I recently read the play A Doll’s House by Henrik Ibsen. The main message the play is giving the world is the message of women’s oppression. Nora Helmer is the wife of soon to be manager of a bank Torvald Helmer, and throughout the play, he treats her as a pet. He gives her nicknames such as “my little lark” and truly seems to think of her as more of an object than a human being. Here’s the thing though; Nora, without Torvald knowing, took a loan from a man in order to pay for Torvald’s vacation in order to get him well. Torvald, however, would not think this as possible, or sensible for Nora, because she is a woman. When he finds out he is really angry with Nora for what she did to him by taking the loan without him knowing. Although the loaner sends him a letter containing the I.O.U. that Nora had written him, and Torvald forgives Nora, she sees what she truly is to him, and leaves him. I found a quote that I think really relates to this situation, spoken by Antoinette Brown Blackwell.
“You asked me one day if it seemed like giving up much for your sake. Only leave me free, as free as you are and everyone ought to be, and it is giving up nothing.”
She needs her freedom from their doomed marriage in which he fell in love with the girl he wanted her to be, and forced her to be. He used her as a pet, a toy, you may even say a doll, and kept her oppressed while he was free. She came to the realization that what they had was not love, but a fantasy. A man’s fantasy that she was forced into, and when they thought they had love this entire time, they actually had nothing. Torvald had his dream, that Nora was his singing lark, and Nora gave up everything for that; but in the end, what they both needed was to move on from their nothing, and hopefully find the miracle of love in the future.
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