Society's expectationsAt the beginning of the first act of “A Doll's House”, the scene is intended to impress the audience “with vivid descriptions of a furnished room tastefully, but nothing too extravagant.” (Ibsen) The first to enter is Nora. Nora enters with her arms full of bags after shopping, and her husband, Torvald, calls from another room to make sure she is the one he hears coming through the door. Torvald places limits on Nora's spending; he treats her both like a child and a doll. The way the characters in the play treat and react to each other shows the selfish intentions that society's expectations hold towards them. The character of Nora's father is only spoken of during the opera, but it introduces a vision of her past and childhood. In society's expectations, Nora's relationship with her father was not uncommon. A mother is usually the guardian of the children; it's obvious that Nora didn't have it. Instead, she was “put on a shelf, like a doll,” by her father. Nora was treated like a special child. Torvald tells Nora many times that she inherited her negative traits from her father, as if to justify why he insults her and treats her like a doll, and sometimes even like a child. The male characters in “A Doll’s House” play roles typical of their gender that society also supports. The way Torvald speaks to Nora, calling her his “little squirrel,” or his “lark,” and nonchalantly telling her that he spends too much of his money, is based on his expectations of her responsibility. Torvald is considered an honest man within his society. Since Nora is a "spendthrift", this seems like a bad thing to him. At the time, women were expected to meet society's expectations of being submissive to their husband... middle of paper... loves Torvald, stops acting like a child and starts acting like a woman. Nora's thought of leaving her children to find herself is not what society would expect from her. Nora's main acts are not so much altruistic, but selfish, because she uses Torvald and then leaves him. When Mrs. Linde asked Nora if she would ever tell Torvald where the money came from, Nora's response was: "Yes, perhaps after many years of him and I no longer having any interest in each other, it will be something useful as a reserve". (Ibsen)Works CitedIbsen, Henrik and Parker, Philip M. “A Doll's House.” San Diego: ICON Classics, 2005. eBook. November 17, 2013Benedetto, Davide. “A doll's house”. Daily Variety July 12, 2012: 10pm. Academic OneFile. Network. November 17, 2013 Rosefeldt, Paul. “'A Doll's House' by Ibsen.” (Henrik Ibsen)(Critical essay). The explainer 61.2. 2003. Academic OneFile. Network. November 17. 2013