A Doll House by Henrik Ibsen

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In Henrik Ibsen’s play, A Doll House, Nora Helmer represents many feministic ideals of the late eighteen hundreds. The ending is often what the play as a whole is remembered by, due to its shocking nature. Nora, the female lead of the play decides to leave her home suddenly, after a confrontation with her husband Torvald and never returns. Many saw this as a huge decision that was made abruptly, however what they fail to notice are the aspects that motivated Nora from the start of the play. At first, Nora may seem as if she is just a mindless, care free woman who is content with her life. Nevertheless, Nora Helmer is truly a strong willed individual who becomes aware of her underappreciated and overlooked potential. The limitations that society brought upon women of her time, as well as her need to have a real relationship with her husband and children, are the elements that shaped Nora’s motivation to leave her family and doll- like way of life in the end.

In A Doll House, Nora and Torvald Helmer are an upper class, married couple who go about their lives in a way that their society would see as completely normal. Torvald works at a bank in which he recently received a large promotion that created a more than comfortable lifestyle for their family. Noticeably, Torvald serves as the provider for the home and focuses primarily on his work. Nora is a housewife and mother to their two children and has no expectations outside of the home. This lifestyle may come across as average for the time, however for Nora it created the feeling of resentment towards not only Torvald, but her home and children as well. She was confined in a home where she had the same daily routine until her husband came back from work, only to briefly discuss he...

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Works Cited

A Doll's House. By Henrik Ibsen. Dir. Patrick Garland. Perf. Claire Bloom and Anthony

Hopkins. 1973. Netflix.

Baseer, Abdul, Sofia Dildar Alvi, and Fereha Zafran. “The use of symbolic language in Ibsen’s

A Doll’s House: a feministic perspective.” Language In India 2013: 622. Literature

Resource

Duby, G, & Perrot, M. (1991). A history of women, Emerging feminism from revolution to

world war. Gius, Laterza and Figli Spa , Rome and Bari: "Late 19th Century America."

Advice for Women. 2002. Web. 13 Oct 2009.

Ibsen, Henry. "A Doll House." Literature; Reading Fiction, Poetry, and Drama.

6th Ed. Emily Barrosse. New York: McGraw Hill, 2007. 1666-1715. print.

Shafer, Yvonne. "Complexity And Ambiguity In Ibsen's A Doll House." Literature In

Performance 5.2 (1985): 27. Communication & Mass Media Complete. Web. 14 Apr.

2014.

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