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Dramatis Personae
Torvald Helmer (HEL.)
Nora, his wife

NORA [after a short silence]. Isn’t there one thing that strikes you as strange in our sitting here like this?
HEL. What is that?
NORA. We have been married now eight years. Does it not occur to you that this is the first time we two, you and I, husband and wife, have had a serious conversation?
HEL. What do you mean, serious?
NORA. In all these eight years—longer than that—from the very beginning of our acquaintance we have never exchanged a word on any serious subject.
HEL. Was it likely that I would be continually and forever telling you about worries that you could not help me to bear?
NORA. I am not speaking about business matters. I say that we have never sat down in earnest together to try and get at the bottom of anything.
HEL. But, dearest Nora, would it have been any good to you?
NORA. That is just it; you have never understood me. I have been greatly wronged, Torvald—first by Papa and then by you.
HEL. What! By us two—by us two who have loved you better than anyone else in the world?
NORA [shaking her head]. You have never loved me. You have only thought it pleasant to be in love with me.
HEL. Nora, what do I hear you saying?
NORA. It is perfectly true, Torvald. When I was at home with Papa he told me his opinion about everything, and so I had the same opinions; and if I differed from him I concealed the fact, because he would not have liked it. He called me his doll child, and he played with me just as I used to play with my dolls. And when I came to live with you——
HEL. What sort of an expression is that to use about our marriage?
NORA [undisturbed]. I mean that I was simply transferred from Papa’s hands to yours. You arranged everything according to your own taste, and so I got the same tastes as you—or else I pretended to. I am really not quite sure which—I think sometimes the one and sometimes the other. When I look back on it it seems to me as if I have been living here like a poor woman—just from hand to mouth. 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.
HEL. How unreasonable and how ungrateful you are, Nora! Have you not been happy here?
NORA. No, I have never been happy. I thought I was, but it has never really been so.
HEL. Not—not happy!
NORA. No, only merry. And you have always been so kind to me. But 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.
HEL. There is some truth in what you say—exaggerated and strained as your view of it is. But for the future it shall be different. Playtime shall be over and lesson time shall begin.
NORA. Whose lessons? Mine or the children’s?
HEL. Both yours and the children’s, my darling Nora.
NORA. Alas, Torvald, you are not the man to educate me into being a proper wife for you.
HEL. And you can say that!
NORA. And I—how am I fitted to bring up the children?
HEL. Nora!
NORA. Didn’t you say so yourself a little while ago—that you dare not trust me to bring them up?
HEL. In a moment of anger! Why do you pay any heed to that?
NORA. Indeed, you were perfectly right. I am not fit for the task. There is another task I must undertake first. I must try and educate myself—you are not the man to help me in that. I must do that for myself. And that is why I am going to leave you now.
HEL. [springing up]. What do you say?
NORA. I must stand quite alone if I am to understand myself and everything about me. It is for that reason that I cannot remain with you any longer.
HEL. Nora, Nora!
NORA. I am going away from here now, at once. I am sure Christine will take me in for the night.
HEL. You are out of your mind! I won’t allow it! I forbid you!
NORA. It is no use forbidding me anything any longer. I will take with me what belongs to myself. I will take nothing from you, either now or later.
HEL. What sort of madness is this?
NORA. Tomorrow I shall go home—I mean to my old home. It will be easiest for me to find something to do there.
HEL. You blind, foolish woman!
NORA. I must try and get some sense, Torvald.
HEL. To desert your home, your husband and your children! And you don’t consider what people will say!
NORA. I cannot consider that at all. I only know that it is necessary for me.
HEL. It’s shocking. This is how you would neglect your most sacred duties.
NORA. What do you consider my most sacred duties?
HEL. Do I need to tell you that? Are they not your duties to your husband and your children?
NORA. I have other duties just as sacred.
HEL. That you have not. What duties could those be?
NORA. Duties to myself.
HEL. Before all else you are a wife and a mother.
NORA. I don’t believe that any longer. I believe that before all else I am a reasonable human being just as you are—or, at all events, that I must try and become one. I know quite well, Torvald, that most people would think you right and that views of that kind are to be found in books; but I can no longer content myself with what most people say or with what is found in books. I must think over things for myself and get to understand them.


-- A Doll's House, Henrik Ibsen