A Doll's House
...Torvald are demoralizing and have over time made Nora become completely subordinate to him. Ibsen created the character of Nora in order to portray how women of this time period were ignorant of their situation in society. The play also exemplified how women are taught to play ignorant. She does not realize until the end of the play that men have always controlled her. Her ignorance is apparent through everything in her life. She does not even take the fact that she has children seriously; she has a nurse take care of her children and she visits them when she feels like it. Nora plays with her children like they are some whimsical objects that delight her for one moment and bore her the next. She has no concept of how to raise children or how to be a mother at all. At the end of the play Nora admits to Helmer, “how am I equipped to bring up the children”. Nora is not allowed to control anything in her life, bringing up the question of how can she possibly take care of children if she cannot even take care of herself? Her controlling husband has kept her ignorant in order to have power over her. Furthermore, another occurrence in the play that exhibits Nora’s learned ignorance is the looming problem of the illegal loan that she took out in her father’s name. Her ignorance comes to light when she reveals her secret to Mrs. Linde. Nora believes that she has a real accomplishment that she can be proud of. In her vain attempt to try and convince Mrs. Linde that she does not have the mentality of a child, Nora’s ignorance becomes abhorrently apparent. Coupled with this incident is the scene later in the play when Krogstad confronts Nora with the fact that she committed obvious forgery in order to secure the loan. Krogstad reveals to her that he knows what she has done and that there are very real legal punishments that could destroy her life. She cannot comprehend the fact that she broke the law. Krogstad realizes this and tells Nora, “Mrs. Helmer, obviously you haven’t the vaguest idea of what you’ve involved yourself in”. In her ignorance she tries to create a sense of innocence for herself. She tries to reason with Krogstad that her actions were all justifiable. Nora truly believes that she did the right thing and the idea that she broke any law never crosses her mind. She saved her husband’s life with that money and that is the end of that problem. Her secure world built over years of blind ignorance comes crashing down when she finally realizes that she must wake up and face the truth. These realizations of her own ignorance being used against her allow Nora to explore underlying issues of power. Nora’s husband has always controlled her life. Before him, it was her father. Nora has always been a man’s doll. Towards the end of the play, Nora asks Helmer why they have never sat down and talked about anything seriously and he responds, “But dearest, what good would that ever do you?” He awes at her beauty an...