Paper 2 Quotations: A doll's House

“Is that my little lark twittering out there?”

Themes: Gender roles, Power

• Infantalization

• Imagery of small and weak cute animal (Helpless) / needs protection

• Lack of power

• Gender roles of the time

“I have learnt to act prudently. Life, and hard, bitter necessity have taught me that.”

Themes: Reverse of gender roles, transformation

• Hard, bitter, emotive language of unpleasantness

Helmer: But I will believe in it. Tell me? So changed that—?

Nora: That our life together would be a real wedlock.

Themes: Love, Transformation, Reverse of gender roles

• Structure: Short sentences + cut off from Helmer = fast pace panic / emotion,

• Juxtaposition with complete singular statment from Nora, showing how calm she is. Difference in emotion towards each other.

• Nora cuts Torvald off with a short, statement + full stop = very impactful

Helmer: I have it in me to become a different man.

Nora: Perhaps—if your doll is taken away from you.

Themes: Control, Gender roles, Transformation

• Symbolism: Doll = Nora / general wife. Comment on how men can treat women as they wish and play with them, like a doll.

• The doll is wholly dependant on them and cannot move or think for themselves - control of men over women.

• The dollhouse on the outside looks perfect / happy.

“The Christmas Tree is in the corner by the piano, stripped of its ornaments and with burnt‐down candle‐ends on its dishevelled branches”

Themes: Transformation, Mental health

• Symbolism: Christmas Tree = Nora's mental state deteriorating

• It is “stripped of ornaments" Nora is stripped of her wellbeing and happiness.

“the performance was a trifle too realistic” (tarantella)

Themes: Desperation, Gender , Passion

• Symbolism: Tarantells symbolizes a side of Nora which she hides due to Torvald's contolr

• Also shows her panic as the dance speeds up and becomes desperate.

“One cannot have anything in this world without paying for it”

Themes: Wealth

• “Anything” is an absolute showing the importance of money

• Money = status and wealth

“I was simply transferred from Papa's hands to yours”

Themes: Gender roles, Inequality

• Implies women as a posession to be traded from Father to Husband

“You are an odd little soul. Very like your father. You always find some new way of wheedling money out of me”

Themes: Wealth, Gender roles

• “Odd Little Soul" has positive connotations of cuteness due to “little"

• Juxtaposed with “Wheedling" which has negative connotation of theft

• Comments on reliance of Nora on Torvald for any income + the stereotype that women can't handle money (Gender role)

“how painful and humiliating it would be for Torvald, with his manly independence, to know that he owed me anything!”

Themes: Toxic Masculinity,

• Comments on expectation of men to provide

• Being provided for or supported is an insult

• “Painful + humiliating" - infers causes physical and emotional pain, emphasizing how powerful this expectation / social norm is.

“And no chlidren?” “Nothing at all then?”