Allegory And Symbolism In A Doll's House

In Henrik Ibsen’s A Doll’s House, Nora, the protagonist, is awakened from her controlled life by her husband causing her to come out of her shell and examine her domestic married life as a wife. To a greater extent, Nora is presented as a submission to her husband, Torvald Helmer, through the use of devices such as imagery, allegory and symbolism. “Symbolism is the use of symbols to represent ideas or qualities.” The development of Nora’s character relies greatly on Ibsen’s use of symbols such as the use of the Christmas tree and even the title to explore Nora’s role as a woman and a wife. The title A Doll’s house is a strong and the most effective metaphorical symbol used by Ibsen in portraying how Nora is controlled and played with by

The use of these pet names also reveals certain character traits of Nora that may correspond to characteristics of these animals. In Act (), Torvald makes the following statements, “Is that skylark chirping out there; “Squirrel, squirrel, is that who’s out there; “Are you being a silly girl”. From these lines we can see that Torvald refers to Nora by skylark, squirrel and silly girl and others such as “My little sweet tooth” and “My little singing bird”. Torvald may have his reasons for referring to his wife by these pet names and readers may understand the reason for Torvald referring to Nora by these names. For example, Nora may be referred to a squirrel owing to the fact that she likes to accumulate and hide things that Torvald has banned her from having such as the macaroons that she hides to eat and denies the act when suspected by her husband. Squirrels are known to be rodents who bury or hide nuts and this may be the reason why Torvald may also refer to Nora as a squirrel because he knows that she hides to eat the macaroons but ignores her. However, it is ironic he doesn’t know about the money she unscrupulously obtains. One thing I came across and found interesting when researching was the phrase to “squirrel something away”. This phrase immediately draws a connection to Nora hiding or obtaining cash fraudulently. Through Ibsen’s

In Act (), it reads, “Nora closes the door. She keeps laughing quietly, cheerfully as she takes her coat off. She takes out the bag of macaroons from her pocket and eats a few”. From these sentences, we can see that Nora has to hide to eat the macaroons and she finds the situation rather quite amusing. Nora’s pretense leads to the unveiling of her character where she is revealed to be a daring character as she fears her husband but simultaneously disobeys his commands. However, Nora reveals some secrets to Mrs.Linde, a childhood friend where she admits to the fact that she forges her father’s signature in order to acquire some money to pay for her husband’s expenses during his period of illness. Ibsen uses the macaroons to represent Nora’s disobedience and at the same time to represent all the secrets that she hides from her husband, i.e. her action of