freedol Nora's Freedom in Ibsen's A Doll's House

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Nora's Freedom in A Doll's House

Perhaps we have all felt the urge to "escape" to some tropical paradise. However, as individuals we have responsibilities and obligations to school, friends and family. These responsibilities and obligations usually keep us from "escaping". It is difficult to balance our personal need for freedom with our responsibility to others. In Henrik Ibsen's play, A Doll's House, the character of Nora Helmer had suffered greatly to achieve her personal freedom.

A woman of the Victorian period, Nora Helmer was both a prisoner of her time as well as a pioneer. In her society women were viewed as a inferior to men and were not provided full legal rights. Women of that era were expected to stay at home and attend to the needs of their spouse and children. Nora was a free spirit just waiting to spread her wings; her husband Torvald would constantly disallow the slightest pleasures that she aspired to have, such as macaroons. (TEACHER COMMENT: THIS STATEMENT WOULD HAVE A BETTER EFFECT IF IT WERE DIRECTLY QUOTED FROM THE PLAY.)

Nora lived a life of lies in order to hold her marriage together. She kept herself pleased with little things such as telling Dr. Rank and Mrs. Linde, "I have such a huge desire to say-to hell and be damned" (Ibsen 59)! She did this just so she could release some tension that was probably building inside her due to all the restrictions that Torvald had set up, such as forbidding macaroons. The need for her to consume these macaroons behind her controlling husband's back was a way for her to satisfy her sense of needing to be an independent woman.

Upon the arrival of her old friend Kristine Linde, Nora took it upon herself to find her friend a job...

... middle of paper ...

...ority says, or what's written in books. I have to think over these things myself and try to understand them (Ibsen 111).

In her leaving and the abandoning of her family and the memories that coincide with them, Nora was able to gain her freedom as an individual and was now in search for new responsibilities. We all have wanted to go out on our own and fulfill our responsibility to ourselves. However our need to find our individuality can lead to our downfall, or our success. In Ibsen's play, A Doll's House, an estranged wife, Nora Helmer; suffered to become an individual in her own right and took accountability for her actions to achieve her freedom.

Work Cited:

Ibsen, Henrik. A Doll's House. Introduction to Literature: Reading, Analyzing, and Writing.2nd ed. Ed. Dorothy U. Seyler and Richard A. Wilan. Englewood Cliffs: Prentice, 1990.

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