Feminism in the Victorian Era

As she assorts her husband, "a colossal wrong was d angiotensin-converting enzyme to me Torvald. First by Papa and thus by you?," (Ibsen, p. 104).

In the beginning of the play, Nora is content to play larks and squirrels for her husband, to err cookies, to beg for money, and to limit herself for her husband's happiness. She believes these yields are part and parcel of the spousal contract, but she also believes her husband would make similar sacrifices for her benefit. In actuality, Torvald primarily views Nora as a experience and wife, while he objectifies her as a sexual object. When she prances around playing larks and squirrels, Torvald tells her, "I pretend to myself that you are my young bride?that, for the first time, I am alone with you - quite alone with you, as you stand there young and trembling and beautiful," (Ibsen, p. 106).

We see that Torvald only seems to appreciate Nora as a virginal and frightened young girl. He has petty to no appreciation for her intellect or capacity for independent thought or action. Despite Nora's existence revolving around fashioning Torvald happy, when she asks to go to Italy he refuses to take her. He tells her she is too " superficial" and it is not his job to "pander to her mood and caprices," (Ibsen, p. 106). Nora is unable to defend herself in any role other than wife (sex object) and catch (housekeeper). Nora will continue to make major sacrifices for her husband,

including fraud, in order to keep him happy. However, at one point she becomes conscious of Torvald's oppression and how it basically makes her into a " shuttlecock" that has no capacity for self-expression or intellect. When she confronts Torvald with the hollow personality of their marriage, his contrite please for a second chance fall on deaf ears. Nora instantaneously understands she is the only one willing to sacrifice for her marriage but that will never achieve fulfilment for her. As Shafer (p.

62) maintains, "Nothing he says penetrates her devastating realization that the miracle she was waiting for in ecstasy and terror the proof that Torvald's love for her was overt of a sacrifice equal to hers for him has been nothing but illusion."

Rekdal, Anne Marie. "The womanly Jouissance: An Analysis of Ibsen's A Doll's House." Scandinavian Studies, 74(2), 149-180.

Nora's efforts to hide her debt for her trip from Torvald helper show the limitation and oppression in the roles of wife and mother in her era. She confides to Christine Linde that she will never be able to tell Torvald her secret. This will be true even when she is "no longstanding pretty" and Torvald "no longer loves me as he does now; when it no longer amuses him to see me dance and dress up and play the fool for him," (Ibsen, p. 105). Ibsen's play shows the artificial and limiting nature of gender roles and norms in the Victorian era. Marriage is nothing more than than than male oppression of females, oppression that limits Nora to being little more than a pretty doll whose existence revolves around sultry her own thoughts and expressions to please men. Ibsen maintained that A Doll's House demolish the fatade of marriage in his era, "Marriage was revealed as being far-off from a divine institution, people stopped regarding it as an self-acting provider of absolute bliss, and divorce between incompatible parties came
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