Emotions In Ibsen's Play

The role of emotions in developing relations between characters. Most women in the Victorian era lived a subservient life. Married women had similar chemistry with their husbands as unmarried women did with their fathers. All they had to do was to obey without questioning and look after the house. This typical female, with her docile nature, has been accurately portrayed by the author, as the protagonist. In this play the author develops his view on this critical relationship between husband and wife and has made emotion a very important propulsive force. He introduces this play with the love between the protagonist and Torvald and ends it with the transformation from someone full of emotions to a fickle person. This was obviously accompanied

He thought that when Nora had saved him she had done two terrible things: the first – threatened his image by breaking the law due to which his reputation in society would jeopardised and he could lose his promotion; the second being her undermining his sense of self – worth by helping him. During this time, the emotions of rage and shock had taken over Torvald and had made him insult and criticize Nora. “You’ve completely wrecked my happiness, you’ve ruined my whole future! ... And I’m brought so pitifully low all because of a shiftless woman!” (Ibsen 221) He says this to indicate that this was all Nora’s fault and that due to her he would never find happiness and peace. At that time the emotion of fear took over him which caused him to panic and thus he insulted and criticized her. The fear gave birth to a new emotion, anger, which was hardly seen at all in the play. It was this ‘fire’ that clouded Torvald’s rationalism with its smoke. If he wasn’t angry then Torvald would have done something much more reasonable than what he had done. He probably would have thanked her for her bravery and later, sat down with her and discussed about what should be done next. However, this could be only to a certain extent as rationalism is primarily impacted by society and its paradigms which was bias against