While both Laertes and Torvald instill fear into Ophelia and Nora, Nora resists being manipulated by concealing the truth. Before Laertes goes to France to continue his education, he warns his sister to stay away from Hamlet:
If with too credent ear you list his songs
Or lose your heart or your chaste treasure open
To his unmastered importunity.
Fear it, Ophelia; fear it, my dear sister,
And keep you in the rear of your affection,
Out of the shot and danger of desire. (1.3.30-35)
Even in his absence Laertes attempts to control his sister by instilling fear of Hamlet’s love. In hopes that Ophelia will remember his words when he is gone, he uses repetition and emphasizes the “shot and danger of desire.” Ophelia willfully accepts her brother’s
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After Polonius questions his daughter’s devotion to Hamlet, Ophelia replies, “No my good lord; but as you did command, / I did repel his letters, and denied / His access to me” (2.1.106-108). Ophelia highlights her inferiority to her father when she calls him her “good lord” and has done what he “did command.” She constantly makes sure to respect her father to the highest degree. After Nora’s secret is revealed to her husband, she decides to leave her family and start a new life. According to Nora, “a woman has no right to spare her old dying father, or to save her husband’s life. [She] can’t believe that…[Nora] [is] going to see if [she] can make out who is right, the world or [her]” (pg. 79). Nora disagrees with societal expectations of women. In the past, she has obeyed her husband and been his trophy to show to his friends; however, now, she decides to challenge the world’s expectation of her role as a woman. In her eyes, a woman having “no right to spare her old dying father” or “save her husband’s life” because she cannot access funds needs to be questioned. Nora decides to abandon her family in order to travel a different path than society’s and “see if [she] can make out who is right, the world or