In the play "A Doll House" by Henrik Ibsen, the author chooses two very unique characters to play Nora and Torvald. He sets them up in a marriage relationship, which is somewhat unrealistic in today's standards of marriage. Nora plays a weak wife in a relationship where her every action is dominated by her husband, yet she plays along to keep him happy.
Torvald is a wealthy man that controls his wife in everything that she does and in his
mind believes that she is truthful about everything with him. These two characters provide for
conflict although Nora stands for her husband's abuse until she can't take it anymore.
Throughout the entire play, Torvald plays the role of the dominant character in his
marriage to Nora. Nora is a delicate character and she puts up with Torvald for eight years. However, when she finally realizes his insensitivity, she knows she must leave him. One example of Torvald's dominance over No
al for years and when it came to the point where Torvald could return the favor to Nora by defending her, he was more concerned with his own appearance. Before Torvald realizes that they have the signature and she is not going to get in trouble, Nora realizes his truly ruthless character. She says to him, "You have never loved me. You only thought it amusing to be in love with me." Nora then decides that she has to leave the house. She wants to become independent. Carol Strongin Tufts, in her critical essay of the play, writes about what a major decision this was for Nora. She speaks of "the spectacle of a woman walking out on her husband and children in order to fulfill her duties to herself" as shocking, especially in the nineteenth century (Tufts, " A Psychoanalytic Reading of Nora", 1633).
and games, such as "Is that my squirrel rummaging around?." Whenever Torvald seeks Nora she comes to him as a puppy would go to their maste
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