Imagined Human Beings. Bernard Jay Paris
departs.
Nora’s detachment is not only a response to past oppression but also a defense against present conflicts. She has to be callous toward her husband and children, she has to run away from them, because they threaten to rouse up her self-effacing side, of which she is now afraid. There is something decidedly cold-blooded about Nora at the end. She is not allowing herself to be aware of the complexities of her situation, to feel a sense of loss, or to experience tender emotions.
Although part of Nora’s transformation involves the adoption of new defenses, there are signs of genuine growth. Nora has seen the severity of her self-alienation and has understood some of its causes. She wants to find herself, to discover her own thoughts and feelings, and to grow from this authentic center of her being. She sees that her humanity has been stunted and is determined to become a capable, functioning, fully responsible person. Her insistence that she has a sacred duty to herself is healthy self-assertion.
How far Nora can grow is a question on which we can only speculate. In the absence of a supportive environment, her prospects do not seem promising. It will be very difficult for her to arrive at a true knowledge of herself and the world around her. She has made contact with previously repressed feelings, such as rage and the desire to throw off her bonds, but this is not the same thing as getting in touch with her real self. Her discovery of her self-alienation is an essential first step, but it is difficult to see how she can recognize and relinquish her defenses without help, and none is available. At the end of the play Nora is like a person in an early stage of therapy who is so afraid of losing contact with her new perceptions and so determined that nothing shall interfere with her growth that she cannot be worried about doing justice to others or caring about their feelings. It is at this stage, of course, that many marriages break up.
If Nora continued to grow, there might be a chance for her marriage, for she would come to see both Torvald and herself more clearly. She would relinquish her over-simple perception of him as a detestable tyrant or a contemptible weakling and recognize that his defenses had complemented hers in many ways but had also been in conflict with them. Nora and Torvald have had such an intensely romantic relationship because they have satisfied each other’s neurotic needs. Nora needed to merge with a powerful, dominant male, and Torvald loved being master. She was excited by his strength and he by her weakness and dependency. She wished to be possessed and Torvald was extremely possessive. She dreamt of being cherished and protected and he of rescuing her from peril. Each was the center of the other’s existence. Torvald was as emotionally dependent on Nora as she on him; at the end, it is he who cannot bear the thought of their separation. Each was “in love” with an idealization of the other rather than with the real person.
When Torvald’s illusory version of Nora is shattered, he cries out, “God! What an awakening!” (act 3). The play has been building toward this moment. We see from the beginning that Nora and Torvald have different attitudes toward borrowing money, social responsibility, and scrupulousness in the management of their affairs. Although she knows that Torvald is opposed to being in debt, Nora proposes that they borrow on the promise of his new job in order to splurge for Christmas. When Torvald asks what would happen if “on New Year’s Eve a tile blew off the roof and knocked my brains out,” Nora replies that under such circumstances it would not matter if she owed money (act 1). “But,” Torvald asks, “what about the people I’d borrowed from?” “Who cares about them?” replies Nora. “After all they’re just strangers.” Torvald dismisses her response as a joke, but Nora is serious. When Krogstad asks if it had not occurred to her that she was not being honest with him when he lent her money on the basis of her father’s signature, Nora answers: “I really couldn’t concern myself with that. You meant nothing to me.”
The Helmers have not had a great deal of money because as a lawyer Torvald has refused “to handle any cases that are in the least bit—shady” (act 1). Nora tells Mrs. Linde that she “agree[s] with him, of course,” but she does not observe his code of rectitude herself and seems to feel that he is too strict. Governed by the values of her self-effacing solution, Nora feels justified in doing whatever is necessary to care for the members of her family. She cannot imagine that “a daughter has no right to spare her dying father worry and anxiety” or that “a wife has no right to save her husband’s life.” Nora’s claims are that she cannot be adversely judged because she acted out of love and that there “won’t be any trouble” because she has “three little children” (act 2).
Her belief system is shaken, however, when Torvald attacks Krogstad at the end of act 1. After committing a forgery, Krogstad had escaped punishment through “tricks and evasions.” When a man behaves like that, says Torvald, “his life becomes a tissue of lies and deception. He’s forced to wear a mask—even with those nearest to him—his own wife and children.” Krogstad “has been deliberately poisoning his own children for years, by surrounding them with lies and hypocrisy.” Nora recognizes herself in this description, since her life is a tissue of lies and deception. She, too, has committed forgery, and she has deceived Torvald about the loan. She lies habitually, about eating macaroons, about what she does with the money Torvald gives her, about what she is doing with the time she spends working, and so on. She justifies many of these lies as being in a good cause and required by Torvald’s rigidity, but after Torvald’s speech about Krogstad she becomes terrified. Afraid that she is harming her family and corrupting her home, she begins to withdraw from her children and to contemplate going away. The self-hate and self-doubt thus activated remain with her through the rest of the play.
It is because Mrs. Linde is appalled by the “deceit and subterfuge” on which Nora’s relationship with Torvald is based that she insists on exposing Nora’s secret, even though Krogstad is willing to take back his threatening letter. She feels that Nora and Torvald must come “to a thorough understanding,” that “Helmer must know the truth” (act 3). She tells Nora that she has “nothing to fear from Krogstad” but that she “must speak out.” Nora’s reaction to this is remarkable: “Now I know what I must do”—that is, she must commit suicide. Why? If she has nothing to fear from Krogstad, she does not have to kill herself to save Torvald’s career and prevent the wonderful thing from happening. Does she want to die so as to avoid a confrontation with Torvald? Does she sense what his reaction will be? Does she fear that he will despise her, as he does Krogstad.
Torvald’s denunciation of Krogstad had been extraordinarily passionate: “It would have been impossible for me to work with him. It literally gives me a feeling of physical discomfort to come in contact with such people” (act 1). The perfectionistic Torvald is pursuing a flawless excellence in the whole conduct of life, and he discharges onto Krogstad the contempt he would feel for himself should he behave as Krogstad has done. Krogstad is, in effect, his despised image, what he cannot bear to be, and he finds his very presence disturbing, especially when Krogstad, an old school friend, treats him with familiarity. His repudiation, condemnation, and defiance of Krogstad confirm his high standards and solidify his sense of identity.
Nora dreads Krogstad partly because her father had been attacked in the newspapers, and she fears that Krogstad will attack Torvald. Confident of his rectitude, Torvald dismisses her fears: “My dear Nora, there is a distinct difference between your father and me. Your father’s conduct was not entirely unimpeachable. But mine is; and I trust it will remain so” (act 2). Torvald feels that his strength is the strength of ten because his heart is pure. His bargain is that he will ultimately triumph and have nothing to fear as long as his conduct is unimpeachable. At the beginning of the play, his bargain seems to be working. He suffered financially because he would not take shady cases, but he has received a splendid new appointment as the reward of his virtue.
Torvald’s reaction to Krogstad’s letter is so intense because his well-earned success has been poisoned, and he has been put in the power of a man he detests. Since he will be in a false position whatever he does, the flawless excellence of his life has been lost forever. Perhaps the greatest blow for him is that his idealized image of Nora and their relationship has been shattered. He has awakened after eight years to discover that the woman who had been his “pride and joy” is “lawless” and “unprincipled” (act 3). He has had intimations of the conflict between his values and Nora’s before, but he has dismissed them because of his need to hold onto his exalted