A Dolls House
By: David • Essay • 813 Words • February 28, 2010 • 1,319 Views
Join now to read essay A Dolls House
Out of a Dolls House Inot
The Real World
From day one birds are born curious, but helpless. However, they grow and develop until one day they finally gain the confidence to leave the nest and fly away. In writer Ibsen's drama A Dolls House readers witness a very similar cycle happen to the character Nora. She is helpless and careless, then becomes fearful of the intense predicament she has gotten herself inot
. But, at the end of the play she finally learns she must spread her wings and discover the world all on her own as she spreads her wings and flys away. Writer Ibsen make it very easy for readers to follow Nora's transition inot
an independent woman as she grows and develops as a round character.
As a young woman Nora was raised to be dependent on the men in her life. She was trained to look to them for the necessities of life. They provided her with food, clothes, shelter, money, and were also in charge of keeping her safe. Nora was completely dependent just as a small lark is dependent on it's parents. Her father was a strong controlling man. When Nora was older she married another man who was much like her father in the way he treated her. Nora in fact went as far as to say she "went from papa's hands to yours" when speaking to her husband of marriage. She also states to her husband that "I was your doll-wife" and about her father "I was his doll-child and he played with me just as I played with my dolls". These quotes from Nora are execclent examples to show exactly how helpless and reliant Nora was/
Throughout the story however, Nora does step outside the "perfect woman box" and her actions lead her to live in fear of the world around her. Nora's husband falls ill and is in need of treatment in the beginning of the book, so Nora takes it inot
her own hands to help him. However she makes a mistake that leaves her fearful fro quite some time. Nora is like a baby bird who has fallen out of a tree and is just waiting for a kitty to come along and discover her. She forges her Dad's signature to get a loan for medical treatment. Krogstad gives her the loan but then holds it over her head saying such things as "are you forgetting that I'll be in control over your final reputation" "now I've warned you, don't do anything stupid" Nora greatly fear her husband finding out of her deeds as what she did was completely unacceptable by any measure. So for a time she lives in complete fear.
Nora is sheltered and does live in fear for a large part of the book, however she is a round character and at the end of the book she realizes she must leave her husband, family