How Does Nora Question Her Identity

Nora’s character development and maturity begins after Nora has been confronted by Krogstad and Torvald for being a “lying mother.” In

Nora’s need to please her father and later her husband made her lose her true self and it is through the flow of events that she realizes that she needs to go and find her true self

Each time Nora finds herself unable to help herself the problem is easily directly traced back to her husband, her father, and to the overbearing dominance of the male society. She tries to save the life of the man she thinks she loves and in doing so sees how she has become a victim of her own ignorance which has been brought upon her by the men in her life.

A Doll’s House, written by Henrik Ibsen, portrays the complicated marriage of Nora and Torvald Helmer. In numerous ways Nora is treated like a child or “doll” by her husband, and in turn, Torvald takes care of her physically, emotionally, and financially. While Nora is stuck in a patriarchal society, until she had a change at the play’s end, she played along and never had an objection. Nora’s sudden realization to start a new life and leave her family not only proves she is irresponsible, but also she does not know what she will face in the real world, and she cares about herself more than her own children.

As he took over the role as bank director his first motion was to fire a man who had been seen as a disgrace for forging a signature. This “disgraceful” man is known as Krogstad. Krogstad is the person that allowed Nora to borrow money. Krogstad comes to find out that Nora had forged her father’s signature on the loan that allowed her to receive the money. When Krogstad finds out that Torvald is planning to relive him from the company, he notifies Nora that he will be blackmailing her if she does not sacrifices for his loss. In other words, Krogstad threatens Nora, in which he will reveal the crime Nora had committed to Torvald. If Nora cannot convince Torval to keep Krogstad at the Bank, Krogstad states that there will be consequences. Day after day, Nora continues to influence and change the perspective of Torvald. In result of Torvald seeing Nora as a “Doll” who entitles, nevertheless childlike activities, he does not take her advice to keep Krogstad. He values Nora as someone who simply means nothing in the world of knowledge. When Nora does not succeed to complete Krogstads request, he sends Torvald a letter describing Nora’s

Her whole life she has been treated like a princess, and has had everything handed to her. Her father started this lifestyle for her, and this lifestyle continued when she married Torvald, a lawyer with a promising future. Nora defies two things in this story, the law and her family in the search to find herself. She defies the law by forging her father’s signature on a check to help her family, “I can’t get it through my head that the law is fair. A woman hasn’t a right to protect her dying father and save her husband’s life!

Life on death row is not pleasant so inmates neither is jail. “North Carolina’s death row inmates live in 11x7- foot cells and have access to a community room with stainless steel tables for playing chess, writing, watching a small TV or listening to music on their see-through audio paler. Outside each death row pod, prison guards sit behind dark-tinted glass monitoring inmates… Two days a week… they get to spend one hour in an exercise yard” (Life on death row: 'Am I going to be next? ') They only get two hours a week to be able to get out of there cell less than most offenders in maximum security prisons that get an hour a day outside. Although they will be able to exercise, workout, they can still make some money doing janitor work they will only get a few cents though. “They can also receive one visit a week with a maximum of two visitors” (Life on death row: 'Am I going to be next? '). Mainly the only good part about this is they can visit with one or two people a week so not all their freedoms are taken away even though guards are watching they get to spend time with their loved ones if anyone decides to visit. I cannot imagine having almost all my rights taken away. Although these offenders are considered highly dangerous they are still human, and you can never be sure that one committed a crime or not. Nowadays with new technology man people are taken out of jail after spending half their lives in confinement are set free, but most are set free with nothing but the

When Torvald finds her hairpin stuck in the keyhole of the letter box, Nora tells him it must have been their children trying to get into it, not willing to admit that she had tried to break into his things. Although the truth about her is about to be discovered, Nora wants to preserve the last bits of dignity that she has left, finally worrying about herself before anyone else. This last lie however, leads up to her finally speaking the truth and expressing that she no longer feels that she loves Torvald. Her husband is furious at her, insulting her, and fails to see that every lie that she told was for his sake. Realizing that Torvald can’t see her side of things and will only find fault in what she did, she comes to her decision to leave her family. Nora states that she is not happy and never really was, her marriage to Torvald was as fakes as a doll house according to her. Rather than lie, she is completely honest now and states that she wants to become her own person and learn that which she doesn’t know despite what society might think.

After having used Krogstad to get what she needed, yet another issue arose. Krogstad turned on Nora once his position at the bank was on the line, and used her borrowing against her for his own good. “Niles Krogstad is also Mrs. Linde’s former crush, and he tries to redeem himself of his crimes of forgery by raising his children” (Rosefeldt).

Nora is motivated throughout the story to be according to her "free," however, she does not only want to be free of the loan she is owning to Krogstad, she wants to be free from her father and husband's control. Throughout the story, Nora feels as if she has always been treated like a doll child first by her father and then by her husband and is never given the opportunity to evolve as an individual and become a woman who has the potential to be independent and forceful (Yuehua 83). The perfect example her attempt to fulfill her potential as a woman is when she first borrows the loan from Krogstad by forging her dying father's signature. Although she knows her act is wrong and against the law, she still goes on with a naïve challenge to Krogstad during their encounter about the forged signature

In A Doll's House, Henrik Ibsen focuses on the importance of women's roles and freedom in society. Widely regarded as a feminist paean, the play features two major female characters; the most prominent of whom, Nora Helmer, shatters her position as a subservient, doll-like female when she walks out on her husband and children with a flagrant "door slam heard round the world." Nora’s evolution, though inspiring, should not overshadow another crucial woman in the play: Mrs. Kristine Linde. Both women attain freedom in a society dominated by the adherence to conservative marital roles, but do it in different ways. While Nora reaches her consciousness and slams the door on her shackling domicile, Mrs.

            Nora does not at first realize that the rules outside the household apply to her. This is evident in Nora's meeting with Krogstad regarding her borrowed money. In her opinion it was no crime for a woman to do everything possible to save her husband's life. She also believes that her act will be overlooked because of her desperate situation. She fails to see that the law does not take into account the motivation behind her forgery. Marianne Sturman submits that this meeting with Krogstad was her first confrontation with the reality of a "lawful society" and she deals with it by attempting to distract herself with her Christmas decorations (Sturman 16). Thus her first encounter with rules outside of her "doll's house" results in the realization of her naivety and inexperience with the real world due to her subordinate role in society.

However, Nora does eventually realize that she has been treated like a child all her life and has been denied the right to think and act the way she wishes. When Torvald does not immediately offer to help Nora after Krogstad threatens to expose her, Nora realizes that there is a problem. By waiting until after he discovers that his social status will suffer no harm, Torvald reveals his true

Her final goal was so important to her, protecting her family, she knew she had to do whatever was necessary, even if that meant not being true to her husband or society. In the end, she realizes that it was more important to her husband his reputation, than what it had meant to Nora, all she had done for the love of her family, concluding to the raw truth that her husband didn´t really love her: he loved what she represented before society, a loving, faithful wife that compelled to all his expectations. She knew that to love her children, she needed first to understand and love herself, a thought way beyond and ahead of time, for a woman in the late 1800´s.

Nora gets blackmailed for forging a signature, and for this she gets disowned by her husband. But, when her husband finds that the blackmail will be dropped, and will no longer affect their lives, he tells Nora that everything is okay and they both can presume living like normal. This opens Nora’s eyes fully for the first time, before she had only glimpses of the wrongness in her identity, but now she knew. Nora had been living a false identity, she had been a ‘toy doll’, and at the end of the play she decides to want so much more than to be what others thought she should be. In the end of Act three, Nora states ”I must think things out for myself and try to get clear about them” (Ibsen 199). Nora is now going to decided who she is and what she really believes, she is going to discover her own identity. In an article on women working in World War II, it states, “While patriotism did influence women, ultimately it was the economic incentives that convinced them to work. Once at work, they discovered the nonmaterial benefits of working like... contributing to the public good, and proving themselves in jobs once thought of as only men’s work” (“Rosie Riveter: Women”). Women before World War II were thought of as simply housewifes for the most part, similar to Nora. The circumstances of World War II brought about need for women in the workplace, this started a domino effect of women taking up an identity similar to males the sense that they could now