Nora As A Passive Character In A Doll's House

In A Doll 's House, Nora spends the majority of her time on stage as a doll: a colourless, passive character with little to no actual personality. Her entire life is a concept of norms of society in that era in order to meet the expectations of others. Until she realises that her life is a lie, and that she lives in a dream world. Within this World, Nora doesn’t feel the need to take life as seriously as everyone around her, an approach to life that eventually led to almost all of the plot’s twists.

Throughout the entire play Nora is perceived as a very playful and childish. During her first act, she is her paying the porter. And although his service costs only “50 ore” , she gives him a krone anyway. Though an additional 50 ore is hardly a significantly large amount of money, the laid back manner in which she offers it to the porter is analytical of her economic volatility. She hands him the krone and before the transaction can be completed, she decides that she does not have enough time to be mucking around waiting for a thank you, so she closes the door

However, we now see Nora showing a more adult attitude by stating “I’m a human being” in order to get across the fact that she wants to be treated as an equal and that she is done being an object and in particular a doll. Towards the end of the play we see another sense of irony which is the fact that once Nora brings out her true self and sits Torvald down to tell him the truth, he is completely new to this side of Nora and as a result is shocked. However, with Torvald still wearing his costume from the party, this is a reprsentation of the artificial world he lives in whereby `Nora is his doll, but by confronting him, he realizes that she is not the Nora he thought she was, making him realise that his world is a facade, and that just like Nora, he too, is nothing more than a doll in a pretend