A Doll's House: A Level York Notes

‘I’ve been living here like a pauper, from hand to mouth.’ I think Nora is right. She has nothing, and therefore has nothing to lose at the end of the play. Helmer of course finds this very difficult to grasp, as he sees himself as a generous husband; but throughout the play we see Nora in situations where she finds herself lacking what she needs – sometimes in material terms, sometimes in political or spiritual ones.

We soon learn that not only does Nora have to ask, as a pauper must, for money to feed and clothe the family, but that she cannot have it without pleasing Helmer by doing ‘tricks’ – literally dancing for him ‘in the moonlight’. While Helmer is not ungenerous and seems to enjoy giving her ‘something in gold paper’, Nora has no financial security to speak of. The debt to Krogstad has made this situation worse. Her clothes, the presents she buys for others, in fact everything that is not for Helmer or the things the children really need, cost very little; but she has to pretend that they are expensive in order to keep some money back for the debt. Hence everything she owns seems to have a lie linked to it. Even the macaroons are forbidden, and she has to hide them. Although Ibsen uses them for comic effect, they also stress that she is, as she says, living ‘from hand to mouth’. In my view Nora is as penniless at the beginning of the play as she is at the end – but at the end, she is the one who chooses to be so, which is arguably a slight gain.

Early critics were so disturbed by Nora abandoning her children at the end of the play that they tended to say it was psychologically impossible – Brun described it as ‘screaming dissonance’. While most people can at least accept that some women, not necessarily monsters, do behave in this way, the children can surely be seen as Nora’s greatest ‘loss’. I think Ibsen intended his audience to debate this. This is not a ‘happy ending’.

However, for much of the play, Nora has been thinking of herself as a bad mother. When Helmer talks about ‘mothers who are constitutional liars’ he may not even mean what he is saying – he likes to make speeches – but Nora takes it completely to heart. After the happy games we see in the first act we might expect to see Nora in her element at Christmas, with even the strain of the debt alleviated by the happiness of being with the children. Instead she avoids them, and there is nobody to advise her; the nurse accepts her decision and says that they ‘can get used to anything’. Nora may be applying that to herself, as well as the children, as she goes on to question the nurse about how such a loss might feel. It is, clearly, going to cause her pain to leave the children, but Helmer’s words have struck so deep that she has already given up a large element of her motherhood. In a way it is Helmer who has already deprived her. Later he threatens to take them away from her; Nora thinks that he is right, even if he says it for all the wrong reasons. She does not give up the children lightly – but she is clear that she, and they, might both be the losers if she stays.

Nora also loses Helmer. His pomposity, his intolerance and his steady refusal to think of Nora as an adult – even when her attitude is clearly more mature than his own, as in the final conversation with Dr Rank – might lead some to argue that he is not much of a loss. Others might point to remarks like ‘You’ve always been so kind,’ and to their more playful moments, when they both seem to find it fun that she is his ‘skylark’. However, I think that the problem is deeper than this. Although she and Helmer have both found some pleasure and contentment in their marriage, it seems that Nora has never really chosen her husband for herself. Helmer has been ‘kind and helpful’ to her father, who has been in some financial or legal trouble. Nora seems to have been a reward for his trouble. Her analysis is that she ‘passed from papa’s hands into yours’. (Helmer confirms this view of events when he complains that he is being punished for this by Krogstad, and that Nora is as dishonest as her father.) Nora cannot really be said to have had a marriage, in the sense of a freely chosen partnership.

Thus, when Nora walks out into the darkness, she has gained more than she has lost. While she is leaving her family, they have never fully belonged to her; she has no money, but she knows that she can earn that. Nora was a heroine for the early feminist movement. I think she is also a heroine to herself, and that this is a real gain.