How a Doll's House Demonstrate the Idea of Modernism

Ibsen's A Doll's House is a representative of modernism especially on the aspect of turning drama into an exposal of a social issue, which in this play, is the flaw of the marriage between Torvald and Nora.

The story begins with the happy marriage of the Helmers' to the rupture of the couple and investigates the problems happen to the middle classes' marriage. It exposes the conflict between a woman emerge as an individual and the life that the society mandates and use it as a challenge to the bourgeois society to encourage feminist equality.

Nora married to Torvald and is the mother of three children but still plays a role as a doll in the family. She is called "sky-lark", "little squirrel" by her husband but is actually fortitude. She forged her father's name on the bond she used to secure the money and got loans from Krogstad to ensure the trip to Italy would exerted. She did all those just for saving Torvald's life, and is even ready to end her life after the scandal was almost spread out by Krogstad. Unlike Trovald only cares about his own reputation, Nora is ready to sacrifice hers to save the family anytime. But she is so disappointed to see the one she can give her life to call her "a hypocrite, a liar, worse than that, a criminal" (Act 3) and treats her as a doll instead of an independent person. "No,no, you just lean on me, I shall give you all the advice and guidance you need"(Act 3)."You try to get some rest, and set your mind at peace again, my frightened little song-bird. You know you are safe and sound under my wing."(Act 3) All those Torvald's words showed clearly that Nora has been treated as a child ever since she married. "You and daddy did me a great wrong".(Act 3) Nora didn't realize the lamentable fact until now, that she was dependent on her father before she marries to Trovald and is later on totally under the control of her