In A Doll’s House Nora masks her real emotions with a smile to please her husband Torvald. However, as the story progresses, the audience begins to see the layers covering Nora’s true feelings start to peel off. Nora is forced by society and her husband Torvald to act in a way that is patronizing to her and women in general. The title reflects the kind of environment her husband Torvald is trying to make her create.

Typically doll houses are manipulated by people to be the perfect house. However, the reason everything in a doll house is so perfect is because everything in a doll house is fake.Nora is manipulated by Torvald in order to create what he perceives as the perfect house. In the beginning Nora does a good job of acting in a way suitable for wives to act during the Victorian era.

She is very neat, she acts as if she would be helpless without Torvald, and she is confined to the walls of the house. It is a rarity for Nora to venture out of the house and she certainly would not do so without her husband’s approval. This just shows how restricted woman of the Victorian era were, so one could see why it is such a big deal for Nora to leave at the end of the story.The first signs of her little rebellion are the macaroons.

The macaroons are an important element in capturing the lack of freedom Nora is allowed, as well as her devious personality. Not only does she go behind Torvald’s back when she eats the macaroons, but she also delights in doing so. She is like a kid who gets told they can’t do something, the first thing they want to do is what they are told they cannot. Furthermore, Nora enjoys flaunting her rebellious actions in front of Dr. Rank. She knows what she is doing and loves every second of it.

Not only does Nora like to flaunt her actions to Dr.Rank but she also likes to use him as a way to defy Torvald. Nora tries to be seductive of Dr. Rank whenever he comes by the house to visit his good friend Torvald. She has no intentions of actually cheating on Torvald, however, considering the era and how woman were suppose to behave at the time, flirting was a much bigger deal then than it is now. Women of the Victorian era were told they weren’t supposed to enjoy sex and they certainly weren’t supposed to talk about it.

So for Nora to be flirting with another man could possibly be worse than a women cheating with another man in today’s time.However, the first two rebellious acts do not compete with the third. Nora gets news of that Torvald has some health issues so she takes a loan to help pay for treatment. Once Torvald finds out about the loan he is ecstatic and rips into Nora. However, little does he know, Nora has grown tired of being treated like a child and has come to the realization she does not want to live a controlled life. Torvald is expecting Nora to be helpless without him but she knows this is just the beginning to her freedom.

Throughout the story Nora transforms from a fake doll house wife into an independent woman who is ready to start her own life.