Heroes In A Doll's House

Heroes take shape in many different forms. Not many would suspect that an entitled, lying woman would fit the part of being a hero, but Henrik Ibsen creates just that with the character of Nora Helmer in his play “A Doll House”. Nora continuously goes to her husband, Torvald Helmer, for money. The first scene opens with Nora begging Torvald for money for Christmas gifts. This scene shows her to be entitled to her husband’s earnings. A conflict appears early on in the play, where the reader finds out that Nora borrowed money to save her husband’s life. While many would applaud Nora for this noble action, the reader finds that Nora lied to get the money and subsequently lied about where the money came from. This sets up Nora as an untrustworthy

As soon as Nora comes in from Christmas shopping her husband, Torvald Helmer, asks her “Are your scatterbrains off again?” (Ibsen 78). The way Torvald leaves off with the word “again” goes to show that this is not the first time he has made fun of his wife’s brains. Nora was asking for money to buy holiday gifts, which seemed ridiculous to Helmer, that she needed more money. He deemed her request silly. Another way Torvald talks down to Nora is by being referred to with nicknames. “The Use of Symbolic Language in Ibsen’s A Doll House: A Feministic Perspective” takes a deeper look at the language Torvald uses when speaking to his wife. Often his nicknames used language that stubley put down Nora. This can be seen when , “. . . Helmer, who calls from his room: ‘Is that my little lark’. . . ‘My’, ‘little’ and ‘lark’ all connote to the patriarchal concepts associated with woman” (Baseer, Alvi, Zafran). In other words, Torvald only gives Nora nicknames that show that he is in possession of her. Nora is nothing more to Torvald than an object of his possession. Nora allows this because “. . . Torvald loves me beyond words, and, as he puts it, he’d like to keep me all to himself” (Ibsen 810). While Nora is aware that Torvald is controlling she does not seem to mind. She even stopped talking to her friends from back home, because Torvald did not like her speaking about them. Nora comes across as a damsel in distress in the first half of the play, who relied on her husband before transitioning to a feminist