A Doll House Analysis
A Doll House is a play written by Henrik Ibsen in 1879. In this era, women were expected to be dutiful wives to their husbands while they supported their families financially. In the play, we are introduced to Nora while she is dealing with conflicts between herself and other characters in the story, as well as an overbearing self-doubt that she harbors until the very last scene. As the entirety of plot unfolds, she bases her every decision around how her husband will react to her well-hidden secrets. Everything ends up boiling down to how trapped she had become in her life, which pushes her to finally leave everything behind in order to live for herself. In addition to the title’s clear symbolism of feeling always controlled, Torvald’s use of the nicknames provide some similar ideas that focus more on Nora’s desire to escape and be her own person outside of the domestic life that she was expected to live.