The Doll\'s House

5 Pages 1339 Words

The Tarantella: Nora’s Dance of Death
The ‘Incurable Disease’ in “A Doll’s House”

Imagery and symbolism is a major and running theme in Ibsen’s play, “A Doll’s House.”
In the third act, when Nora’s crisis is coming to a head, the black shawl, the dark lighting, her sense of inevitability and doom, the tarantella, all combine to make the play a nightmare descending into “incurable” disease and disaster for the heroine, Nora. She believes that she is a moral incurable, and in the end becomes the hero of the play, the only one willing to admit there is a problem, and to change it. She changes it the only way possible, that is, by leaving altogether the comfortable “Doll’s House” she has built and maintained for so long.
Nora’s house reflects society and the way women were raised and trained, as “modern” women (at the time the play was written). Her upbringing, and her father’s faults, have combined to make her into a person with a hidden and ‘incurable’ disease: ignorance. Nora has been trained to get her way by manipulating men and using her charms to get what she needs. She has not been shown another way, as is a symptom of society’s treatment of women at that time. Nora discovers through her experiences that she must leave the situation and “find herself.” She must find her human side, and learn new, more honorable ways to survive and thrive in the man’s world she lives in. She must find self-respect.
Nora’s humiliating ways of achieving her means have been dictated by her narrow view of the world. In the beginning of the play, she believes that her moral code, that of love and family, should be respected and even admired by outsiders. When she realizes that this is not the way the law views things, and even her husband would not approve, she becomes desperate to cover up her (now realized) terrible mistake. But when she made those mistakes, they were, in her ...