Doll\'s House by Henrik Ibsen

¶ … Doll's House

What is the "miracle" Nora anticipates? The miracle Nora hopes for is that she and Torvald would actually have a romantic relationship in which shared respect and household equality would emerge. She of course is weary of being the "doll child," and of being the little toy that was passed from her father down to Torvald. She realizes that he is controlling, that he really cares only about himself but enjoys her company. In effect she is a kept woman, a kind of slave who will wear erotic garments for him, who will dance sexy dances to amuse him and will agree to remain submissive to his whims. She tires of his condescending attitude when he says that she "doesn't understand how to act on your own responsibilityno, no, only lean on meI should not be a man if this womanly helplessness die not just give you a double attractiveness in my eyes" (102). He will protect his "frightened little singing-bird" like "a hunted dove that I have saved from a hawk's claws," he says, and hence, once he forgives her she is by way of becoming "both wife and child to him" (104).

But the miracle she wishes for wasn't about to happen, so she is ready to depart.

Another miracle / fantasy that Nora wishes for is to have a "rich old gentleman" fall in love with her, and upon his death, his will would read, "The lovely Mrs. Nora Helmer" shall be bequeathed "all I possess paid over to her at once in cash" (p. 25). When she couldn't come up with all the money needed to pay back the loan she took out illegally to save Torvald's life, she had that fantasy of being willed a large sum of money.

Why does Nora at once hope for the miracle and fear it? In Victorian society women had very little authority, in particular they were for the most part beholden to their husbands. They could not borrow money without the husband's consent. Her first desire for a "miracle" so to speak is that by rebelling against Victorian society through the act of breaking the law and forging the documents for the loan to save Torvald's life, she can also break out of the chains that women were controlled by in economics and marriage. So wants to pull this off (pay back the loan and no one will be the wiser) but fears she will be found out. She fears that she will go out of her mind -- "and it might easily happen"

In Act III she tells Torvald that she "existed merely to perform tricks for you," as she is coming to terms with her belief that she has to extricate herself from the phony marriage. Does she revise her idea of the miracle in the end? Yes she does. The adjusted miracle turns out to be her escape from her husband and her life as a little bird, a little dancer in sexy dresses, and a puppet being controlled by her husband.

She says she doesn't believe that she is a wife and a mother, but instead (108) she is "a reasonable human being" who can no longer "content" herself with "what most people say, or with what is found in books." As to religion, by denying that she believes anything the clergyman has said she is in a way revising her miracle to another level. She has to be apart from Torvald and her home and her dancing and her dresses before she can truly assess what religion might be. "I will see if what the clergyman said is true, or at all events if it is true for me," she says, but she won't know until she is out on her own.