AP Lit Blog - Anastasia Kishiniovski

Individual vs. Society in A Doll's House

I'd like to apply my main focus from ATKM to Ibsen's play to see the relationship between the individual and society in the characters' lives. Torvald, for example, only views his life in terms of what society would find acceptable for him. He lacks a distinct sense of individuality and is completely controlled by society's expectations of him as the husband and father of his house. This characteristic of his is shown when Nora originally asks Torvald not to fire Krogstad and Torvald refuses because he doesn't want the bank employees to think that he can be so easily influenced by his wife on such major decisions. All he is concerned about is preserving his image as the man of his household and ensuring that he maintains a good reputation in the eyes of society. Even after he and Nora get into an extreme argument and he decides that she is not fit to raise their children and that he can no longer trust her, he still insists on keeping her around the house and having everything go back to "normal" for the sake of keeping up appearances. He is more concerned about what others will think of him and his marriage than about his marriage in general. Krogstad's decisions have also been impacted by society's influence. His moral "sickness" is only deemed that way because of society's standards for what is "moral" and what is "immoral". Krogstad had lost his credibility when he committed a crime of forgery and appears to have spiraled further down in his moral illness by resorting to blackmail in an effort to keep his job. But if society had not such great of an impact on what we deemed as "moral" and "right", then Krogstad would have never had such power over Nora in the first place. But society has such an effect on him because he is a victim to its control and rules. Nora, on the other hand, becomes more and more prone to express herself as an individual than to succumb to the role that society has given her. Although she is originally a slave to society as she plays the role of the perfect wife and mother, she begins to question the authority that society has in her life. Nora realizes that this lifestyle does not reveal her true identity and who she really wants to be, it just makes her into what society wants her to be. She breaks the status quo by attempting to become her own person when she leaves Torvald to live her own life. Nora's actions are a cry out against society and the traditional rules that society has set for people. Nora breaks free from these rules by establishing her own sense of the "individual" and not being swayed so easily by what society tells her she should and shouldn't do. Each of the characters in the play are either fighting against society and representing themselves as an individual or are giving in to societal guidelines and associating themselves with the crowd that is known as society.