Ibsen's presentation of families and relationships in the text

A Doll’s House presents real human relationships – turbulent and complex. There are friendships, romances, and maternal (also paternal, though distant) relationships.

The most immediate relationship in the text is between Nora and Torvald. This relationship varies – from being highly sexualised to childlike, with both characters flirting and avoiding the truth of their slowly collapsing ‘romance’. The two characters use their sexuality to get their own way – with Nora teasing her husband (and Dr Rank) with the promise of dancing.

This means that Nora is sexualised – often of her own accord – but her husband is predatory towards her, which is why, I think, he uses birds as a term of endearment – he likes his wife to be weaker than him, smaller than him, and beautiful. She is something pretty to look at. Even Nora picks up on this when she is talking to Christine – commenting on her own beauty.

Christine and Krogstad’s relationship transforms the superficial villain of the play into someone human with a past riddled with heartbreak and loss. Krogstad says: “When I lost you, it was just as though all solid ground had been swept from under my feet. Look at me. Now I’m a shipwrecked man, clinging onto a spar.” This exclamation of feeling is very different from the threatening individual who visited Nora dressed in shadows

Ibsen also addresses relationships between friends – Nora’s relationship with Christine, Torvald’s with Dr Rank. However, in these relationships, there is an aspect of cost-benefit analysis – using people for personal gain. This raises the question of whether or not the friendships, or indeed relationships as a whole, are more than merely for the benefit of individuals: Christine mends Nora’s dress and plays to her need to be complemented, yet has this relationship with her in order to get a job with Torvald; Torvald pities Dr Rank, but really Dr Rank is there to see Nora. It is this cycle of need upon which the text revolves.

The children are not cared for by their mother, but by her own childhood-nurse, Anne-Marie, and Torvald is only fleetingly seen as interacting with them. This means that the ultimate impact of Nora’s epiphany is not as devastating as it would have been, perhaps, in modern day Norway. Other people do the majority of childcare – she played with her children just as her father did with her (dolls) but no more than that. She uses her children to appear motherly – almost all of Nora’s acts are to keep up appearances. She is the doting child-wife, child-mother, beautiful and demure and able to dance at a party. Torvald considers her to be a prized possession. He disciplines her more than his children because this dominance is attractive to him. When she leaves, he reacts because of the impact upon him, and his life, as opposed to what this means to Nora. Maybe this is telling of humanity – are we all intrinsically selfish?

Therefore, the play represents families and relationships as being means to achieve personal goals, as opposed to being honest. This is, in my opinion, why Nora’s departing words are so poignant – she is doing something for herself without using others to achieve it for the first time in the play.