A full essay response to the English Literature Question, 'A Doll's House is not primarily about the suppression of Nora but about her defiance.' This is a top band essay, achieving marks in the 21-25 range. This essay covers Nora, Torvald and Mrs Linde.
‘A Doll’s House is not primarily about the suppression of Nora but about her defiance.’
To what extent do you agree with this view? Remember to include in your answer relevant
detailed exploration of Ibsen’s authorial methods. (25 Marks)
Ibsen’s A Doll’s House resolves with Nora’s leaving the domestic sphere of home in order to pursue a
self-education; arguably, Ibsen presents this as a result of Helmer’s suppression of her individuality,
consequentially leading her to desire life outside of his confines as her husband. However, the play’s
ending is perhaps more so the summation of Nora’s defiance – his suppression certainly her reason
but not the inevitable cause of her leaving; either way, Ibsen depicts suppression and defiance as
interlinked. Although, perhaps Nora eventually leaving is not asked by Ibsen to be admired for its
defiance or for its dismantling of suppression but more so for its reason, Nora’s desire to self-educate
and gain her own understanding is life is the arguable sole message Ibsen wishes his audience to
contemplate.
Ibsen threads irony throughout the play in both Torvald and Mrs Linde’s dynamics with Nora; in each
interaction they chose to suppress Nora through belittlement and dismissal, unknowingly, pushing her
into the realisation that she must escape their suppression. Torvald’s repeated infantilisation of Nora
throughout the play becomes somewhat suffocating for the audience; its progression from ‘little
songbird’ to ‘hunted dove’ by the ending conveys Torvald as innately believe of his own superiority,
he views Nora as something in which he needs to rescue. The infantalisation, however, becomes a
direct cause for Nora’s leaving, he belittles her through addressing Nora as his ‘dear little one,’ and
‘strange little one.’ These overt displays of Torvald as the patronising adult and Nora the wayward,
helpless child eventually result in her realisation that she had been his ‘doll-child.’ Through the
threading of this metaphorical infantalised Nora throughout the play, the audience see that where
Torvald has ignorantly dismissed Nora – he also worked to awaken her desire to no longer be his
child, or pauper ‘fed from hand to mouth.’ The particular metaphor suggests that Nora is now aware
of her suppression, and her lack of individuality from the extent at which she describes her
debilitation, an awareness that may have not occurred had it not been for Torvald’s continuous and
hyperbolic infantilization of her. Similarly, Mrs Linde works to suggest that Nora’s suppression is the
cause for her escape, and therefore arguably Ibsen’s prime focus. Mrs Linde tells Nora that she has
known ‘so little of life’s troubles,’ which Nora refutes, perhaps it is the irony of the line that Ibsen
wishes the audience to recognise – Linde, mirroring Torvald, pushes Nora into wanting to ‘know
life’s troubles.’ The ending consists of Nora no longer wanting to parent her children as she is a ‘doll-
child’ herself and that she ‘knows nothing’ of key aspects to societal life – ‘religion’ and ‘politics,’
this direct desire for knowledge that she has been suppressed into not knowing has been ignited by her
suppressors. Therefore, Ibsen is in fact primarily focused on the suppression of Nora as this is what
then incites her freeing ending, no longer Torvald’s ‘caged bird.’
Comparatively, perhaps Nora’s defiance is the primary focus as it is the driving force in her eventual
escape. Nora’s enthrallment and pride with her defiance of both societal gender norms and the law
makes her decision to leave in the end appear inevitable. When Mrs Linde, the representative for 19 th
Century norms about women, states that ‘a woman can’t borrow without a husband’s permission,’ and
scolds Nora’s actions – she replies, ‘not if it’s a wife with a little business sense.’ The pride in the
phrase ‘business sense’ but still ability to restrain that power with ‘little’ demonstrates that Nora has a
desire within to defy the norms projected onto her as a woman; in extremist social views
contemporary to the time, ‘wife’ and ‘business sense’ is almost oxymoronic, and in that Nora
continues to show her defiance. Ibsen has Nora even overtly demonstrate that she knows of her
defiance in terms of gender norms, when she fondly recalls feeling ‘like a man’ when she secretly
worked to pay back Krogstad. The simile has Nora acknowledge the boundaries she wishes to cross,
and choosing to cross them – cementing the ending, and its importance constructed by Nora’s acts of
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