Doll's House: Lifelike Figurines Sold Separately
Doll's House: Lifelike Figurines Sold Separately
The marriage of Torvald and Nora Helmer has many problems, and is doomed because the couple can't match up to the elements of a successful union. To keep a marriage alive and growing it must hold true to certain qualities like love, communication, trust, and loyalty. With these qualities most marriages can work.
Without love a relationship would probably not even begin. Two people meet, a friendship forms, and soon a romance blossoms. Though Nora and Torvald's relationship appears to be centered around love, the needed balance is not obtained. Torvald doesn't really love Nora. To him she is just another child to baby-sit. He says, "And I wouldn't want you to be any different from what you are-just my sweet little song bird. But now I come to think of it, you look rather-rather-how shall I put it? -rather as if you've been up to mischief today".
Calling his wife names such as "skylark," "squirrel," and "spendthrift," Torvald does not love his wife with the respect and sensitivity a husband should. I think that Ibsen does this to fuel the reader's loathing for Torvald's condescending ways. The main area where Torvald shows his lack of love for Nora was in the way he manages his house. Torvald's fishbowl world that he has all neatly laid out like a house playset with little dolls of a wife, children, and hired help. Nora is the only one of the two partners who shows love for the other in the beginning and actually right up to the very end.
Going against all the odds a woman could face in that time period, Nora goes behind her husband's back, borrows a large sum of money, forges her father's signature, and hopes to pay the Krogstad load off with Torvald never hearing of it. She refuses to be a doll or brainless figurine, and alternates personalities between "Torvald's little skylark," and "Nora the intelligent and strong woman".
Throughout the entire play, irony becomes a big ol' hammer that knocks the reader over the head, reminding them that the plot is growing thicker and the tension and danger is mounting with each situation that arises. The truth is clear that when all of Nora's secret information is disclosed, all the laundry is out in the open, something bad is bound to happen. Torvald has almost no trust in Nora. In the...