A Doll's House

4 Pages 1017 Words

In Henrik Ibsen’s, A Doll’s House, the character of Nora Helmer goes through the dramatic transformation from a kind a loving mother to an empowered woman. Her transformation is the personification of feminism during the nineteenth century. Torvald, her husband, represents society in the way he treats his wife. Nora rebels against this treatment and comes to realize that she is her own person, not a mother, not a wife, but a woman.
In Act I Nora is still nothing more than a child, careless in her action and not thinking ahead to the possible consequences. She enters the scene, just returning from her Christmas shopping, planning to have a big holiday party. Her husband, Torvald, tells her that their budget this year won’t permit them to have the usual big holiday party they usually have. He speaks to her in a very condescending way, representing the way society viewed women at the time. Her treats her like a child, telling her that she doesn’t know better and calling her pet names like “songbird” and saying that she is “scatterbrained”. Society at this time viewed woman in the exact same way. Creatures meant to be taken care of because they “did not know better”. Torvald’s condescending manner serves to slowly push Nora closer and closer to the edge, finally pushing her over in the end.
Toward the end of Act I a man named Krogstad enters onto the scene. This is the man from whom Nora has borrowed four thousand crowns to finance a trip to southern Italy. This meeting begins Nora’s slow transformation from the inferior half of society to the empowered woman. Krogstad comes to Nora seeking a favor. He works at the bank where Torvald is the manager and he has broken the law, but still wants to keep his job. He asks Nora to try to persuade Torvald to let him keep his job. When Krogstad asks this favor of Nora he highlights another role that society demands of women. He recognizes the feminine influ...