A dolls house - Themes

Themes in A dolls house by Henrik Ipsen

1. Themes: A Doll’s House By Henrik Ipsen

2. The Sacrificial Role of Women In general, the play’s female characters exemplify Nora’s assertion (spoken to Torvald in Act Three) that even though men refuse to sacrifice their integrity, “hundreds of thousands of women have.” In order to support her mother and two brothers, Mrs. Linde found it necessary to abandon Krogstad, her true—but penniless—love, and marry a richer man. The nanny had to abandon her own child to support herself by working as Nora’s (and then as Nora’s children’s) caretaker. As she tells Nora, the nanny considers herself lucky to have found the job, since she was “a poor girl who’d been led astray.” Though Nora is economically advantaged in comparison to the play’s other female characters, she nevertheless leads a difficult life because society dictates that Torvald should be the marriage’s dominant partner.

3. Underlying Patriarchy Nora throughout the play feels that she must hide her loan from him because she knows Torvald could never accept the idea that his wife (or any other woman) had helped save his life. That she must work in secret to pay off her loan because it is illegal for a woman to obtain a loan without her husband’s permission. Torvald also refuses to allow Nora to interact with their children after he learns of her deceit, from fear that she will corrupt them.

4. Societal Gender Roles for Women Nora and Mrs. Linde. Women at this time were expected to get married, have children, and stay at home to tend to their children and husband. When a woman actually had a job and earned money, like Nora copying lines in secret, it was “like being a man.” Women had very few opportunities to make money for themselves and had to rely on husbands or fathers to provide for their needs: which is why Mrs. Linde married a rich man or so she thought Because of the expectations to stay home, raise children, and obey their husbands, women missed out on many opportunities, often needing legal consent from their husbands to perform simple business matters. By the end of the play, Nora recognizes the destructive nature of these gender roles, telling Torvald that he and her father, by enforcing societal expectations on her, are the reason she has “made nothing of [her] life.”

5. Societal Gender Roles for Men Though Torvald clearly enjoys his role as an enforcer of societal expectations, he doesn't realize that he can't fully love his wife because he doesn’t truly see her as a person. Because of his “manly independence,” he can't receive help from anyone else, especially not a woman, and Nora, therefore, decides that it’s better to lie to her husband than to wound his pride. Most importantly, Torvald’s inability to break free of societal gender roles leads to his failure to recognize that the love of his wife is more valuable than his reputation. As a result, he loses Nora, and will ultimately become the very thing he feared most: the subject of gossip as a failed man.

6. Marital roles: conventional and deceitful Nora and Torvald represent a completely conventional marriage at the beginning of the play: she stays home and tends to their house and children, and he supports the family financially. In order to keep their conventional marriage afloat, Nora lies to Torvald at every turn; she's not only dishonest about silly things like eating macaroons, but about enormous things as well, like the fact that she secured the loan that saved Torvald’s life. Torvald , as a conventional husband, feels that he has the right to control his wife and must control every aspect of his household, even the keys to the letterbox he’s astonished when Nora says that it’s “nice” of her to do what he wants. This perceived right to control is another reason their marriage falls apart

7. Marital Roles: A Union and Partnership the relationship between Krogstad and Mrs. Linde, while unconventional, represents the “real wedlock” that Nora desires by the end of the play. Mrs. Linde’s role as the breadwinner of the family is highly unusual, but it gives her the agency to earn money and the opportunity to live part of her life outside the home. Furthermore, Mrs. Linde and Krogstad can speak frankly to each other (something Nora and Torvald find impossible until their marriage falls apart), meaning that they don’t have to hide behind contrived marital roles. They see each other as equals, “two shipwrecked people” joining forces. Because they actually respect each other as equal human beings, their union allows them to grow, change, and become better people.

8. Deception Nora’s action of borrowing debt and then forging her father’s signature show that she has deceived her husband. Nora deceives her husband’s love when she is flirtations with Dr. Rank, and shares more with him than she ever would with Helmer Dr. Rank feels deceived when he informs Nora that he will never return anymore, and that Mrs. Linde might take his place: being Nora’s friend Helmer feels deceived when he finds out about the forgery and that all this time Nora never shared it Krogstad also suffers from a bad reputation as he is with Nora in forging the signature of her father and using her a ploy to get a promotion. Therefore, such frauds and deceptions have been presented in the play as corrupting forces that not only destroy the very foundations of the society but also ruin blissful married lives.

9. Money and Power In the beginning of the play it is revealed that Torvald was recently promoted and will receive “a big fat income,” however he still chastises Nora for spending too much, arguing that they need to be cautious financially. In the play, money symbolizes the power that the characters have over one another. In the first scene, Torvald’s ability to dictate how much Nora spends on Christmas presents shows his power over her. Meanwhile, the debt that Nora owes Krogstad allows him to have power over her and Torvald . Both Nora and Mrs. Linde cannot earn large incomes because they are women; their inability to access significant amounts of money is one way that they are oppressed by the sexism of the time.

10. Materialism Torvald in particular focuses on money and material goods rather than people. His sense of manhood depends on his financial independence. He was an unsuccessful barrister because he refused to take "unsavory cases." As a result, he switched jobs to the bank, where he primarily deals with money. Torvald also is about as materialistic as one can get. With the revelation of the blackmail plot, he goes into a hysterical panic, yelling and screaming at Nora for having jeopardized his career—his status and, obviously, his material wealth.

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