Doll's House

Mrs. Linde: Character analysis In Henrik Ibsen's 19th century drama A Doll's House, the character of Christine Linde acts as a kind of foil for the main protagonist Nora Helmer. In most dramatic interpretations of the play (such as in the 1973 film version), to the audience, Christine appears to be dour, inhibited, and accepting of her fate in contrast with Nora's vivacity. Christine married a man she did not love out of duty to her poor family and her life has been one of unceasing toil.

She believes her life is in sharp contrast with Nora's carefree existence. However, Nora, unbeknownst to Christine, has been toiling herself to repay a debt she incurred to enable her husband to take a vacation, an act which she believe saved his life. Still, Mrs. Linde never expresses female solidarity with Nora and even allows Nora's husband to find out that his wife borrowed money without his being aware of the fact.

Ultimately, it is Christine's unquestioning self-sacrifice that really embodies what Ibsen believes to be the false ideal of the woman giving herself to marriage and asking nothing of her husband in return; it is brave Nora who attempts to live a more honest ideal away from the confines of this patriarchal institution.

Although she says has spent her life working, Christine has done so for others (a very feminine thing to do) and her fruits of her labor have ultimately been barren because her supposedly wealthy husband who was to provide for her and her relations died penniless. Nora comes to understand the falseness of the ideal that men can protect women; Christine never learns. "Nora…does not follow Kristine's example, does not leave the doll home to sacrifice herself for others.

Hers is the more selfish and ruthless decision to re-create herself in truth, if possible, whatever the consequences" (Stetz 156). Nora, by the infamous slamming of the door at the end of the play, makes the decision to leave her own children so she can be fully realized as a human being, not simply live as a self-sacrificing wife. There is an ironic contrast in regards to the value of work throughout the play as embodied by the two women.

Nora appears to be the idealized angel at the hearth, or non-working wife, but it is she who is actually working like a man, unbeknownst to Torvald, as she takes on work at night to repay the loan she took to save her husband. Christine's main 'work' in life, for all of her seriousness and contempt of Nora, was to marry a man, until she was forced to take a job at Torvald's bank to support herself after her husband's death.

The two women highlight together the unfairness of women's condition, the fact that society expects women to get married and offers women little real economic recourse outside of marriage to survive. Women do work in the capitalist sense but this work is not really acknowledged by society, the only 'real' work women are supposed to do is get married. Christine and Nora both work but the true cost of that work to both women is overlooked. Christine is thus far from a feminist when contrasted with Nora.

Christine could even be called the 'anti-feminist' heroine of the play, given the fact that her main romantic interest is that of Nils Krogstad, Nora's nemesis, to whom Christine gives herself unquestioningly. Krogstad attempts to blackmail Nora, demanding that Torvald give him his job back or otherwise he will expose her fraudulent signature on the loan she took out unbeknownst to Torvald. In the patriarchal world of 19th century Norway, this effectively also means disgracing Torvald, given the husband's presumed dominance over the wife's behavior.

Far from censoring Krogstad, Christine in the end decides that there have been too many lies between the Helmers, even though Krogstad ultimately desires not to bring the case before the legal system and instead is satisfied to leave with his love Christine to make a new life. Interestingly enough, Krogstad reproaches Christine for his fallen behavior, stating that if he had been married to her, he would never have sunk so low.

This once again suggests how the concept of the woman as domestic angel influences even Krogstad's view of the world and Christine implicitly agrees. By leaving with Krogstad, Christine once again has a sense of fulfillment and living through others -- she will be given the chance to rehabilitate a 'fallen man.' This again highlights her difference with Nora's state of mind at the end of the story, when Nora refuses to play the role of the self-sacrificing woman anymore and leaves alone.

Nora is initially bitterly disappointed that Torvald refuses to take the blame for her (even though she says she would refuse to let him do so), realizing that she has in fact been living a lie all this time and the connection between herself and Torvald is bankrupt, just as much as the domestic ideology to which both she and Christine subscribed.

Christine was initially given Krogstad's clerical job at the bank, but rather than accepting this ability to work 'like a man' as Nora aspired to, Christine cannot shirk this duty fast enough when she realizes how it has hurt Krogstad. He tells Christine that "when I lost you, it was just as if the ground had slipped away from under my feet. Look at me now: a broken man clinging to the wreck of his life" (Cited by Stetz, 159).

Christine gladly gives up her brief life of independence, countering "help might be near," equating sacrificing her own vocational position and her own economic independence to marriage as the help that Krogstad deserves, not herself (Cited by Stetz, 159). She takes on the burden of Krogstad's children while Nora shirks the responsibility for raising her own children, arguing that until she has a stronger sense of self she cannot raise anyone.

It is Nora who ends the play robbed of her illusions: Christine clearly clings to the hope that she can rehabilitate Krogstad and make a difference for herself and for others once again through sacrifice. Marriage gives Christine a sense of useful purpose; Nora recognizes that marriage really just creates female idleness on the surface and conceals female work in reality.

Torvald patronizes Nora as a skylark and a silly woman even though she has been scrimping and saving to the penny to pay back her debt and playfully concealing all the work she has been doing. Christine's labors over the years in an.