After Krogstad rescinds his blackmail threat and returns the loan document with the signature Nora forged, Torvald is relieved and tells Nora he forgives her.
He clearly enjoys the idea that Nora needs his guidance, and he interacts with her as a father would. He instructs her with trite, moralistic sayings, such as: “A home that depends on loans and debt is not beautiful because it is not free.” He is also eager to teach Nora the dance she performs at the costume party.
Torvald Helmer
Nora's husband. Torvald delights in his new position at the bank, just as he delights in his position of authority as a husband. He treats Nora like a child, in a manner that is both kind and patronizing. He does not view Nora as an equal but rather as a plaything or doll to be teased and admired.
She no longer believes Torvald's assertion that she is “a wife and mother above everything else.” Nora says that she realizes that she is childlike and knows nothing about the world.
A Doll's House ends with the slamming of a door. Nora turns her back on her husband and kids and takes off into the snow (brr) to make her own way in the world (brrrrr). It's a pretty bold decision, to say the least. Some might even call it foolish.
The play was so controversial that Ibsen was forced to write a second ending that he called “a barbaric outrage” to be used only when necessary. The controversy centered around Nora's decision to abandon her children, and in the second ending she decides that the children need her more than she needs her freedom.
When the play was first presented in Germany in 1880, the actress Hedwig Niemann-Raabe refused to act the final scene, on the grounds that "I would never leave my children". Ibsen was forced to write a different "happy ending", where Helmer forces Nora to the nursery door and she sinks down helpless before it.
This cements Nora's disillusionment with her marriage, and with marriage in general—she comes to the conclusion that not only does Torvald not love her, but that the institution of marriage, as it is conceived and practiced in her society, may make love impossible.
It soon becomes clear to us that Nora's dependence, not Torvald's love for Nora as a person, forms the foundation of Torvald's affection for her. In Act One, Torvald teases Nora about wasting money but then tries to please her by graciously giving her more.
What secret has Nora been keeping from Torvald? She was in love with his brother before she married him. She borrowed the money they used to take a trip to Italy. She had an affair with Krogstad five years earlier.
Nora is a victim of the male-dominated society of the nineteenth century. To save her husband, Torvald, she borrows money so that he might be able to recover from a life-threatening illness in a warmer climate.
Nora procured money and told Torvald that her father gave it to them, though she really raised it herself. Nora's father died before Torvald had a chance to find out that the money didn't come from him. Nora has kept the source of the money a secret because she doesn't want his “man's pride” to be hurt.
Nora's use of Torvald's pet names for her to win his cooperation is an act of manipulation on her part. She knows that calling herself his “little bird,” his “squirrel,” and his “skylark,” and thus conforming to his desired standards will make him more willingly to give in to her wishes.
To Nora, the right choice seemed to be to leave her family. She felt trapped in her own home. She was like a doll taken from the shelf to play with whenever Torvald felt like he wanted to pay attention to her. She lived only for him.
He treats Nora more like a child than a wife. He calls her silly names and scolds her for eating macaroons. Toward the end of the play, he even says that Nora is "doubly his own" because she has "become both wife and child" (3.257).
While speaking with Nora, Dr. Rank confesses his love for her, adding that Torvald is not the only man who would make sacrifices for her. In the end, however, we learn that Torvald does not even consider sacrificing himself for Nora. In his confession, Dr.
Torvald then retires to his study to work. Dr. Rank, the family friend, arrives. Nora asks him for a favor, but Rank responds by revealing that he has entered the terminal stage of his disease and that he has always been secretly in love with her.
This is a drastic change from the traits Nora displayed in the beginning of the play where she was dependent on Torvald for all things. She has now liberated herself from his grasp and the play ends with her leaving, never to be spoken to again.
The main message of A Doll's House seems to be that a true (read: good) marriage is a joining of equals. The play centers on the dissolution of a marriage that doesn't meet these standards.
Nora explains that Torvald has never understood her and that she has been wronged both by him and her father. Torvald, shocked, asks how that can be true of the two people who loved her more than anyone else.
The first instance of female sacrifice is seen in Act 1 through the interaction between Torvald and Nora, where Nora sacrifices her opinions and desires to satisfy her husband. Nora puts on a submissive façade, whose characteristics are similar to a child.
Nora believes herself to be a doll because the men in her life see her more as a toy than a human being.
He insists that Nora is not to be allowed near the children anymore, because she may corrupt them. Just then, a letter arrives from Krogstad. In the letter, Krogstad says that he's had a change of heart and will no longer be blackmailing them. Torvald is really happy and forgives Nora.
In the end, Else smiles her rare smile because she, too, has seen, and appreciated, the perfect little lamp. Kezia and Else each share their love of the lamp despite their obvious class differences, and Mansfield seems to suggest that friendship and empathy can overcome class prejudice.
In the past, Nora was always a passive child-like possession who followed Torvald's orders, but now she is an independent adult and is able to dominate Torvald, who is used to playing with dolls. In comparison with the "real" Nora, Torvald is the doll.