A Doll's House Analytical Essay
Analytical Essay on A Doll’s House
In A Doll’s House by Henrik Ibsen, Nora, a frivolous, lying wife, makes a major decision in which she borrows a loan meant to be used for a trip to better her husband’s health, behind his back. The play develops through constant struggles Nora takes to keep in secret her actions. In the end, her husband Torvald learns of her loan and is extremely infuriated to the point where he says he no longer loves her. Shocked by her husband’s reaction, Nora looks back on her motives for making her decision and decides she had been living a fake life which had come to be by a lack of communication in their marriage. After struggling so much to keep her husband from finding a painful truth and being critized when it was known, Nora realizes all she had ever been was a doll to her loved ones which pushes her to make the right decision of leaving everything behind and finding herself.
Nora made the right decision to leave a man who controlled and treated her like an object. While talking seriously to her husband for the first time, Nora admits, “I’ve been your doll-wife” (Ibsen 1120), which she used to show how he controlled her every move. Aside from being a “doll-wife” (Ibsen1120), Nora also confesses, “You arranged everything the way you wanted it, so that I simply took over your taste in everything” (Ibsen 1120). All these things demonstrate how since the beginning of their marriage, Torvald controlled Nora’s everything.
Another reason Nora’s choice to leave her family is correct, is that she has the right to find someone who loves and takes her serious. In the first serious discussion Torvald and Nora had, she asks him, “Does it occur to you that this is the first time we two, you and I, man and wife, have ever had a serious talk together?”(Ibsen 1120). Nora also points out how for “eight years they never exchanged a serious word on a serious subject” (Ibsen 1120), which ultimately demonstrates how Torvald never thought Nora serious
In A Doll’s House by Henrik Ibsen, Nora, a frivolous, lying wife, makes a major decision in which she borrows a loan meant to be used for a trip to better her husband’s health, behind his back. The play develops through constant struggles Nora takes to keep in secret her actions. In the end, her husband Torvald learns of her loan and is extremely infuriated to the point where he says he no longer loves her. Shocked by her husband’s reaction, Nora looks back on her motives for making her decision and decides she had been living a fake life which had come to be by a lack of communication in their marriage. After struggling so much to keep her husband from finding a painful truth and being critized when it was known, Nora realizes all she had ever been was a doll to her loved ones which pushes her to make the right decision of leaving everything behind and finding herself.
Nora made the right decision to leave a man who controlled and treated her like an object. While talking seriously to her husband for the first time, Nora admits, “I’ve been your doll-wife” (Ibsen 1120), which she used to show how he controlled her every move. Aside from being a “doll-wife” (Ibsen1120), Nora also confesses, “You arranged everything the way you wanted it, so that I simply took over your taste in everything” (Ibsen 1120). All these things demonstrate how since the beginning of their marriage, Torvald controlled Nora’s everything.
Another reason Nora’s choice to leave her family is correct, is that she has the right to find someone who loves and takes her serious. In the first serious discussion Torvald and Nora had, she asks him, “Does it occur to you that this is the first time we two, you and I, man and wife, have ever had a serious talk together?”(Ibsen 1120). Nora also points out how for “eight years they never exchanged a serious word on a serious subject” (Ibsen 1120), which ultimately demonstrates how Torvald never thought Nora serious
Cited: Ibsen, Henrik. A Doll’s House. United States of America. Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1879 Print.