Question: (2) : Draw a
character sketch of Nora Helmer in the play “A Doll’s House” by
Henrik Ibsen.
Answer: Nora Helmer is an excellent creation of Henrik
Ibsen, a Norwegian playwright and theater director. In the play “A Doll’s
House”, she is one of the major characters. From the beginning to the
end of the play, she keeps on changing radically. She develops and changes from
a doll to an independent woman. She is portrayed in her relations with her
Torvald Helmer, children, Krogstad, Doctor Rank, the old Nurse and Christine
Linde. In the beginning of the play, she was happy but towards
the end of the play, she becomes serious and somber leaving her husband’s house
to face the future of uncertainty.
Nora Helmer is seen at the beginning
behaving like a conventional wife. She fully responses to Torvald's terms of
endearment when he calls her a ‘little skylark’, a ‘squirrel’,
a ‘little singing bird’, ‘darling little wife’ and so on. She is
an accommodating wife but her husband instead of protecting her after knowing
about secret becomes indignant. This surprises her. After the incident, she
realises that her husband treats her as a doll in the house. Even her father
compels her to adopt her father’s views and opinions. Her father also treats
her as a doll in the play. Such treatment is inflicting to her as she says:
“You and father have done me a great wrong.
It is your fault that my life has come to nothing.”
(Page: 164, A-3)
Nora is a very loving and
affectionate mother who loves her children even though the old Nurse mostly
looks after them and is largely responsible for their upbringing. In the happy
domestic scene of the play, the children show great pleasure in the company of
their mother and Nora is shown as supremely happy in playing with them. When it
seems to her that she is going to leave her children behind, she asks the old Nurse if she would like to
look after them as dutifully as she is doing now. Thus, she is quite concerned
about the welfare and happiness of her children but it is quite surprising to
us that she ultimately leaves them. Her desertion of the children is something
of which we cannot approve but her own state of mind at that time is such as
she finds no alternative but to leave them.
Her friendship with Mrs. Linde is
amiable, helpful and healthy. They share each other’s miseries. At one stage
when Mrs. Linde asks Nora to help her to get a job, Nora requests her husband
to arrange a job for her. On the other hand, she has a very friendly
relationship with Dr. Rank who secretly loves her and wants to commit suicide
if he does not get her leaving all his property for her but Nora honestly maintains a respectable
distance for the purity of her relationship.
She is more practical than many
other women in the Victorian Age and even than her husband, Torvald Helmer.
However, it is not an easy task for a woman to borrow money but she alone takes
the risk of managing the money for him to recover her husband from illness. She
is dead against reaching the news to her husband but it is Mr. Krogstad, an opportunist,
informs Torvald of it by a letter. After a perusal of the letter, he becomes
very enraged. He calls her ‘the unfathomable hideousness of it all’. She
is excessively hurt at the loveless comment. At that time, the realisation of
her captivity maddens her. She always believes that Torvald can sacrifice
anything for her sake but now she understands that his love for her was
artificial. This is for the first time she, like a mature woman, rediscovers
her and decides to leave him and her children and raises a voice of protest
against inflicting male-domination. She complains with excessive grief:
“You have never loved me.
You only thought it amusing to be in love with me.”
(Page: 163, A-3)
In fine, it is clear that Nora
Helmer is a realistic character. Her faults show that she is a real being. In fact
the whole portrayal of this woman is splendidly handled. She is not a figment
of the fancy but a real woman. In her protest against her husband’s possessive
attitude towards her, she symbolises the feminine revolt against male
domination. She is a modern woman, an independent and free woman who maintains
her self-respect at a very high cost. She is an awakened woman with her
awareness for her feminine rights as an individual. She represents a revolt
against the slavery of woman by man.
