Nora's Characterization in "a Doll's House"

Phoebe Mamaloukas

“Write a characterization of Nora as she appears in Act I of the play”.

        In most literary texts a widely used drama technique is characterization. A spot-on example of this would be the work of Henrik Ibsen, “A Doll’s House”, which first premiered in Copenhagen in 1879. In this play Nora, a Norwegian woman of the middle class, desperately attempts to conceal from her husband, Torvald, that she had borrowed money in order to help him when he became ill, while Krogstad, the man she had borrowed from, threatens to reveal everything. When Torvald finally learns, he sees it as an act of betrayal, since he thinks she was the reason he lost his financial independence. Nora realizes that he never truly loved her and leaves. Throughout act I many elements of Nora’s character are revealed to the audience, the most distinguished ones being her childish behavior, her pretentious financial irresponsibility, as well as her cunningness. All these features become evident through her speech, actions and movement.

From the first stage directions Nora is portrayed as childish and immature. From the acoustic image “the bell rings” we understand that Nora does not even have keys to her own house, which can be interpreted as forgetful and irresponsible behavior.  When she “tiptoes across and listens at her husband’s door” or when she eats the macaroons and lies about it to Torvald, she creates the image of a naughty child. Moreover Nora seems to embrace willingly Torvald’s overuse of pet names when addressing her, such as “my little songbird” or “my squirrel”. One particular phrase she says to Torvald - “them? Who cares about them? They’re strangers” referring to the people from which Torvald would hypothetically borrow – further stresses her immaturity and shows that not only does she know nothing about the real world, but she doesn’t care to know either, which is exactly the mindset of a little kid. Since women in 19th century’s Norway were expected to be unintelligent and oblivious of real world problems, Nora purposefully assumes the part of the helpless damsel in distress in order to fit those standards and boost Torvald’s ego.

        Furthermore, Nora seems to have a lack of frugality, at least at the beginning. When she enters the stage, she is “carrying a lot of parcels” and she also over-tips the porter. All she asks from Torvald for Christmas is money, so that she can “spend it on all sorts of useless things for the house”. Moreover the audience gets the impression that she is not good at saving when Torvald humorously and condescendingly comments “That’s quite true. [You save] every penny you can. But you can’t”. Even Mrs. Linde acknowledges that even “at school [Nora was] a terrible little spendthrift”. The audience is led to deduce that this attitude towards money is due to her belonging to the middle class and therefore not being economically strained.

        However, this financial irresponsibility is just a façade to Nora’s actual character, and that is where the cunningness takes over. Nora plays the role of the “spendthrift” in order to conceal from Torvald her big secret, i.e. that she has borrowed from Krogstad and has committed forgery to do so; this incident is given using the technique of exposition throughout Nora’s dialogue with Mrs. Linde. Although the action itself requires her to be sly, as it was not easy for a woman of the 19th century to be involved with money, the plans and excuses she comes up with to keep it a secret are an even better example of her craftiness. She is aware of Torvald’s motto - that “a home that is founded on debts and borrowing can never be a place of freedom and beauty” - therefore she knows better than to tell him the truth. When she says “if only you knew how many expenses we larks and squirrels have, Torvald”, she is actually hinting the truth to Torvald and to the audience and now the latter can better understand her previous obsession with money; she kept asking for more so she could save in order to repay her debt. Later on when Torvald brings up Nora’s shutting herself away for days to make decorations and her coming up with nothing in the end, we understand that the cat “tearing everything to bits” was just an excuse. She was actually working during that period in order to make more money to repay the loan.  In the situation she is in, Nora is forced to develop that cunningness, because as a woman she is completely dependent on her husband for money, while he is willing to put his economic dignity above his health. Therefore she is required to think rationally for him. Borrowing money was impossible for women back then without having a man’s permission, so forging her father’s signature and faking his consent was necessary in order to help Torvald.