A Doll’s House | Story Analysis

Running head: A DOLL’S HOUSE
A Doll’s House
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A DOLL’S HOUSE
2
A Doll’s House
The Christmas tree is significant as it acts as a representative of Nora herself. Under
normal circumstances a Christmas tree is used as a decoration during times of celebration. At
this point, the tree is quite significant as it might allude to the mental state that Nora is in. As
seen above, the tree is usually used as an object of festivities. In this scenario, it represents
the value that Nora has towards Torvald, that is, Nora is a pretty lady who is there to entertain
Torvald. The tree overshadows a bitter ending for the relationship between Nora and Torvald.
Nora instructs the maid to keep the tree as a secret. This represents the kind of lies (which
must be kept secret) that she uses to maintain the stability of her marriage. Later, when the
marriage is stumbling, the tree stats to wither.
Nora talks to Kristine about some loan that she took to help her ailing husband.
According to Nora, she and her husband used the loan to travel to Southern Europe to seek
medical help for her husband. There are two main reasons why Kristine is quite suspicious
about this loan. First, Nora states in a vague way that she obtained the loan from her father.
Nora then contradicts herself by stating that she raised the money on her own. The second
reason for Kristine’s suspicion is that Nora claims to have repaid all of the loan by herself
using the proceeds of her small jobs. Judging from the nature of her jobs, it is rather
impossible for her to raise the money to repay the loan.
There are several instances of hiding that are evident in this act. Following are some
examples. Nora explains to Dr Rank that when she was young, she loved her father but
preferred to hide among the maids since the maids did not make any attempts to dictate to her
how she should behave. Secondly, Nora hides from her husband, the means she used to
acquire the loan. Thirdly, we see Nora hiding her fancy-dresses. These elements mainly show
that Nora is working so hard to hide from reality. She is especially cautious to hide a great