Minor Characters In A Doll's House

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How does Ibsen use minor characters to present Nora in ‘A Doll’s House’? In A Doll’s House, Henrik Ibsen sets a theme of contrast in times of drastic change, set in a time and place where many were reluctant to accept the changes going on around them. In essence, everyone within the play contrasts with someone else. Nora and Torvald act as the two central characters behind Ibsen’s consistent theme of women’s roles in what was then modern society. He portrays this theme by analysing the contrast in the behaviours of different characters in the play. Where Torvald is oftentimes hesitant to let go of longstanding traditions and laws or family values, his wife Nora evolves to be a character that is true to themselves, she believes more in her moral rationale than the laws imposed upon her. Meanwhile, the family doctor, Rank, and Torvald’s employee Krogstad portray very differing …show more content…

Almost everything about the two differs, where Nora is married to Torvald, a wealthy banker and has children too take care of all the whilst working in secret to pay off her debts, Christine is a widow who had to work for the sole reason of minding her younger brothers and their sick mother. With the death of their mother and the growing up of her brothers, Christine has nobody to work for and has lost all her passion. Furthermore, Nora is dedicated to fixing her mistakes or hiding them by any means necessary, and this remains her main goal until the end of the play. Christine helps in this, she is selfless and driven to help until the very end, where she finally changes because she finds out that she can now work for Krogstad. In essence, Christine is a guide towards Nora’s development, one can think of her as everything that Nora aspires to be. Where Christine has a change set off in her towards the end of the play, Nora remains the same consistently, once again only developing her motives

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