Blog 2: A Doll House #5

The era in which the story A Doll House takes place in is an era that women have been fighting against since the dawning of time. The relationship between Nora and Torvald is not a marriage but a father/daughter relationship. In that I mean that Nora is not treated like a wife, she is treated like Torvald's child. Nora finally realizes her position with Torvald at the end of the story when Torvald expresses his true feelings toward her about the revealing letter Krogstad has written to Torvald explaining how Nora borrowed money behind Torvald's back and going against his wishes of never having to borrow money from anyone for anything. Torvald's ranting had finally ended when everything was cleared up and Nora received her note back. But that was only the beginning for Nora. The critic D.C.R.A. Goonetilleke commented that Nora had gone against conventional middle-class values by acting rebellious against her husband. The values Nora went against was to stand by her husband and do as he told her to do and to not do anything else unless told otherwise. She had had enough with Torvald treating her like she was not capable of anything and by the nicknames Torvald gave her were suggestively demeaning. He would call her names such as "stubborn delicate creature," "his little songbird," "his little squirrel," all of which suggest that she is merely a woman and is subordinate to her husband. She broke the code of a wife when she went against her husband. She went even further by leaving him and their family and venturing off to find herself. In this story, a wife did not need to find herself, she was already a wife and that was that. But not for Nora, she did not want to live her life with someone who treated her as not an equal but as a pretty little thing.