Patriarchy in a Doll's House

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her know that she is his: “Why shouldn’t I look at my dearest treasure?—at all the beauty that is mine, all my very own?” (3.262-263). Torvald uses patronizing language to portray how to him Nora was just a "sweet little skylark”, and uses typically ’loving’ terms but makes them seem condescending and demeaning. This use of language emphasizes his misogynistic ego and his superiority sentiment over her. Even after Nora’s epiphany, he continues to diminish her and treat her as a child, probably to convince her on her lack of knowledge and to make her drop the subject. No matter what Nora is saying, the entitlement is present during the entirety of the play and doesn’t ever go away. Torvald’s misogynistic qualities are engraved in him, most likely due to the fact that he was simply taught that a wife was inferior to him and therefore a doll he could play with.

Torvald’s immense hypocrisy speaks more on his character than in any idea of marriage, but it wouldn’t be as clear of a characteristic if it weren’t for the strange way he was taught marriage was supposed to be. Through the duration of the play, Torvald, even though misogynistic, seems like he deeply cares for his wife and her well being. He lets her buy things and have pleasures. He even fantasizes about saving Nora from danger, at one point, “I have often wished that you might be threatened by some great danger, so that I might risk my life’s blood, and everything, for your sake” (3.409-411). Nevertheless, after Nora’s truth is revealed, his rant reveals that all of the affection he apparently had for her was a play act. Torvald is unable to recognize the immense sacrifice his wife had done to save his life and is easily ready to continue their lives pretending to be happily married, caring only about what people would say about them instead of Nora’s reactions, feelings or overall thoughts. Torvald doesn’t think twice before taking away Norah’s right to her children: “I shall not allow you to bring up the children; I dare not trust them to you” (3.486-487). However, after the document appears, he says he only said that because he was “In a moment of anger” (3.645). Once the danger for Torvald’s image passes, he takes back everything he said about his wife and her values, and even has the audacity to tell Nora that “I know that what you did, you did out of love for me” (3.526). Despite the fact we can forgive Torvald for not knowing any better on certain aspects of his marriage, we cannot overlook the fact that his hypocrisy was a choice.

In spite of the author picking a marriage that was still much better than most marriages at the time, Nora and Torvald still portrayed the reality of the institution. Both of these characters help us understand how marriage was supposed to be like and how women were not supposed to grow or have any ambition of their own. In the end, Nora was freed from her “doll house” and was able to come into her own as a woman and as a human, but Torvald didn’t seem to understand his own reality quite yet.

Works Cited

DiYanni, Robert. Literature: Reading Fiction, Poetry, and Drama. Sixth Edition,

McGraw-Hill Education, 2007.

Ibsen, Henrik. A Doll’s House. DiYanni. 1102-1105.

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