play, but she is not as clear-headed as she thinks she is. She fails to see, for example, that she has also participated in the creation of her destructive relationship with her husband and that Torvald has been no more of a real person for her than she has been for him. She informs Torvald that she must leave home because he has not treated her as a real person, but she also says that she stopped loving him when the wonderful thing did not happen. If Torvald had behaved heroically on the receipt of Krogstad’s letter, Nora would have been delighted, but such behavior on his part would not have shown respect for her as a person. Nora seems unaware of this, and of much else besides. She says that she has never been more sure of herself, but she is full of self-doubt, and her flight from Torvald and her children is compulsive. Turning against her failed self-effacing solution, Nora is now driven by defensive needs for aggression and withdrawal, as well as by her newly awakened desire for self-actualization.
Nora initially develops into a predominantly self-effacing person not only because of the attitudes toward women in her society but also because of the particular conditions of her childhood. She has no mother, and her father is a domineering man who wants her to remain a “doll-child” and who would be “displeased” if she expressed any ideas contrary to his own (act 3). Nora cannot afford to rebel; she is strongly attached to her father and does her utmost to please him. She retains the childlike playfulness and docility that he finds so charming and either adopts his opinions or remains silent. It seems likely that the absence of a mother increases her dependence on her father; she has no one else to turn to for love and protection. Moreover, she has no model of mature womanhood to emulate, and she acquires few skills on which to base her self-esteem. When she becomes a mother herself, she depends on her old nurse, Anne-Marie, to care for her children, whom she treats as playmates. Nora’s father rewards her compliance with fondness and indulgence, and she grows up feeling that the way to gain safety, love, and approval is to please a powerful male.
In Torvald Helmer, Nora finds a man who is much like her father, and she relates to him in a similar way. She is content to be his “lark,” his “squirrel,” his “doll-baby,” his “little featherbrain,” his “crazy little thing” (act 1). Nora does not feel demeaned by these epithets, as we feel her to be, although at an unconscious level they are destructive. She lives, as she says, “by performing tricks” for Torvald, and she is proud of her ability to keep him charmed. For Torvald there is “something very endearing about a woman’s helplessness” (act 3), and Nora is at great pains to conceal the fact that she has saved his life and almost paid off a large loan by her own efforts: “Torvald could never bear to think of owing anything to me! It would hurt his self-respect—wound his pride. It would ruin everything between us.” It is important to Nora to preserve Torvald’s feeling of mastery, for this is the price of his love and protection. She is keeping her heroic effort “in reserve,” however, for the day when she is “no longer so pretty and attractive . . . when it no longer amuses him to see [her] dance and dress-up and act for him” (act 1).
In the meantime, it gives her “something to be proud and happy about.” She is proud partly because “working like that and earning money” has given her a feeling of strength, has made her “feel almost like a man” (act 1), but mostly because it fulfills her need to be good and loving. Like Mrs. Linde, and most women in her culture, Nora glorifies sacrificing self for others, and she reveals her secret only when Mrs. Linde makes her feel inferior by contrasting Nora’s easy life with her own noble suffering.
Nora also has needs for power and mastery, which she fulfills in a typically self-effacing way by identifying with Torvald. She exults in the fact that “all the employees at the Bank [will] be dependent on Torvald now”: “What fun to think that we—that Torvald—has such power over so many people” (act 1). She bristles when Krogstad speaks disrespectfully of her husband because she participates in Torvald’s glory, and any threat to his status is a threat to her own. Her identification is so intense that she is ready to commit suicide to preserve her husband’s high position.
Nora begins to think of suicide as soon as Krogstad threatens to reveal that she has obtained a loan from him by forging her father’s signature. She becomes panic-stricken when, ignoring her pleas, Torvald dismisses Krogstad, saying that he will bear “the whole burden” of any retaliation. “He’d do it too! He’d do it—in spite of anything!” she exclaims to Dr. Rank. “But he mustn’t—never, never! Anything but that!” (act 2). Nora is convinced that Torvald loves her so “deeply” and “intensely” that “he wouldn’t hesitate for a moment to give up his life for [her] sake.” She thinks that one way of saving him would be to pay off her debt, thereby securing the incriminating papers. She considers asking Dr. Rank for the money, but when Rank declares his love, she can accept nothing from him, even though the alternative is so terrible. Apparently, her romanticism is so intense that she would rather commit suicide than taint her devotion to Torvald. She is afraid to kill herself, however, until Krogstad boasts that within a year he will be Torvald’s “right hand man. It’ll be Nils Krogstad, not Torvald Helmer, who’ll run the Joint Stock Bank.” “I have the courage for it now,” Nora declares (act 2).
Nora’s relationship with her husband is based on a bargain she has made in her own mind. She will be a charming, obliging, self-sacrificing wife, and Torvald will love and protect her. Nora delights in being babied, coddled, and indulged. Everything Torvald does for her shows how valuable she is to him and assures her that she will be taken care of. She does not mind being weak as long as his strength is at her service. She controls him through her dependency. When he becomes director of the bank, she does not regret the fact that she will no longer have to earn money secretly but is overjoyed that there will be “no more trouble! No more worry! I’ll be able to play and romp about with the children” (act 1). She does expect to be rewarded for her years of devotion, however. Some day, somehow, Torvald is going to make a magnificent sacrifice for her, and then she will see how strong and noble he is and how much he loves her. This is the “wonderful thing” that will validate her bargain and make her dream of glory come true.
Nora is certain that when Torvald opens Krogstad’s threatening letter, the wonderful thing will happen. Torvald is too brave, too noble to submit to Krogstad’s demands. In order to protect her from prosecution, he will take responsibility for the forgery on himself. In Nora’s romantic fantasy Torvald is her knight and she is his lady. Just before he reads the letter, he tells her: “Do you know something, Nora. I often wish you were in some great danger—so I could risk body and soul—my whole life—everything, everything for your sake” (act 3). Torvald’s equally romantic version of their relationship reinforces Nora’s. She believes his professions and is convinced that he will sacrifice himself for her. Nora wants the wonderful thing to happen, but she is terrified of it as well, for Torvald will become a social outcast, like Krogstad. He will lose his power and position, and life will become unbearably bleak and mean. A ruined Torvald could satisfy neither Nora’s compliant needs for care and protection nor her expansive needs for power and glory.
The severity of Nora’s neurosis is clearly revealed by her determination to kill herself. By committing suicide she will prevent Torvald from taking the blame on himself. Her heroic sacrifice will forestall his. Instead of having to endure guilt and self-hate for having ruined Torvald, she will save his career as she had earlier saved his life. The reward will be his undying gratitude and devotion. She will be enshrined forever in his memory and will not have to fear the loss of his love when she is no longer so attractive. Her suicide will secure Nora from the ravages of time and the vicissitudes of fortune. She will die in full possession of the two things she values most, Torvald’s love and his glory.
In a relationship of morbid dependency, such as that between Nora and Torvald, there is a turning point, says Horney, for the self-effacing partner, “as the stake she is gambling for fails to materialize” (1950, 252). The turning point for Nora comes with Torvald’s reactions to Krogstad’s letter. He neither praises her for having earned so much money and saved his life nor offers to take the blame for her forgery on himself. Instead he calls her a hypocrite, a liar, and a criminal and tells her that she “won’t be allowed to
