Best of Miami Portfolios 2001 - Units.muohio.edu

Response to a Text—Brendan Klosterman
Woman: Doll, Child, Slave
ADoll’s House, by Henrik Ibsen, creates a peephole into the lives of a family in the
Victorian Era. The play portrays a female viewpoint in a male-dominated society. The values of
the society are described using the actions of a woman, Nora, who rebels against the injustices
inflicted upon her gender. Women’s equality with men was not recognized by society in the late
1800’s. Rather, a woman was considered a doll, a child, and a servant. Nora’s alienation reveals
society’s assumptions and values about gender.
A woman was considered by society to be a doll because she was expected to be subordinate
to her husband’s whims. Referring to a ball that she would attend, Nora asks her husband, Torvald,
if he would “take me in hand and decide what I shall go as and what sort of dress I should wear”
(26). Nora relies completely on how her husband would dress her, just like a doll. Just as Nora is
treated as a doll, she interacts with her children as such. She doesn’t raise them, she merely “play[s]
and romp[s] with the children” (13). She tells Torvald, “our home 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” (67). In this conversation, she shows her alienation as a woman in society by expressing
discontent with her role in life.
In addition to being treated like a doll, Nora is also regarded as a small child. Victorian
society looks upon women’s intelligence as no better than a child’s. Torvald tells her, “You talk like
a child. You don’t understand the conditions of the world in which you live” (69). Yet, he does
nothing to rectify the situation. While Nora says she is unlike a child, she displays her childish
tendencies by repeating “impossible” (Ibsen 28, 29) when she is confronted with the possibility that
she might have to face punishment for forging her father’s name. She alludes to a child’s character
when she says, “everything I think of seems so silly and insignificant” (26). Torvald replies with a
condescending statement: “Does my little Nora acknowledge that at last?” (26). Torvald expects
only childish talk from her. He even tells her she is “little,” like a child, and although he expects
nothing more than child’s talk from her, he does expect to be obeyed.
Nora plays the part of a slave in her subservience to her husband, for she is supposed to
abide by his rules and be dependent on him. She is not supposed to think for herself and repeatedly
told so by those around her. When speaking about Nora in her presence, Torvald says, “She is so
terribly self-willed” (55). Nora has a conversation with Mrs. Linde, who also tells her, “Don’t be
self-willed” (57). Torvald tells her, “I will advise you and direct you” (64). Nora is expected to be
a dependent slave who follows her husband’s advice and directions. Women were also legally
dependent upon men. The society’s laws of that time even required the male to cosign everything
that a woman had to sign. Nora’s naivete in forging her father’s signature and trying to pay off the
loan further emphasizes Victorian society’s assumptions about women’s inability to deal with a
“man’s world.”
These assumptions about women caused their gender value to be vastly outweighed by that
of men. From relationships to working, men had more power than women. Nora and Torvald’s
relationship followed this rule, even to the extent of Torvald’s condescending nicknames such as
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