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  • Essay / Analysis of the character of Torvald Helmer in a doll's house

    A predictable response to reading Henrik Ibsen's A Doll's House might be a distaste for Nora's moronic obsession with money, possessions, and culture through the first two acts which is then, suddenly and unexpectedly , reversed as these harsh opinions fall on her stunned husband. as Nora breaks away from her puppet strings and takes a stand for the potential she had that was suppressed and squandered by the men dominating her life. Her revealing speech is so moving, so epic, that a reader can't help but applaud it at the end and look at Torvald Helmer with a kind of anger and shame at his genre-typical oppression, and when Nora finally slams the door. about their marriage and her life as a "doll", there should be mental applause in the reader's head as the audience rises screaming from their seats, only the defeated Helmer remaining on stage to suffer their joy. However, all of this stands in stark contrast to the first two acts, in which the audience would have collectively shaken their heads at Nora's simple, superficial actions and her husband's impending problems as a result. Indeed, the gap between acts two and three is shocking, to the point that a reader, after coming down from the euphoria of this final speech, inevitably questions the transition. There are few points in common between the Nora who implores her husband: “You know that I could never act against your will” (31) and the Nora who announces: “I believe that I am above all a human being” ( 58). ), which means that she revokes her status as a doll (even if this essayist would like to point out that, to parody Forrest Gump, humans are like humans). However, while it is often argued that Nora's sudden development is a flaw in the story, Helmer's role is more ambiguous. After all, a reader would presume, didn't he reinforce Nora's role as a puppet? Has he ever done anything to spark a passion in her for things other than buttons and dresses? Certainly not, at least not from what the piece reveals. And that becomes reason enough to point the finger at Helmer in shame. However, it could also be argued that Helmer was not as controlling and condescending as Nora claimed - at least, not by nature. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on “Why Violent Video Games Should Not Be Banned”? Get an original essay It could be that he was simply adapting himself to a role suited to his own actions; After all, he didn't shape Nora to be this way. On the contrary, he continued his growth in the same direction in which she had already been headed and with which she was already satisfied, as had begun her father, whose role is not so easily analyzed throughout the play because that he appears there only through Nora's references, and even these are subjective and few in number. But, assuming that her father had as much of an effect on her as she claimed, it is likely that when Helmer met Nora, she was already playing with dolls and bore no signs of higher aspirations in life . She accused Helmer of molding her to share his fantasies and opinions, but perhaps the opposite is also true, that Helmer adapted to her doll-like mind. There is, after all, no indication of Helmer's personality before Nora; he may have been the type to encourage those with intellectual potential, but since Nora never displayed it, he had no reason to assume that she possessed a mind capable of occupying itself with anything more complicated than sneaking macaroons. In The Golden Notebook,.