A Feminist Critique on A Doll's House

In the three act play which I read during my senior year in high school, A Doll's House, by Henrik Ibsen, is a play with very apparent feminist notions. The main character, Nora, is the model housewife who cooks, cleans, and sometimes spoils herself with goodies such as candy. What is revealed during the play is that her husband at one point was very ill, and while they were both very poor, and she felt that a vacation in Italy would help him get better. To pay for the trip expenses Nora had to borrow money from Krogstad, a banker who works under Torvold (Nora's husband).

The transaction between Krogstad and Nora is kept from Torvold's attention, and makes for the basic premise of the play. Instances where we can see the three phases which Showalter references to in her pieces on Towards a Feminist Poetics. In the beginning we see her as an obidient wife despite that step towards independance from Torvold when we learn of how the trip to Italy was paid for. As the plot of the play thickens, the danger of Torvold finding out about the borrowing money from Krogstad grows even bigger, she becomes more nervous about it. We again see a typical feminine behaviour executed by Nora several times during the second act, especially when she uses her power of flirtation over Torvold to meet Krogstad's demands.

In the end, Torvold does indeed discover the transaction between Krogstad and Nora and proceeds to vow that she will not be allowed near their children or to even raise them, Nora is devastated by this flow of insults and claims, but Torvold reads another letter which indicates that Krogstad no longer cares about the contract between them and Torvold attempts to take back all's he has said. Yet Nora, seeming to take that finale female stance, stands up for herselfs and reveals how despite their being married for several years, they truly do not know one another, claims that he has only treated her like a doll (pampering her, calling her pretty, etc.), and finally walks out in a defiant slamming of the door. Showalt might say that "we are not learning what women have felt and experienced, but what men have thought women should be," but certainly within A Doll's House, we can see both in the way that Torvold treats Nora and the way in which Nora defies it and claims her independance and "female" status.