The Role Of Marriage In Henrik Ibsen's A Doll House

In the modern world divorce is not something that is considered overly strange or obtuse regardless of whether the person to instigate the divorce is the husband or wife. For many people, marriage is both a legal contract between two individuals who decide building their life together but also the divine union of two separate spirits. In A “Doll House” by Henrik Ibsen, the character of Nora leaves her husband of several years in order to pursue her own goals in life and find herself. While many people might still see this as a controversial decision as the woman had children with her husband, others instead point out the ways in which Nora acts as a kind of precursor to the women's rights movement as she decides to make a change for her own

Nora this explains to Torvald with the line: “I have been your doll-wife, just as at home I was papa's doll-child; and here the children have been my dolls. I thought it great fun when you played with me, just as they thought it great fun when I played with them” (Ibsen). Nora does not discredit her position as a wife and mother but, instead, points the fact that they are all simply using one another in a kind of game within their family. Just as Nora is treated like a doll, both by her husband Torvald and by her father previously, this quote explains that she treats her children the same way that she had long been treated. She realizes that this is not a healthy relationship and has decided to make a change in her life for her own betterment. While some might argue that she should stay with her husband for her children’s sake, this is the same argument the people have used for women who have been emotionally and physically abused by their husbands for generations. While Nora has not been physically abused, as far as the reader knows, the fact that Torvald has taken no interest in her other than as she has described being used like a doll shows that he does not have her mental and emotional health in mind. As a result, this initial perspective points out that Nora should leave for her own mental state and for the benefit

For Nora, the goal was not to simply escape her life but instead to make a life for herself that she could be proud of and live with happily. Torvald did not treat her with the respect that a husband should treat a wife by modern standards and while this might have been considered a controversial decision for the period in which it was written, by modern standards it can easily be shown as the logical way to end the