Relationships in "A Doll House"

Paper Summary:

This paper looks at how lack of trust and honesty leads Nora and Torvald Helmer down a long path to destruction. It explains that the play gives a picture of a marriage relationship that comes apart when a crisis reveals the lack of trust and the resulting deception that was present. Nora and Torvald Helmer have been married for eight years, but have filled those years playing the role of what society would have said was a happily married couple. It shows how a lack of trust and honesty has left them as strangers without a firm relationship to hold them together.

From the Paper:

"The crisis occurs when it is revealed that years earlier, Nora had forged her father's name to acquire a loan. The money was needed to take her husband to Italy so he could recuperate from a life threatening illness. Torvald felt that to borrow would result in "Something of freedom lost - and something of beauty, too - from a home that's founded on borrowing and debt" (1569). So, with the help of Nils Krogstad, a bank clerk, Nora had secretly taken out the loan. Now Krogstad, in retaliation for Torvald firing him from his job at the bank, threatens to make it public that the loan was obtained by forgery. This turns Nora's life to turmoil."

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