Feminism in a Doll’s House by Henrik Ibsen

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Nora’s husband was absolutely ecstatic, not even realizing that his true intentions and worries were shining through in his outburst. Nora’s realization of these intentions were one of the main reasons she finally laid her claim on her own rights and opinions of how she should be treated. She then states, “Exactly as before, I was your little skylark, your doll, which you would in future treat with doubly gentle care, because it was so brittle and fragile” (Ibsen 2.764-766). In this quote Nora’s ferocious sarcasm shows how belittled she felt about how Helmer thought and treated her as. She was no mere skylark or doll, no, she was a human being just like him and deserved to be treated as so rather than belittled by her husband’s societal need to feel superior, which is precisely what feminism is.

So far all that has been discussed on the grounds of Nora being a feminist is how much she gave and took back, but what also is needed to be made clear is how she took her dignity back, specifically by not allowing herself to be known only as a wife and a mother. Nora has her own ideas, her own thoughts, and her own values other than what Torvald thinks of her to have. Nora had gotten a loan to bring Helmer to Italy for the betterment of his health and had even told Krogstad in one of their conversations that she could influence Torvald at the bank where he worked with her ideas and suggestions. Nora also makes it clear that she had her own ideas and her own views on her marriage that to Helmer were absolutely absurd.

Helmer. How unreasonable and how ungrateful you are, Nora! Have you not been happy here?

Nora. No, I have never been happy. I thought I was, but it has never really been so.

Helmber. Not---not happy!

Nora. No, only merry. And you have always been so kind to me. But our house has been nothing but a playroom. I have been your doll-wife, just as at home I was papa’s doll-child; and here the children have been my dolls. I thought it great fun when you played with me, just as they thought it great fun when I played with them. That is what our marriage has been, Torvald. (Ibsen 3.622-632)

Her use of words such as “playroom” and “doll-wife” connect what the pair knows with their children in a seemingly simple but very complex way. Nora’s expression of distaste in her words evidently show her negative views on the life she has been living. This is further backed up in another excerpt from Helmer and Nora’s argument where it states, “‘Before all else, you are a wife and a mother,’ Torvald said. ‘I don’t believe that any longer. I believe that before all else I am a reasonable human being, just as you are--or, at all events, that I must try and become one’ replied Nora” (Ibsen 3.679-682). Nora’s remarks in this quote embody everything that she had been explaining through the end Ibsen’s play. The very core meaning of feminism is embodied in these words used by Nora. In the end, her denial of the assumption that all women were to be simple housewives who followed their husbands bidding as their puppeteers to gain back her respect should be reason enough to call Nora a feminist.

They say that a person’s choices at the end of the day define who a person is in life, so it can be said that even in today’s standards Nora is a feminist heroine. Nora started the this story as a seemingly tame housewife and stayed that way for the majority of the play, but not necessarily like a perfect plastic doll. Aspects throughout the story showed imperfections in this type of notion of Nora, from her simply eating a macaroon, to her committing an act of forgery in order to get a loan. It may not be until nearer and nearer to the end until Nora starts taking strides towards her own independence, but she still made the decision to do so and be a true feminist by the closing of the play. People change as they do both today and back when this play was written, so how she acted at the beginning shouldn’t change the end result, the result that Nora is, by the end of A Doll’s House, a feminist heroine.

Works Cited

Biography.com Editors. "Henrik Ibsen Biography." The Biography.com Website URL. A&E Television Networks, 3 Mar. 2015. Web. 28 Nov. 2016.

Grafenstein, Jerimy. "The 25 Most Controversial Books of All Time." The Richest. TheRichest.com, 2 May 2014. Web. 28 Nov. 2016.

Ibsen, Henrik. A Doll’s House. Archer, William. New York: Bantam Dell, 2005. Print.

Kile, J. "5 Traits of a Hero." Moral Heroes. N.p., 1 Dec. 2012. Web. 28 Nov. 2016.

Lewis, Jone Johnson. "Feminism Definition." About.com. About, Inc., 28 July 2016. Web. 28 Nov. 2016.

SparkNotes Editors. “SparkNote on A Doll’s House.” SparkNotes.com. SparkNotes LLC. 2002. Web. 28