Character Analysis on 'A Doll's House' By Henrik Ibsen Essay Example

Nora is the central character in Henrik Ibsen's A Doll's House. She has been married to Torvald Helmer, a bank manager, for eight years and they have three children. The Helmer's are wealthy. Nora Helmer is a housewife at her late thirties. In Doll's House, Nora is given the roles of a child, a friend, a soul mate, and a manipulator. The ultimate accomplishment she achieves is her brilliant presentation as a caring daughter and an obedient wife. Nora's situation reveals the challenges faced by present-day women: men misjudge them. Men think that ladies are acquitted and feeble since they are female. Nora, who is reflected as 'childlike' is a model of those females living in a symbolic "dollhouse". To effectively dichotomize the personality of Nora Helmer, one must talk about the tussles of women during Nora's time.

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At the beginning of the story, Nora appears preparing Christmas with full hopes. She acts from the opening to the close of the play. Nora seems extremely happy. She affectionately reacts to her husband's playful and communicates with enthusiasm about the additional income that Torvald would earn from the new job. She takes the pleasure of her friends and children's company. She monitors her husband's ruling in the family matters. She tolerates his authority in every action thinking that she must be liable for the household. Nora does not wish to go against her husband's wishes, and she is cautious about his flavor, his adores and hates. She attempts to thrill him by being more of a songbird. At this time, Nora seems not to care for her doll-like life where she is coddled and demeaned. However, as the story advances, she proves that she is not a 'silly girl' as Torvald refer to her. The element that she is willing to break the law shows her courage in undertaking risks.

In Henrik Ibsen's A Doll's House, Nora Helmer is a protagonist character. At the beginning of the story, she plays as a pampered housewife, but she ends up a free woman getting into the realm to enlighten herself. The credit that Nora some years back when her husband fell ill is the primary drive towards her transformation. She forges her father's signature to obtain the loan; this is an illegal deed. The rising action of the story starts when Krogstad, who loaned money to Nora blackmails her into helping him retain his employment at the bank where her husband is the manager.

Regardless of the uncertain legality of her actions, the loan is a point of pride for Nora; she feels that she has done what is necessary to save her husband. She secretly worked for years to pay the loan and sacrificed her time and maintenance money. Nevertheless, Nora feels obliged to hide her capability, and as a substitute, she plays the role of a 'silly wife' that her husband, Torvald expects her to be. When the truth about the loan she had acquired is revealed to Torvald, she expects him to feel owing a favor to her, and take the blame of her actions. Instead, he harshly rebukes her, crushing Nora's deceptions of her happy marriage.

Krogstad's extortion and the ordeal that follow do not alter Nora's personality; instead, they open up her eyes to see her exasperated and undervalued abilities. On one point, she tells Torvald that she had been performing tricks for him during her confrontation with him. Nora realizes that on top of her actual singing and dancing behaviors, she has established a play during her marriage. She has fabricated to be someone she is not just to accomplish the roles that her father, her husband, her friends and the society at large expects of her.

Nora had acted out of role from the time when she was a kid. She says, "When I was home with daddy, he told me all his opinions, and so they became my options too. If I disagreed with him, I kept it to myself, for he wouldn't have liked that. He called me his little doll baby and played with me the way I played with my dolls" (Ibsen Act iii 945). Imagining Nora as a young child living under such circumstances, she has failed to exercise her potential and has too much concentrated on doing what is required of her rather than what she feels is right for her.

Nora is a cooperative woman; she is compliant short of any trace of self-centeredness. She is relatively watchful to her children. When they come home, she is friendly in the way she plays with them as a friend. She is also fairly welcoming to Mrs. Linde; this is revealed when she sympathizes with her and influences her spouse to give a job to Linde. Nora is somewhat truthful to her close friend and an admirer, Dr. Rank. She does not show any sense of conflict. She is a societal and persistent woman; she strains to face her difficulties on her own. She does expose her secrets even when she is continually exposed. She tries all her best to meet all her troubles by herself but discloses her problems to Mrs. Linde when the matter moves from bad to worse.

Torvalds's plain and egotistic response after knowing about Nora's dishonesty and the forgery is the ultimate facilitator of Nora's arousal. However, in the first act, she reveals that she is not ignorant that her personality is at odds with her life. Though in small yet meaningful ways, Nora shows signs of defiance by eating macaroons and lying to her husband about it. She insists only for the desire she gets from the negligible revolt in contrast to societal standards. As the story discloses, her consciousness of reality about her life develops, and her need for uprising escalates, concluding in her walking out on her family in search of individuality and independence.

When her husband curses her outspokenly after realizing her involvement in forgery, she feels guilty of her husband's pride. She feels upset, and sheer bravery and enlightenment occur in her life. She realizes her self-worth and hates Torvald's twin standard. Nora turns violent in a temper and hates her husband. She no longer compromises with her husband, and she leaves the house in the night. She neglects her responsibilities as a wife and a mother. At this time she is only destined for responsibility to herself. When Torvald efforts to convince her with some morality and religious quotes, she tells him "I am no longer prepared to accept what people say about what's written in books. I must think things out for myself, and try to find my answer" (Act iii 945).

Conclusion

From Nora's quest for self-independence, I was able to discover that sometimes the closest people around you can be the barriers towards your attainment. I also learned that people fail to recognize the risk that one takes to earn their happiness, Torvald disregards the risk of forgery that Nora took when he was ill, and instead, he curses her. Nora is a character that I admire because she uses her wisdom and childish nature to achieve her interests. She does not care the critics from the society about her solution for her marital impasses. To own satisfaction, one must move out of the possible barriers. I like being independent to exercise my thoughts, and that is why I find Nora as a character who is most useful since she shows that self-satisfaction is the most valuable goal in human life. If I were trapped in a condition similar to Nora's, I would also have moved out of the blockades of self-exercising.

Work Cited

Ibsen, Henrik. A Doll's House. , Minneapolis, MN: First Avenue Editions, 2014:96.Internet source.