Submitted by: Submitted by harshvardhan
Views: 657
Words: 2684
Pages: 11
Category: Literature
Date Submitted: 04/18/2011 05:57 AM
Throughout the play Ibsen takes pains to enforce and reinforce Nora’s identity. Right at the beginning of the play we witness the following exchange between Helmer, Nora’s husband and Nora herself
Helmer. Is it my little squirrel bustling about?
Nora. Yes!
Helmer. When did my squirrel come home?
Nora. Just now. (Puts the bag of macaroons into her pocket
and wipes her mouth.) Come in here, Torvald, and see what I
have bought.
Helmer. Don’t disturb me. (A little later, he opens the door
and looks into the room, pen in hand.) Bought, did you say?
All these things? Has my little spendthrift been wasting money
again?
Immediately even with this brief introduction several things become clear. First and foremost every time Helmer talks to Nora he uses the word my, a first person adjective used to denote things which we possess or things which we own. Helmer sees Nora only as a pretty little thing. Nora is a doll and their home is her dollhouse. Here she is confined to her duties as a mother and a wife. She is not to decide how much she can spend – she has no autonomy, financial or otherwise and is dependent on her husband for all her needs. In exchange she agrees to be caged and agrees to please and amuse. This is the contract which society has bound Nora by and this is the contract which Nora honours right until the end. This contract stipulates that Nora must be a doll and fulfill her husband’s wishes. This contract makes her impulsive, naïve and frivolous on the outside although as we realize later on that Nora is in fact a clever and world weary woman. This tension which all women of that time must have faced, the tension between the inner, true self and the outer, fake self cuts Nora as a lonely, isolated figure living through society like chaff caught in the wind.
The characters in Halfway House are even more helplessly trapped and isolated. Unlike Nora they seem not to have the option or rather the ability to make an exit. They try to leave...