as the mother cares for her children’s. As we see, the wife’s role has characteristics of both the daughter and the mother. This further highlights society’s expectation of women with dependent roles.
Throughout the play, the daughter’s role parallels that of the wife. After getting married, Nora goes from her “Papa’s hands” into Torvald’s. The daughter is dependent upon her father for values and opinions; the wife is subject to her husband’s authority. Having been brought up in this patriarchal society, Nora readily accepts her role as a wife. She relies on her husband even in simple circumstances such as choosing a costume for a party. Torvald tells Nora that as a man, he will take on responsibility in times of trouble, when “it really counts”. Societal values like these, with daughters who are taught to be dependent on men by their controlling fathers to ensure that they become submissive wives, lead Nora to believe that that Torvald would accept responsibility once the loan crisis surfaces. However, when Torvald does find out about the loan, not only does he not take on responsibility, but he also distances himself from Nora and claims that there is no one who “gives up honor” for love. This leads to Nora’s realization that she has been Torvald’s “doll-wife”, just as she was her father’s “doll-child”.
The names Torvald calls Nora emphasize this doll-like quality. Among the many animal names Torvald uses to address Nora, the use of “songbird” is particularly significant. When songbirds sing, they entertain. Torvald shows that his wife’s presence offers a sense of amusement. In both cases, as a daughter and a wife, women play a subordinate role and are controlled by men like dolls. The direct parallel between the two roles clearly reveals the society’s value towards women.
The connection between the roles of mother and wife is also shown when Nora takes care of her children as a mother, and similarly takes care of Torvald, by negotiating the loan. Indeed, Nora takes out the loan to save “his life”. Evidently, she loves her husband, and does her utmost to care for him. The parallel nature of the roles shows the duties society assigns to women – they do not serve themselves, but others – and that society’s values confine them to their social status in such a manner that restricts them from surpassing these designated roles.
The critical, underlying concept of the loan drives Nora towards self-awareness. When Krogstad threatens to blackmail her near the end of Act One, Nora discovers for the first time that her actions are illegal and will be “judged according to law” (1534). Yet Nora cannot believe him, believing, as she does, that her actions – as a wife saving her “husband’s life” and as a daughter protecting her dying father from “anxiety” (1534) – are socially acceptable. Thus she learns for the first time that what she had believed as the right thing to do, fulfilling the society’s roles of a daughter, wife, and mother, is in fact illegal. As a result, Nora begins to question the values she has always been taught to believe in.
When Torvald tells Nora that Krogstad poisons his own children with “lies and pretense” and that he is “morally lost”, indirectly, what he said applies to Nora’s present situation as she lies to prevent Torvald from finding out about the secret loan. As a result, she is “poisoning” her very own children. At this point Nora is in a state of anxiety and confusion as her actions increasingly conflict with the values of her society. When Nora refuses to “let [the children] in” to see her, fearing to “hurt” her children and “poison” her home, she begins to question her society. From a content housewife who plays the defined roles society has given her, she now questions the very values of the society that she grew up in.
Nora is a highly dynamic character who discovers her real self by revealing the values and stepping out of her patriarchal society’s boundaries. While Nora’s attempts to fulfill the roles her society assigns to women, her attempt leads her to question the very roles she fulfills. She experiences bittersweet aspects of real life through her experience, and finds herself in an increasingly alienating environment. Her experiences with the loan lead her to question the accepted values and roles of her society, discovering that her personal experience is at odds with society. Confused, she can only “educate” and fulfill “duties” for herself, before she can be a functioning member of society.