A full timeline of the events in A Doll's House with quotations, AO1 points, and helpful notes. Great for brief summary during exam-time revision or when first studying the play.
- Nora comes home – Christmas tree – domestic sphere/ dressing up
- ‘Little songbird mustn’t droop her wing’ playful dynamic with Torvald
- ‘My little spendthrift’ Torvald damns Nora for her spending/ frivolity
- ‘My dear little one’ infantilising Nora
- Torvald and Nora’s dynamic – the bird metaphors is sexualised
- Torvald, ‘you are a strange little one, just like your father’
- ‘I must take you as you are, its in your blood, that sort of thing is hereditary’ the idea of
identity/reputation being defined by reputation/identity of parents – echoes Dr Rank being
damned with illness for his father’s infidelity
- Nora, ‘I wouldn’t dream of crossing you,’ innate recognition of Nora’s obedience to Torvald
- He has the capability to frighten her with his authority ‘of course not’
- ‘I’m not at home to visitors, remember that’ Nora restrained to her domestic world
- Mrs Linde arrives
- Nora and Christine discuss her husband’s death
- ‘And he didn’t leave you anything?’ ‘Not even a sense of loss.’
- Nora’s mention of the children, but separation from them – disconnected mother
- Nora instantly boasting about Torvald’s promotion, ‘I feel so relieved… not to worry’ Nora
recognises some liberation in money
- Nora can’t help but talk about Torvald being ill and her having to work
- Nora ‘all I’m doing is talking about myself’ then fixates on the idea of Linde not loving her
husband, ‘so he was rich at the time then?’
- Perhaps we can see Nora’s fixation with money as a means of liberation only furthering the
impact of her deciding to leave in the ending – this would be without financial stability, so
somewhat limiting to her, but she recognises that a wealth of self-education would be far
more liberating than a wealth of materialism
- Nora foils Linde, ‘I don’t have a papa to pay for it, Nora’ belittling of Nora
- At first, Nora says it would be ‘terribly too tiring’ for Linde to work, as this is how she thinks
is to respond – conforming women to their posts as women – but then goes on to confess how
much she enjoyed working. Nora unable to see that working was what made her happy rather
than the money, which is what women are supposedly only attracted to.
- ‘You have no one to live for, so you get to be selfish’ Linde portrays this negatively, Ibsen
perhaps says that this is what Nora needs by taking away the people she must ‘live for’ in the
end
- ‘You’ve known so little of life’s troubles’ Everyone belittles Nora, unrealisingly pushing her
into wanting to ‘know’ life’s troubles/ this and ‘caged bird’
- ‘Torvald mustn’t hear at any price’ ‘I saved Torvald’s life’
- ‘A wife can’t borrow without a husband’s permission’ ‘a wife without a little business sense’
- Nora’s pride, when she’s with Nora – she airs this confidence, cocky – ironic
- ‘Is it rash to save your husband’s life?’
- ‘It would destroy him to know that he owed me anything’
- ‘It might be useful to have something up my sleeve’ Nora impressed by her own savviness,
but also not wanting to become unwelcomed by Torvald
- ‘It was tremendous fun, sitting there working, it was almost like being a man’ Nora expresses
an innate desire for work/ for purpose
- Nora’s dream of an ‘old gentleman’/ died – wouldn’t have to deal with the marriage, but have
the financial freedom
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