Nora In A Doll's House

In Henrik Ibsen’s A Doll’s House, Ibsen portrays growth in almost every character in the play. One of the most dynamic characters of the story is Nora. Nora exhibits many different character traits that develop her into the character she becomes by the end of the play, but one describes her development much more than the others. Throughout the play, Nora can be seen acting childish in her interactions with other characters and her dealings with inconveniences. Nora can easily be described as childish and immature through the way she handles adult situations, interacts with her husband, and the way she acts as a selfish mother and wife. One may say that Nora is not childish, but afraid to stick up for herself. Torvald and Nora’s relationship

The way that Nora responds to Torvald and his many rules show again Nora’s childish nature. This is evident in how Torvald controls Nora and does not want her to eat macaroons. After realizing that Nora had in fact had some, he questions her to which she responds “No; what makes you think that?” (Ibsen 1361). Nora hides the truth from Torvald as if he is her father and is unable to stand up to him because she fears what may happen to her even though they should be equals. Although it may be frowned upon for the wife to make such decisions in this period, Nora knows that this is no way to live, and instead of making that known she buries the idea. When discussing the purpose of Nora and the way she acted during the escalation of her decision to forge documents, David B Drake describes it as “under board”. He then goes on to explain that this “under board” signifies “secretiveness or deceptiveness” (Drake). Nora deceives Torvald countless times throughout the story whether it be her choice to eat macaroons, her faulty deal, or spending large amounts of money behind his back. Nora’s choice to deceive her husband is irresponsible and childish. Nora makes the decision at the end of the play to leave Torvald after their altercation upon Torvald finding out about Nora’s forged documents. This sudden change of heart could have been avoided had Nora only spoken to her husband and been honest with him.

When dealing with the burden of hiding the truth from Torvald, Nora begins to contemplate suicide. At the beginning of act two, Nora is speaking to the nurse and says, “Do you think they would forget their mother if she went away all together?” (Ibsen 1378). This is about her children and her taking her own life, which is incredibly outlandish. The nurse speaks to Nora saying how they need their mother at such a young age and would be damaged by her absence. Nora again is choosing to run and hide from her problems only this time it is affecting her family. Had Nora chosen to cower from the difficulties presented to her, she would have traumatized her family as well as left her children motherless. Nora is incredibly selfish in the way she treats her children. Multiple times Nora promises her children that she will play with them but continues to push them away. When talking to Krogstad she makes the Nurse take them away, and even after he has left she refuses to play with them because she is unable to focus on anything else but her own inconveniences. In the end, Nora inevitably chooses to leave her family. In this decision to as stated “educate” herself, she leaves her children motherless, and runs from a substantial household. Some may say that she was unhappy, but Nora never brought it to Torvald’s attention that she was unhappy and chooses to leave him behind without ever giving