Where Does the Responsibility Lay?

In what ways do you find Nora a victim? In what ways at fault?

Henrik Ibsen’s A Dolls House reveals a woman trapped in an unpleasant situation. Nora is a victim of circumstance, of society, and of her own misconceptions. She is married to a man who does not understand her as a person, who alternates between treating her as a child and treating her as a possession. She tries to do the right thing, to help her husband in his time of need and does not seek any sort of recognition for her actions. Rather, she is forced to hide her good deed, feeling only guilt for doing what needed to be done. The fact that she does not understand the real world and her role within it – she thinks she won’t be found guilty of fraud because she has a good reason – is not her fault. She has no real education and is denied the ability to handle financial transactions on her own. She transgresses society’s gender boundaries to save the life of her husband, the most subservient of acts, and yet she is vilified as a rebellious woman. Even her husband turns on her, rather than deal with Krogstad himself. Nora’s actions might have seemed to be sinful at the time, but the entire moral of the play is that the standards of the time were wrong. A woman was denounced for daring to do something a man would normally do. She attempts to save her husband’s life the only way she knows how and yet she is forced to feel guilty for it. Society tells her that she is wicked for acting boldly, seeking to experience things beyond the dollhouse that she has been confined to. She acts as a woman rather than a doll, and civilization simply tries to dehumanize her all over again. No, Nora is not guilty of much beyond dishonesty. Society must bear the blame in Ibsen’s play.
(332).