Nora acknowledges that both her father and her husband have mistreated her by not considering her as an individual with her own thoughts and feelings and treating her like a possession for their own amusement, just like a doll.
In Henrik Ibsen's A Doll's House, Nora Helmer spends most of her on-stage time as a doll: a vapid, passive character with little personality of her own. Her whole life is a construct of societal norms and the expectations of others.
Nora is like Torvald's doll—she decorates his home and pleases him by being a dependent figure with whose emotions he can toy. Read an in-depth analysis of Torvald. In addition to being something of a doll to Torvald, Nora is also like a child to him.
Doll as Metaphor
Referring to her father, Nora recalls: "He called me his doll-child, and he played with me just as I used to play with my dolls." In using the doll as a metaphor, she realizes her role as a woman in a man's society is ornamental, something cute to look at like a doll-child.
Nora has lived like a doll for her entire life, concerned only with her appearance and entertaining others instead of bettering herself. I believe that I am first and foremost a human being, like you – or anyway, that I must try to become one.
Nora leaves the role of the doll child and doll wife she played her whole life, and becomes an independent self-thinking adult, when she realizes that the world is different than she always thought it was, and that she herself is not who she thinks she is.
Nora even goes as far as calling her baby her sweet little baby doll. Her throwing the childrens things around shows her carelessness to realize that she is the mother of her children, not their owner like one who owns toys. She acts like a kid playing with her toys, not as much as an adult taking care of her children.
Torvald Helmer
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.
The doll's house itself is a symbol of the Burnell family's societal position. When it is brought into the Burnell courtyard, it becomes, literally, a house within a house, a mirror of the Burnell's home…
There are two important aspects of the play, which the title directly points to: the doll and the house. The doll represents Nora the central character, and the house stands for the house of Helmer where Nora lives.
Nora's primary struggle, however, is against the selfish, stifling, and oppressive attitudes of her husband, Torvald, and of the society that he represents. Rising action Nora's first conversation with Mrs. Linde; Krogstad's visit and blackmailing of Nora; Krogstad's delivery of the letter that later exposes Nora.
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.
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.
A Doll's House by Henrik Ibsen is a significant work as a model play in the rise of feminism of 19th century. 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.
Nora wants to celebrate – not simply Christmas, but her progress in paying off the debt so far. She wants Helmer to give her more money towards this.
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.
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.
A Doll's House is a spotlight on the society when people are under the pressure of public opinion about masculine society. This play discusses social problems in general, and individuals' in particular, women are considered as victims and society as a victimizer.
In his A Doll's House, Henrik Ibsen employs dramatic and situational irony to highlight the contrast between Nora's true independent personality and her obsequious facade around Torvald, demonstrating the restraints of a typical Victorian marriage that inhibits women's individuality.
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.
Torvald's objectification of Nora is clear from the start, as he addresses her with dehumanizing epithets like “little singing bird” and “little squirrel of mine,” which cast Nora more as a pet, as a thing to be kept, than as a person with autonomy (3).
Nora is certain that beneath the role Torvald is playing, that he loves her just as deeply as she loved him when she secretly broke the rules of society.
But now that she knows that Torvald (and his obsession with maintaining appearances) has only held her back, Nora understands that she cannot remain with a man who does not treat her has an equal, and she cannot raise children to be competent human beings without understanding how to be one herself.
In the third act of the play, Nora shifts from a fragile and immature mother and wife to an independent and courageous woman who challenges society's gender roles in the 19th century and redefines womanhood as individualistic.
This shows a high level of hypocrisy where he pretends to be very close friends with Torvald because of his wife. Nora is also a hypocrite as he pretends to flirt with Dr. Ranks so that she can convince Dr. Ranks to tell her husband not to fire Krogstad.