gender

• In A Doll’s House, Ibsen portrays a stereotypically gendered household with Torvald and Nora Helmer and then shows how characters—both male and female—suffer because of the roles society expects them to play. 
• The constrictive nature of gender roles is especially apparent for the main female characters in the play, Nora and Mrs. Linde. Women at this time were expected to get married, have children, and stay at home to tend to their children and husband. When a woman actually had a job and earned money, like Nora copying lines in secret, it was “like being a man.” 
• women had very few opportunities to make money for themselves and had to rely on husbands or fathers to provide for their needs. 
• Because of the expectations to stay home, raise children, and obey their husbands, women missed out on many opportunities, often needing legal consent from their husbands to perform simple business matters.
• By the end of the play, Nora recognizes the destructive nature of these gender roles, telling Torvald that he and her father, by enforcing societal expectations on her, are the reason she has “made nothing of [her] life.” 
• The men in the play also suffer, although more subtly and unknowingly, because of the gender roles they actively uphold.
•  Though Torvald clearly enjoys his role as an enforcer of societal expectations, he doesn't realize that he can't fully love his wife because he doesn’t truly see her as a person. Because of his “manly independence,” he can't receive help from anyone else, especially not a woman, and Nora, therefore, decides that it’s better to lie to her husband than to wound his pride. 
• Torvald’s inability to break free of societal gender roles leads to his failure to recognize that the love of his wife is more valuable than his reputation. As a result, he loses Nora, and will ultimately become the very thing he feared most: the subject of gossip as a failed man. 
• A Doll’s House exposes the restricted role of women during the time of its writing and the problems that arise from a drastic imbalance of power between men and women. 
• Throughout the play, Nora is treated like a child by the other characters. Torvald calls her his “pet” and his “property,” and implies that she is not smart or responsible enough to be trusted with money. 
• In the final scene she tells Torvald that she is not being treated as an independent person with a mind of her own. Her radical solution to this issue is to leave domestic life behind, despite Torvald's declaration that he will change.
• The more fundamental issue is with domestic life as it was conceived and lived at the time, in the way it legally and culturally infantilized women and made it impossible for them to be recognized or treated as full individuals.
• Both Torvald and Krogstad are very ambitious, driven not only by the need to provide for their families but also by a desire to achieve higher status. Respectability is of great concern to both of them; when Nora’s borrowing is revealed, Torvald’s first thoughts are for his reputation. Meanwhile, Krogstad is fixated on achieving success now that he has “gone straight,” and intends to one day take over Torvald’s job and run the bank.