Nora’s Decision
Towards the end of the play, “A Doll’s House,” Nora decides to leave her husband because she felt she came to the realization that she had been married to a total stranger. While, to some extent, one might try to understand why she took such a bold move and walk out of her marriage, personally, I feel that she could have approached the situation differently. Nora did not particularly offer her husband Torvald a chance to redeem himself after she decided her marriage was no longer working out. Torvald even says to her, “I have the strength to change,” which Nora replies with, “Perhaps – if your doll (Nora) is taken from you” (1124). In Nora’s mind, leaving Torvald was the only option she had. At no point in the play are we told that she tried to confront Torvald about the problem, and he refused to change. This is the first time she confronts her husband with the problem and there, and the decides to leave.
The other reason why I believe Nora could have handled the situation differently is that in about eight years she had been in a marriage with Torvald, she had been blessed with three children, “In that moment I realized that for 8 years I had been living here with a complete stranger and had born him 3 children” (1222). As mother to three children, Nora should have handled the situation differently and not leave them to the man she asserts had been a stranger to him. Nora asserts that she had no intention of even speaking or seeing them, “I don’t want to see the children. I know they are in better hands than mine” (1124). It’s one thing for a woman to walk out on her husband, but it’s totally another when a woman decides to walk out on her children and somehow decide to even forget and never see them again.