A Dolls House Critique - Essay Example

She is shown as an oppressed individual who throughout the play portrays an inauthentic identity due to the societal demands of the times. Her identity has always been established by her husband Torvald who treats her as one of his responsibilities.

Nora at the start of the play seems happy and does not mind her doll-like existence and responds to the teasing of her husband affectionately. With the progression of the play various facets of her intelligent and courageous nature are highlighted which is far removed from the inauthentic “silly girl” her husband thinks her to be. She took a loan to preserve her husband’s health and this proves very clearly that she was intelligent and possessed qualities that were beyond mere wifehood. All her life she lived under the care of her father and later her husband thus she is inexperienced in the ways of the world. Throughout the play, she emerges as a strong and authentic individual who refuses to be a doll and rejects the false union of marriage and the burden of motherhood, telling Torvald in no uncertain terms, "I've been your wife-doll here, just as at home I was Papa's doll-child" (1608).

Her childhood friend Mrs.Linde comes into her life after losing her husband and mother. Her life is filled with poverty and struggle. She is hard-working, practical, sensible, and very down-to-earth. Her adherence to the norms of society provides a perfect foil to her impetuous nature of Nora. Her view of the world is practical whereas Nora’s views are childlike. Mrs. Linde is a perfect foil to Nora’s exuberance as well as to her feminist ideas which erupt at the end of the play. Mrs. Linde is an archetype of the woman of those days, whose qualities Michael Meyer has described as “stuffy Victorianisms. She looks forward to the label of a wife, even if it means marrying the irascible Krogstad. She has been the dutiful daughter who nursed her sick mother until her death, whereas Nora had no such filial emotions and had even deserted her father in his sick, old age.

Kristine Linde is a woman well aware of her place in society and for that reason wishes to be bound in wedlock, for this would give her life a sense of purpose and give her another chance at mothering. Nora. But on the contrary, does not allow even her maternal feelings to come in the way of her quest for self-discovery. She has absolutely no compunctions about leaving her children. In the modern age, this may not raise an eyebrow, but when placed in the context of the times in which the play was written, it was scandalous. All through the play Nora has been transgressing norms, in such harmless ways as eating macaroons, when told not to do so and then lying about it and swearing just to defy conventions, as when she says, "I have such a huge desire to say-to hell and be damned!" (Isben, 59). Mrs. Linde, on the other hand, is a model of propriety, who tells Krogstad to leave the letter in the mailbox, so that their lives could begin free of any falsehoods.

In the final scenes of the play, Nora breaks the shackles placed on her in the name of marriage and tells her husband that they need to “discuss all this that has been happening between us”, which leaves the play open for interpretation by the readers thinking. With this assertion, Nora is on her way to a new life, and as she says, “I'm a human being, no less than you-or anyway, I ought to try to become one" (1609). This sums up the transformation of Nora, at the same time highlighting the pathetic condition of women in general, as represented in the weary acceptance of life by Mrs. Linde.