A Doll House Throughout the play A Doll House, Ibsen plays with the concept of appearance versus reality. Nora appears to be childish and irresponsible while she really she has taken upon herself a very large weight and has saved her husband’s life. Torvald seems to be a very moral man and very selfless when actually he is a coward and only thinks of himself. Krogstad appears to be a villain but changes his heart and is indeed a very understandable man. Each of these characters were given a certain precept and each of those precepts were proved to be wrong.
In the opening of the play Nora is appearing to be a very selfish and silly young girl who does not know how to take care of money. As the story progresses the reader soon comes to realize though that Nora has given everything she could to save her husbands life. She took out a secret loan to take him on a vacation for his health and has been consistently paying it back each month without letting her husband know. Instead of being a spendthrift, as she was perceived, she was being very sly and clever. Torvald is Nora’s very endearing husband.
He gives her names of adoration and raise, and embraces the idea that in marriage the woman is to be looked after by her husband. He always wishes to look after and guide Nora, and at one point states that he has “often wished [that Nora was] facing some terrible dangers so that [he] could risk life and limb, risk everything, for [Nora’s] sake. ” He wants to be seen as Nora’s savior, but when the time comes for him to risk everything for her sake he tells Nora of all the shame she has now brought upon the family and how she has ruined all of his happiness.
He tries to portray himself as a man who is confident in himself, ut in reality is dependent upon the way he believes that society will look upon him and is not full of as many heroic and moral qualities as he is believed to have. Krogstad comes into the story being immediately seen as a villain, but is not all that he seems to be. Though in the beginning he does hold Nora’s loan over her head and continues to torture her with it, he is not completely unsympathetic. He has fair reason and motives for his actions.
He is a single parents and know the hardships that not only he, but also his children will face when he is without pay, and with a ad reputation. As the reader looks into his situation as the story unfolds, one can perceive that he really is not that heartless and that his crime of forgery is one that could have been committed out of circumstance and a current state of a compromised emotions. He was in a relationship with Ms. Linde, and she left him for a man with more money. This could have easily persuaded any man to come to a place of such desperation that he could forge a signature on a check.
Society placed his with the class of criminals that he did not deserve. He has a reputation upon his ame that makes it very hard for him to gain any respect. In each of these person’s lives, the way they were perceived by one another, society, and the reader were all very different from the way they actually are. Nora was seen as a silly girl and was proved to be a very independent woman and thinker In tne end. lorva10 was wantlng to De percelvea as tne strong ana magnanimous husband, he was later found out to be a very cowardly and petty boy who cared more about his own appearance that the actual healthy of his family.
Krogstad is a man who was definitely misinterpreted. He fghts for a good name and for his children to have a chance at succeeding in the world, but was seen as a crook and a man that can only bring about troubles. The appearance of each of these characters is far from the reality of who they truly are, what their identity truly is. Ibsen brought about a point that is very relevant to not only the story, but also the world that is modern today: often the person that we are, and the person that we wish to be seen as, are in conflict with one another and the working out of that problem will lead to a more mature and true identity.
