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Nora Helmer

In: English and Literature

Submitted By annie2660
Words 610
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Nora is subject to accepting and conforming to her gender roles throughout the play as it was expected to live up to Victorian ideals. This restricted females, especially due to the patriarchal control over the household, which is represented early on in Act 1 in A Doll’s House from the stage directions; “A bell rings in the hall...Enter NORA” ,this shows that the only way to enter her own home is through the access being granted by someone else. This straight away highlights the fact that she has no key to enter her own household, leaving her powerless to make the choice of when she may enter or leave the domestic sphere. This would seem to be a bizarre concept to modern audiences as it can be seen a belittling, whereas normal to a contemporary audience, though this is difficult to generalise. By Ibsen not allowing Nora to have a key could also be interpreted as also being metaphorical, due to having no control because she is Torvalds’s possession with society locking her away from giving her no escape route out. This contrasts to Shaw’s representation of Vivie as you can infer that she has outside knowledge of the real world since she hasn’t been in a ‘doll’s house.’ This is drawn attention to from when she speaks of having been to ‘Chancery Lane’ for a month

The main time Nora rejects her traditional gender role would be at the end of the play, when she has a realization, leading to leaving her family. In a sense, the final act of the play is Nora’s awakening, in which she realizes that she was never happy in her life with Torvald and recognizes that she has been forced to live a lie. She states, “I’ve lived by performing tricks for you, Torvald. But that’s the way you wanted it. You and Father have done me a great wrong. You’ve prevented me from becoming a real person”. As Torvald tries to stop her and ask her to stay, for the sake of her duty to him and the

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