Ibsen's "A Doll's House" in a Doll's

Ibsen's "A Doll's House" In A Doll's House by Henrik Ibsen, the play's protagonist Nora Helmer has her character defined, in part, by the use of a dramatic foil for her -- her former schoolmate Christina, always addressed as "Mrs. Linde" because she is a widow. Ibsen uses Mrs. Linde's secondary subplot as a way of commenting or drawing attention to the primary storyline about Nora and her husband Torvald. But in each of the three acts of Ibsen's drama, the dramatist uses Mrs.

Linde effectively as a foil, by advancing each element in her lesser storyline as a means of providing a constrast to (or perhaps at times a reflection of) Nora, the protagonist and the "little doll" of the play's title (Ibsen 84). I hope to demonstrate this by showing how Mrs.

Linde is used as a foil in each of the three acts, and concluding by noting how the changing arc of her character over the course of the play is meant to serve the greater (and more shocking) changing arc of Nora's character. The first act of A Doll's House introduces us to Mrs. Linde immediately after the introduction of the protagonists: she makes a social call upon Nora, although Nora does not recognize her.

It is clear that the two women have not seen each other for some time, although they have remained apprised of each other's existence: Nora confesses a short way into their dialogue that she knew from a newspaper obituary that Mrs. Linde had been widowed three years ago, and had contemplated writing to her but ultimately did not. The reason Mrs.

Linde provides such a stark foil upon her immediate entrance in Act One, though, is because she enters hard on the heels of the play's opening dialogue between Torvald and Nora, which is all about Nora's spendthrift habits. The opening lines of the play have shown Nora generously tipping the Porter who has delivered her Christmas tree, telling him to "keep the change" (Ibsen 5).

This prompts the opening conversation between the Helmers, in which Torvald upbraids Nora for her spendthrift ways in the most condescending way possible, as though talking to a child: "What are little people called that are always wasting money?" (Ibsen 8) So when Mrs. Linde enters and we see her somewhat shabby condition as a penniless widow, we register the idea that poverty could possibly lurk for a woman without a man's protection -- that in some sense Mrs.

Linde represents a stark future that could potentially befall Nora, as Torvald had hinted by suggesting that. Ibsen has introduced Nora as protagonist by inviting us to consider her economic behavior -- and to balance the overwhelming condescension with which Torvald addresses his wife against.