In the opening of the play, A Doll’s House, the first character that was introduced was Nora, the frivolous wife of lawyer, Torvald Helmer. When Nora gave the porter a crown and told him to “keep the change”, it suggests that she is a woman who is wise with her money as she tips the porter who is obviously from a lower class than her. Though when she is talking to her husband, Ibsen reveals her childish side when she says “…we can afford to be…extravagant now…Just a teeny-weeny bit.” This implies that she likes to show that she has money even if the family’s financial situation is rigid and as for the “teeny-weeny” part, it just adds to how she is manipulative and uses her childish side/cuteness to talk her husband into giving her more money. If that’s not bad enough, a bit into the play, Nora is seen lying to her husband even about the littlest thing like, eating a macaroon and for the audience in those days, they would’ve thought “If she lies about just eating a macaroon, she will surely lie about even bigger things”. Ibsen presents Nora to be a typical housewife with a side of courage as she is not afraid to lie to her husband which foreshadows what happens in the play later on and how she uses her courage to doing what she thinks is right for herself.
However, slowly, we see that Nora is not just a typical housewife, she is more than that through the phrase “Who cares about them! They are only strangers!” in response to her husband when they were talking about paying off debts. Her reaction shows that her family is her most important priority and if her husband was to die, she isn’t going to worry about paying off strangers’ debts and it also shows a fearless side to hear, how she is not afraid to face them by herself. Moreover, she did not even go see her father on his death bed as she had “poor Torvald, gravely ill” on her hands – this shows that she’s a woman who had suffered a ‘double-tragedy’ where she had to sacrifice not seeing the man who gave her her existence, to take care of her husband (who actually only sees her as a trophy wife to make him look good infront of his friends). Because of this, it makes her frivolous personality just a façade as she suffered more than people think.
Ibsen builds the character of Nora to be a frivolous typical trophy housewife before he strips that façade away and reveals the heroine that she is.
As for the presentation of Torvald, the first distinctive attribute that we see in him is how he uses diminutive names to call Nora such as “little sky-lark”, “little squirrel”, “little spendthrift” and “pretty little pet”. At first, it may seem adorable how a husband could still be sweet to his wife though afterwards, it gets repetitive and offensive since for every name, there is the word “little” and it suggests that Torvald sees Nora as a person with, undoubtedly, less authority than him and “little” combined with the objects it goes with, creates a childish and silly tone to it as though Torvald was talking to his daughter which go to shows how he does not take her serious at all. Within the diminutive names he calls her, there’s a sense of how Torvald only sees Nora as his trophy wife, a statue that makes him look superior to his fellow mates, and for example, ‘sky-lark’ is a small bird that could sing and hum beautiful rhythms for one’s enjoyment and interestingly, a collective noun for sky-lark is exaltation. What’s more is that Helmer repetitively mentions how ‘bored’ he gets when she’s not there with him. Whenever he’s without her, he is “bored to tears” or during Christmas last year, he “never felt so bored in all my life” and this illustrates how Nora is just a form of entertainment to him that keeps him occupied and content.
Ibsen portrays Torvald as a dominant husband who uses Nora as his entertainment getaway while forcing her to follow his many rules including, forbidding Nora to eat a macaroon because he doesn’t want his trophy wife to gain weight and lose her appealing appearance.
Lastly, Nora is visited by a friend of her named Kristine who is modest in her speech and a good listener as the reader’s first impression. Compared to Nora’s paragraphs of speech, Kristine only says a few sentences or so in reply. Kristine comes off as a realistic person as she accepts reality for example; she knows that she is “much, much older” and that she is a widow with no children. The audience might’ve felt sorry for Kristine to sit through Nora’s stories after stories about how splendid her life is considering Kristine’s background.
Not a lot has been revealed about Kristine but so far, we see that Kristine is modest and grounded which is a contrast to Nora.
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