Explain the significance of the last conversation between Torvald and Nora. In your explanation, consider how irony is an important element.
Conduct cursory research about the rights of women in the late 1800s and early 1900s. What were women allowed to do/not allowed to do?
A Doll's House: Responding to Act 2
Choose one quote from Act 2 that is the most significant to the action of the play and development of the conflict. Defend your choice in a short paragraph in which you share the quote, explain it, and discuss its significance.
Considering the mores* of the time, how should the play end happily? (Mores is defined as the unspoken but understood norms of a community or society.)
A Doll's House: Responding to Act 3
What positive gains does Nora make in the course of the action? What must she learn in order to perform her final act? Is that act a triumph, or a failure, or some of both? (for the play's first performance in Berlin, Ibsen was pressured into creating a conventionally "happy ending" - Nora is persuaded by Helmer not to leave him for the sake of their children, and so sacrifices herself to their need for a mother. Why is the present ending truer to the themes Ibsen presents? In your answer, you should consider the motifs of deception and honesty and self-deception and self-discovery.