At the end of Ibsen's play, A Doll's House, Nora decides to leave Torvald because she doesn't know who he is anymore. She believes she is married to a stranger.
When Nora Helmer walked out on her family at the end of Henrik Ibsen's A Doll's House, she stepped into a new life as an individual. But 15 years later, our unlikely heroine comes back.
After many years of maintaining her “perfect” life, Nora could no longer live like this. She finally stands up for herself and makes a choice to leave her family. This decision is completely reasonable. It is unimaginable to think anyone could treat another person so crudely.
Nora rejects his offer, saying that Torvald is not equipped to teach her, nor she the children. Instead, she says, she must teach herself, and therefore she insists upon leaving Torvald.
Henrick Ibsen's title “A Doll House” has a significant representation to convey Nora Helmer and her image. She is conceived as a subservient, easy to handle and under control by her husband Torvald. Nora is depicted as a lovely doll in a lovely house that Torvald takes care of and owns.
Particularly its focus is on women's status in the society and their behaviour of patriarchal thinking, the lack of true love and affection, value and respect for a wife by a husband and the lack of inequality, injustice and dignity in the treatment of women in the society.
Nora, as a woman, a wife, or a mother, behaves like a doll. She is under the control of the invisible hands and the pressures of patriarchal society. Ibsen protests against the position of women in a masculine society which is unfair and under the hegemony of male-dominated powers.
Nora faced many challenges throughout the play that made her come to terms with the awful life she had been living ever since she was a child. In order to fix the problem, Nora decided to leave her family to start a new life instead of commiting suicide.
At the end of A Doll's House, Nora makes the ultimate assertion of her agency and independence by walking out on her husband and her children in order to truly understand herself and learn about the world.
However, Nora, who has seen Torvald's true selfish character, decides to leave. She tells Torvald that like her father, he had never known her—even she doesn't know who she really is herself. She states that she felt like a 'puppet' under Torvald's control and she needs some time to live alone to understand herself.
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.
She is both a victim of her circumstances and also at fault for actions which she committed. Nora is a victim. Throughout her entire life, she has never been taken seriously by anyone. She has been treated like a doll by both male characters in her life, her father and her husband, and has acted accordingly.
"After Nora Walks Out" In 1923, in his famous feminist speech “What Happens After Nora Walks Out”, influential Chinese writer Lu Xun, raises his concerns about the future and the impasses of women who have awakened with a gender consciousness in a society that is not ready for their emancipation.
Krogstad is the antagonist in A Doll's House, but he is not necessarily a villain. Though his willingness to allow Nora's torment to continue is cruel, Krogstad is not without sympathy for her.
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.
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 Helmer's choice to leave her family behind, at the end of “A Dollhouse” by Henrik Ibsen, is completely justified in her actions with the other characters throughout the play.
Nora has avoided her children, fearing to pollute them. In a conversation with her old nurse, she tells the servant that the children will have to get used to seeing less of their mother from now on. This is Nora's first suggestion of withdrawing from the life she has lived up until now.
Why doesn't Nora want to see her children at the end of Act 1? She feels bad about forging the signature. What final arguments does Helmer make to Nora as reasons for firing Krogstad? It would make Helmer look bad if he changed his mind at that point.
Krogstad betrays Nora by failing to keep the secret about the loan he had advanced her. When Helmer is promoted to the managerial position in the bank, he threatens to fire Krogstad, who also works in the bank, claiming that he is corrupt and he describes him as morally diseased.
Nora asks that he not look at her “like that,” and Torvald responds by asking if he can't look at his “most treasured possession.” He says that he can tell she still has the tarantella in her blood and that makes her even more desirable.
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.
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, the central female character, acts as the harbinger of feminism here. She is seen in the play as a rebellious female for establishing her own recognition as a human being. She discovers herself as a locked bird in both her father's house and husband's as well.
So she leaves her “happy home” for uncertainty as well as she leaves the community of her own people. Actually, Nora is the representative of the pioneering female world who tried to change the male-dominated social systems and to change their discriminatory outlook to the womanhood.