Nora: a product of her envronment

An examination of Nora as a product of her environment:

Our first impression of Nora is the stereotype of a light headed housewife. She comes off as greedy, insensible, and stupid. As a woman in the late 1870s she has been brought up her entire life with the roll models of other such seemingly unsubstantial women. I would like to consider the role of “flimsy housewife” as a kind of camouflage used by women in order to survive in their social environment.

As we see in Acts II and III, Nora is in no way lacking intelligence. Knowledge and wisdom may be at fault, but these are all things not taught to a woman of her time and stature. Nora uses her feminine charms and skills in ways that were most socially appropriate to her time. She was able to slip under the radar of the law and do what she felt needed to be done. She charms her husband into giving her money, and she fools Krogstad into giving her a loan which he later finds out to be false.

She used the options available to her to save her husband's life. Nora is a prime example of a master manipulator, a skill I believe many women of that time may of possessed. As a woman without direct access to political, social, or economic power it would have been of extreme importance to find someone with that kind of power and use it to their advantage.

I believe Nora left her husband, her children, because she realized for herself that she was just the sum of parts imbued into her by her environment. She no longer wanted to manipulate, she wanted to able to have a genuine conversation with her husband. In the end she left because she believed that Torvald would never be able to see her as anything other that what she had shown him. Nora says “You never loved me. You’ve only thought it fun to be in love with me, that’s all.” In this statement Nora is explaining how Torvald perceives her. Torvald sees her not as an equal capable of mature love and understanding, but as as the collection of parts society has given her. A pretty thing to keep on his shelf and admire.