Themes in A dolls house by Henrik Ipsen

1. By Henrik Ipsen

2. • 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.”
1. 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.
2. 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.”
3. 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. • 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. • 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. • 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. • 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. • 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. • 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. • 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. • 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.