Question: Compare and contrast the characters of Nora and Ms Linde. What do we learn of the Norwegian society through their inter-actions?

Authors Avatar

A Doll’s House Practice Exam Question

Question: Compare and contrast the characters of Nora and Ms Linde. What do we learn of the Norwegian society through their inter-actions?

  Throughout the piece “A Doll’s House”, the writer Henrik Ibsen challenges the hypocrisy of the 19th century Norwegian society. At the time, Norway was a patriotically society meaning male are the dominate race. Women on the other hand were expected to play by the society’s expectations and men had the right to treat them as “little song birds” or “little children”. In this play, there is a strong contrast between the actions Mrs. Linde and Nora, at the end of the play, the two women basically swoop position or roles as Mrs. Linde goes back with Krogstad and enjoys a romantic relationship with him whilst Nora leaves Torvald for her own ambitions and goals. Both of their actions were for “freedom”, and that is the thing that connected the two to “needing each other”. From the two women’s interactions we learn that women had to stand up to the system and make sacrifices if they wanted an improvement in life, throughout this essay, I will explain and explore how and why it is done in the case of the frictional characters in A Doll’s House.

   In the beginning of the play Nora is presented as a beautiful young wife of a banker and a mother of the bourgeois family. She takes pride in dressing up elegantly and enjoys taking care of her children. Ibsen presents her almost as a “model” of how a typical woman would act at that time. Nora also plays by the role of a woman the society expects her to play. At home, she is often referred to as a “little songbird” by his husband, notice the use of the possessive pronoun “my” here which is as if Nora was an object which Torvald owned. Torvald often mocks Nora’s intelligence, often adding the word “little” in front of names Torvald would call her to suggest how little she knows. At one point, Torvald even tells Nora that “in lots of things, you’re still a child” and that he is “older” than her “in many ways” and just “had a little more experience”. Even with the aid of stage directions Nora is presented as a child-like character, examples would be as she “runs to open the door”.

Join now!

  However, following the arrival of Mrs. Linde the readers are revealed to the deep secrete Nora holds which if exposed can damage her and Torvald’s face and reputation. A few years ago, Torvald was seriously ill at that time and was told by the doctor that he had to go to Italy to rest. However, the family did not have the money to do so and Nora was forced to complete a forgery in order to borrow money to pay for her husband’s trip to Italy. Knowing the kind of “pride” men held at that time, Nora knew ...

This is a preview of the whole essay