A dolls house act 3 analysis

A Dolls House by Henrik Ibsen is about the oppression of women and how they were asked by men to live in a ‘Doll’s House.’ We see throughout the play how Torvald acts like a dictator with Nora and talks to her condescendingly.

However, in Act III things start changing. Torvald’s tone becomes harsher, he actually starts treating her like a possession and dresses her up like a doll in all the things he finds most ‘desirable’.

After the party he tries to have her in order to satisfy his desire but when Nora reveals Krogstad’s condition Torvald tries to use his desire as a point of consolation. When Nora talks to him and tell him her own secret. He unravels. He abuses her verbally and claims she has shamed him. He completely rejects her position.

Yet, as soon as the truth is revealed through the letter the maid brings, he forgives her. By then Nora has had enough and decides to leave him unable to live anymore as a possession with no will and a person with no individual identity. She said of her position with her dad and then Torvald as her husband, “He played with me just as I used to play with my dolls. And when I came to live with you I was simply transferred from Papa’s hands to yours.”

It is this Act that summarizes Nora’s conflicts throughout the play where she struggled to see herself as an independent woman but was confined by her sense of duty to her husband and society. She felt she was freed and her ties with Torvald severed when he refused to help her and honor her when faced with baseless accusation. It showed her that she had been sacrificing herself for a man who would never love her as she needed to be loved. He valued his possessions more than her and that was something she would not accept.

She has discovered that as a woman she has been continuously asked to do her ‘duty’ and has done so but she is also expected to remain a plaything for her husband and that she can no longer do. She has discovered that she values her sense of the self, her discovery of herself as an individual over her role as a wife, mother and daughter and she is no longer willing to sacrifice her life for people who cannot return the same emotions for her sake.

References

Dolls House by Henrik Ibsen