How the Main Character Nora is Portrayed in “A Doll’s House”

In A Doll's House, the main character, Nora, is portrayed to the reader through her verbal and physical actions. She is also described through other characters views and discussions about her. She is represented as a manipulative, selfish, and spoiled woman who, in the end, works it out for herself and leaves.

Nora has a certain smartness about her to get what she wants—her ability to manipulate her husband without it looking obvious. As shown on P.167, Nora is influencing her husband without him knowing it. She is able to get him to think the reason Mrs. Linde came to visit was to please him. Quote HELMER, and that he is an able man. She made it up on the spot. Her selfishness—oh, how thoughtless of me! Here I am. Quote Noa, but then she goes on talking again.

Nora is a woman that likes money, and with such references to the word several times on every second page in Act One, it shows a great deal of importance on which their lives are based. But it costs a terrible lot of money; it's very lucky to have money (P.156). For one, this book is based on Nora's secret about the loan she got from the bank and how she forged the signatures.

Nora can be described as the doll in the house, a child almost; throughout the play, this is shown, like when she asks about her children's adventures outside. At last, NORA hides under the table. The children come running in to look for her (P. 169). She takes their clothes off and likes to do all the fun things, as a child would do, like playing with a doll. She lives in a house, described on the first page of the play (P. 147), that sounds exactly like a beautiful setting of a room in a doll's house, suggesting that Nora lives in one and therefore is a doll.

A doll's house doesn't exist without the interaction between the young child playing with one doll and another. This is like Nora's character; she always has to have people coming into her life to keep her alive or doing something; otherwise, the game is over, and it is not fun anymore.

In the end, Nora gains self-knowledge and says, As I am now, I'm no good to them (P. 231), saying that the woman she is no longer needs her. This change, an increase in self-knowledge, led to her evolving as a character, going from being a husband's wife living at home to being a woman in control of herself.

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