By the end of this first act, Nora is emerging from the protection of her married life to confront the conditions of the outside world. Although she has been content in being a protected and cared-for housewife during the past eight years, and has once averted a crisis by finding a way to borrow money for the sake of Torvald’s health, Nora has never learned to overtly challenge her environment.
Christine, on the other hand, has independently faced life’s challenge, although she too sought protection by marrying for the sake of financial convenience. Her harsh experience as a widow who was forced to earn her own livelihood stands in sharp contrast to the insulated and frivolous life which Nora leads. Having learned, through suffering, the value of truthful human relationships, Christine is the first person to recognize that Nora’s marriage is based on deception.
The device Ibsen uses to describe the Torvalds’ deceptive marital relationship is the problem of Nora’s debt. To prevent Torvald from discovering her secret, he shows how Nora has developed the manner of an evasive, charming adolescent whose whims and caprices her grown-up husband must indulge. This bolsters Torvald’s self-image as a protector of the weak, the head of a dependent household, and the instructor of the mentally inferior.
The audience is immediately aware of Torvald’s shallowness as he utters his first condescending words to his wife. Nora herself provides further evidence: when she says that Torvald might one day tire of her “reciting and dressing-up and dancing,” she unknowingly describes the decadence of her marital relationship. Pedantic and pompous, Torvald sometimes seems like a father who enjoys the innocence of a favorite daughter. Setting up rules of behavior (prohibiting Nora’s macaroons, for instance), instructing his wife even in her very dress, Torvald shows that he regards her as a plaything or a pet rather than an independent person. These attitudes suggest the baldly sexual nature of Torvald’s marriage; the theme is later expanded in following acts until Nora recognizes her position and finds her role repulsive as well as humiliating.
Krogstad shows Nora another deceptive quality about the nature of the world: an individual is responsible for his own acts. Society punishes its lawbreaker; the innocent wife acting to save the life of her loved one is equally as guilty as the unscrupulous opportunist who acts out of expediency. Once recognizing the parallel between the “morally diseased” Krogstad and herself, Nora begins to confront the realities of the world and with this new knowledge must draw the inevitable conclusions.
