The difference between being human and being a doll is that a doll is an object and a human is a subject. Dolls are things. They can be anything you want them to be with manipulation. However human beings think, feel, create, and express who they are and who they want to become. In the play A Doll House by Henrik Ibsen the two characters, Torvald and Nora, are the “doll-wife” and “doll-husband” in a doll house created by society. They both have similar but different definitions of a “human being” that in the end destroys their marriage.
To Torvald, men are supposed to work hard, earn money, handle all the finances, and be the providers for their family. Women are to make a home for their husbands and children, and they are not to bother themselves with “men’s business.” The women are also to be the objects of their husbands and are seen as childlike because they cannot make well reasoned decisions. They also always submit to their husbands because whatever the husband does is always right. The husband has complete control in the relationship. This is being a human being. When Torvald’s wife Nora abides by these standards he is pleased because it is nothing out of the ordinary. To Nora, this is also how men and women should be. She has been cultured in this society of where being human is to be the object of your husband.
However when Nora takes out a loan without her husband’s consent in order to help her husband get better, both Torvald and her reputation are at stake. Torvald loses control and becomes oppressive. Because of her mistake, he wants to cut her off from the children and hide her away. He expresses that “happiness doesn’t matter; all that matters is saving the bits and pieces, the appearance”. All that matters is the fake doll house lifestyle that the Helmers have grown accustomed too and that Torvals has manipulated Nora into living in. In other words, when Nora tries being human and goes against the traditional role of being a woman, Torval cannot handle it. Her definition of a human being is shattered. She now defines a human being as a person who makes decisions, learns, and controls herself. Being human is making mistakes and learning from them. It is not being manipulated into something one is not. Nora was a doll her whole life, and it took one human mistake to make her realize that her whole world was fake.
