NORA:
Thank you for your forgiveness. (She goes out through the door to the right.)
HELMER:
No, don’t go. (Looks in.) What are you doing in there?
NORA (from within):
Taking off my fancy dress.
HELMER (standing at the open door):
Yes, do. Try and calm yourself and make your mind easy again, my frightened little singing bird. Be at rest and feel secure; I have broad wings to shelter you under. (Walks up and down by the door.) How warm and cosy our home is, Nora. Here is shelter for you; here I will protect you like a hunted dove that I have saved from a hawk’s claws; I will bring peace to your poor beating heart. It will come, little by little, Nora, believe me. Tomorrow morning you will look upon it all quite differently; soon everything will be just as it was before. Very soon you won’t need me to assure you that I have forgiven you; you will yourself feel the certainty that I have done so. Can you suppose I should ever think of such a thing as repudiating you or even reproaching you? You have no idea what a true man’s heart is like, Nora. There is something so indescribably sweet and satisfying, to a man, in the knowledge that he has forgiven his wife – forgiven her freely and with all his heart. It seems as if that had made her, as it were, doubly his own; he has given her a new life, so to speak, and she is in a way become both wife and child to him. So you shall be for me after this, my little scared, helpless darling. Have no anxiety about anything, Nora; only be frank and open with me, and I will serve as will and conscience both to you – What is this? Not gone to bed? Have you changed your things?
NORA (in everyday dress):
Yes, Torvald, I have changed my things now.
HELMER:
But what for? – so late as this.
NORA:
I shall not sleep tonight.
HELMER:
But, my dear Nora –
NORA (looking at her watch):
It is not so very late. Sit down here, Torvald. You and I have much to say to one another. (She sits down at one side of the table.)
HELMER:
Nora – what is this? – this cold, set face?
NORA:
Sit down. It will take some time; I have a lot to talk over with you.
HELMER (sits down at the opposite side of the table):
You alarm me, Nora! – and I don’t understand you.
NORA:
No, that is just it. You don’t understand me, and I have never understood you either – before tonight. No, you mustn’t interrupt me. You must simply listen to what I say. Torvald, this is a settling of accounts.
HELMER:
What do you mean by that?
NORA (after a short silence):
Isn’t there one thing that strikes you as strange in our sitting here like this?
HELMER:
What is that?
NORA:
We have been married now eight years. Does it not occur to you that this is the first time we two, you and I, husband and wife, have had a serious conversation?
HELMER:
What do you mean, serious?
NORA:
In all these eight years – longer than that – from the very beginning of our acquaintance we have never exchanged a word on any serious subject.
HELMER:
Was it likely that I would be continually and forever telling you about worries that you could not help me to bear?
NORA:
I am not speaking about business matters. I say that we have never sat down in earnest together to try and get at the bottom of anything.
HELMER:
But, dearest Nora, would it have been any good to you?
NORA:
That is just it; you have never understood me. I have been greatly wronged, Torvald – first by Papa and then by you.
HELMER:
What! By us two – by us two who have loved you better than anyone else in in the world?
NORA (shaking her head):
You have never loved me. You have only thought it pleasant to be in love with me.
HELMER:
Nora, what do I hear you saying?
NORA:
It is perfectly true, Torvald. When I was at home with Papa he told me his opinion about everything, and so I had the same opinions; and if I differed from him I concealed the fact, because he would not have liked it. He called me his doll child, and he played with me just as I used to play with my dolls. And when I came to live with you –
HELMER:
What sort of an expression is that to use about our marriage?
NORA (undisturbed):
I mean that I was simply transferred from Papa’s hands into yours. You arranged everything according to your own taste, and so I got the same tastes as you – or else I pretended to. I am really not quite sure which – I think sometimes the one and sometimes the other. When I look back on it it seems to me as if I had been living here like a poor woman – just from hand to mouth. I have existed merely to perform tricks for you, Torvald. But you would have it so. You and Papa have committed a great sin against me. It is your fault that I have made nothing of my life.
HELMER:
How unreasonable and how ungrateful you are, Nora! Have you not been happy here?
NORA:
No, I have never been happy. I thought I was, but it has never really been so.
HELMER:
Not – not happy!
NORA:
No, only merry. And you have always been so kind to me. But our home has been nothing but a playroom. I have been your doll wife, just as at home I was Papa’s doll child; and here the children have been my dolls. I thought it great fun when you played with me, just as they thought it great fun when I played with them. That is what our marriage has been, Torvald.
HELMER: