Awakening a Doll's Decision

Sarah Todd

Ms. Macnally

World Lit

3 February 2011

Awakening a Doll's Decision

Have you ever pictured your life ten years from now; Probably happily married with children. In the books The Awakening, and A Doll's house, Edna and Nora struggle to maintain their image as a wife and mother, and stay happy in their marriages. Both characters lives end up pushing them over the edge into self-destruction, but Edna's is more selfish than Nora's.

In A Doll's House, it's clear from the beginning that Nora and Torvald's marriage isn't picture perfect. Nora has always been kind of a companion in Torvald's life. Though Nora is aware of this, she doesn't seem to think anything of it because when she was younger, her father treated her with similar behavior. But as the play goes on, we see Nora become more and more unhappy about her marriage with Torvald: "I have existed merely to perform tricks for you, Torvald. But you would have it so. You and papa have committed a great sin against me. It is your fault that I have made nothing of my life. Our home has been nothing but a playroom. I have been your doll-wife, just as at home I was papa's doll-child; and here the children have been my dolls. I thought it great fun when you played with me, just as they thought it great fun when I played with them. That is what our marriage has been, Torvald" (Act 3). Torvald has always thought of Nora as a peice of property. He never lets her take her own responsibility, and he believes she should agree with everything he does. Nora thinks this is normal in any relationship between a man and a woman because of her past with her father. Also, Nora's relationship with her kids is kind of childish. Nora is still young herself, so her qualities to be a mother may not be the ideal qualities that a mother should have back in those days. Eventually Nora's unhappiness becomes too much for her to handle, so she does what she thinks is best for her, and leaves, but before she leaves she tells her husband what's she's always wanted to say: "You don't talk or think like the man I could bind myself to. When your first panic was over - not about what threatened me, but about what might happen to you - and when there was no more danger, then, as far as you were concerned, it was just as if nothing had happened at all. I was simply your little songbird, your doll, and from now on you would handle it more gently than ever because it was so delicate and fragile. At that moment, Torvald, I realized that for eight years I'd been living her with a strange man and that I'd borne him three children. Oh, I can't bear to think of it - I could tear myself to little pieces!(Act 3). Nora dramatically leaves her