Literature review: Nora Helmer in the play Dollhouse by Henrik Ibsen
Nora Helmer is one if not the most interesting character in the three-act play prose written by the great writer Henrik Ibsen. Many of the literally critics me included argue that such an immature, incredibly ignorant person can never have attained the kind of understanding or the revolutionary, amazing qualities that are represented by Nora by the time she leaves her home.
While analyzing the play I noticed the creative and careful construction of the character Nora take place in the play. Ibsen has created Nora in such a way that her far sightedness and show of independence can be seen through her youthful capriciousness (Ibsen, p 23).
As the play starts, Nora is considered to be a completely happy person. She responds to Torvalds’s teasing very affectionately. She speaks with a kind of excitement. She doesn’t seem concerned with her doll-like existence where she is pampered, patronized and even coddled. As the play progresses, she starts taking firm grounds and raising above the chauvinism of one Torvald. She refuses to be called “silly girl” by Torvald (Ibsen, p 35). She argues that she thoroughly understands the implications and the details of the debt she incurred taking care of her husband. This I believe goes to prove that she is not ignorant after all. From the play she describes the years she spent providing secret labor to pay off the debt. This is an indication of ambition and hard work. Despite her father and husband seriously injuring her chance at practical education, she is seen to have accumulated enough native wisdom to handle any emergency. She is seen to bungles a situation with one of the most careless forgeries which only adds more credence to her thought independence and to show her simplicity. While many of us would see her as wise but childish and I would conquer with them, but this mixture is her strongest real quality. This quality enables hers to refute the doctrines of her chauvinist husband and the knowledge of books.
The play doll house is set around the metaphor of doll house. This is even after Nora is seen as to exemplify the quintessential role of an ideal housewife. Through her character development from the ignorant and immature housewife to an independent and self-actualized individual goes a long way to revealing the metaphor “doll” as used in the play to represent the role of women the early feminist ideas. She is the protagonist in the play. When she was first called a spendthrift, I was somewhat inclined to agree with that reference. She is seen to give an overly generous tip to the porter in the first parts on the play. When Christine an old friend of hers arrives, Nora lets us into her little secret. She lets us know that she is not just leeching her husband, actually, on the contrary, she was working on saving his life (Ibsen, p 58). Well by getting them into this massive debt.
Unknown to Torvald, the impressive Nora borrowed money to facilitate a yearlong medical holiday to Italy. Instead of being the spendthrift she is cast as by Torvald and her good friend Christine turns out to be quite thrifty. As mentioned earlier, she worked secretly to offset the debt. Behind the curtains of the ditzy Nora portrayed in the first section there lays a competent, loving, determined Nora waiting to show herself.
Towards the end of the play, Nora is seen to have made an important realization that underpins the whole idea of feminism. She realizes that she has been very submissive and loving to her husband (Ibsen, p 89). Who when an opportunity arises for him to fit in her shoes and sacrifice himself for her and fail, she chooses to stand up and fight for her position as a person and a woman for that matter. Nora is seen weighing her duties and her independence.
Nora finally comes to a life decision to leave the dollhouse. She moves out to fulfill her responsibilities and obligations to herself. She leaves her children behind which to me is the greatest and boldest sacrifice she has made so far. The decision breaks her superficially perfect dollhouse (Ibsen, p 90). The play was written during the period of the Naturalism movement. Ibsen apparently made a reflection of the society in the play. Ibsen created the character Nora to help raise questions and issues about the treatment of women in the period. He creates the typical hero of the Naturalism period through Nora.
Nora is seen to transform throughout the play and gain an identity to herself. Her eventual rejection of marriage and motherhood was an important feminist message to the contemporary society. The play shows her a self-liberated woman and not one who has been raised from the yolks of failed relationships and oppressed backgrounds. Ibsen illustration of the 19th-century woman through Nora was scandalous, to say the least. Nora is seen as a hero by the feminist but as a controversial character to the conservatives. She abdicates her marriage and children to seek liberation which to the traditional world is unheard of and intolerable. Many myself included would question why she would leave her kids with a man she disapproved.
However, critics of Ibsen representation of the Naturalism period argue that Nora’s moral authority to question the morality of her husband according them does not talk about feminist ideas of the naturalism period. She is seen as a reckless person who is willing to commit a crime although for a good course, which according to critics does align with the role she pays in the play doll house, a role model to be emulated in the society.
Despite the various critics of the role, purpose and the choice of Nora as perfect underdog hero to the journey of self-actualization and liberation, I would think that the journey to achieving these great milestones is not always straight and sometimes it expected for one to make hard choices. For Nora, she sacrifices her children, her dignity and her integrity. These are the costs she had to pay for her independence in order for her to be liberated.
In contemporary society we make sacrifices to achieve something, it common place for people to lose something to gain something else. Therefore, I believe that Nora was a hero and her ability to learn and move from being a “silly” wife to that independent, and self-sufficient women are both commendable and surprising. Nora is a perfect depiction of the early feminist ideas, her ability to start a new life despite the sacrifices is remarkable.
Work Cited
Ibsen, Henrick. A Doll's House. , 2015. Internet resource.
