Noras Quest for Justice

Nora’s Quest for Justice

In Henrik Ibsen’s, A Doll’s House, Nora struggles to achieve justice and her rightful place as a woman, mother, and wife, despite the hardships and mistreatment of her husband Torvald and her father. Throughout Nora’s life, she has faced hardships in order to survive as a normal person because of the mistreatment she received from the two men in life she ever loved; her father and her husband. The mistreatment of Nora’s father and husband has caused Nora to become and be an extremely weak individual. Nora is fearful to live the way she wants to because she no longer has an identity of her own. Despite the hardships and mistreatment Nora encounters, she still has extreme hubris. She wants everyone to recognize and believe that she is living a joyous and wealthy life. In search for Nora’s rightful place as a wife, mother, and woman, she must also search for her quest for justice. “[… ] When her image of herself and her domestic life is shattered she does what she feels she must to become a true person.” (Clurman154) Nora encounters many struggles in achieving justice and finding her rightful place in society.

Throughout Nora’s life, she has been mistreated and viewed as a doll not as a human. “Nora’s father, it transpires, an irresponsible spendthrift, brought her up with no sense of social obligations or serious thought for the morrow, while her husband, finding her a delightful companion like this, did nothing to repair the omission and treated her with a playfulness of a teen not a mother.” (Beerbohm147) As a result, Nora realizes that she has been mistreated and treated unfairly. “Nora, however, protests that she has been treated unfairly in being denied the opportunity to participate in her marriage and in society as an informed adult.” (Gosse219) Torvald and Nora’s father both viewed Nora as if she could not make decisions on her own. “The transformation from her carefree days as a girl to marriage meant no more to her than a change from a small doll’s house to a larger one.” (Salome226) In the play A Doll’s House, Nora is not oblivious to her mistreatment; she soon becomes very much aware of it. Nora states, “I was simply your little songbird, your doll […]” (Ibsen230) Nora has never been taken seriously; not by her father and now not by her husband. They do not take her thoughts or her comments in to any considerations what so...

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...shielded from all responsibilities throughout her life. “[…] Poor Nora, who cannot understand why a daughter has no right to spare her dying father anxiety or why a wife has no right to save her husband’s life.” (Goldman2) Nora’s quest for justice and finding her rightful place in society ends in triumph when she comes to realize that the love she had for Torvald was never really love and that the life she thought was perfect was not in the least bit perfect. “She was never happy under his roof, “only merry.” And now when she looks back, it seems to her as if she had lived like a poor person” from hand to mouth.” She had been impoverished.” (Salome230) Nora’s find act in achieving true happiness, finding herself in society and completing quest for Justice ends with the “slam of a door” to a life of mistreatment and weakness and “opens a door” to a new life of independence and true identity. “The woman’s eyes are opened; and instantly her doll’s dress is thrown off and her husband left staring at her helpless, bound thenceforth either to do without her or else treat her as a human being like himself fully recognizing that he is not a creature of one superior species, man.”(Shaw143)