Torvald is forced to admit of some truth—though “strained and exaggerated”—in what she says. It shall be different in the future, he vows, “playtime shall be over and lesson time shall begin.” She answers that he is not the man to educate her into being a proper wife. Neither is she ready to bring up her children, Nora continues, for there is another task she must first undertake. “I must try and educate myself,” she says, “and I must do that for myself.” That is why she is leaving him now. Finding her husband a stranger, Nora chooses to seek lodging with Christine rather than spend another night with him. Torvald points out that she has no right to neglect her most sacred duties—duties to her husband and children:
NORA: I have other duties just as sacred. Duties to myself.
TORVALD: Before all else you are a wife and mother.
NORA: I don’t believe that any longer, I believe that before all else I am a reasonable human being just as you are—or, at all events, that I must try and become one. I know quiet well, Torvald, that most people would think you right and that views of that kind are to be found in books; but I can no longer content myself with what most people say or with what is found in books. I must think over things for myself and get to understand them.
Torvald accuses her of loving him no longer. She nods, explaining that tonight “when the wonderful thing did not happen, then I saw you were not the man I had thought you.” For such a long time she suffered with the guilty secret of her borrowed money, feeling certain that eventually the “wonderful thing” would happen. The chance came with Krogstad’s letter, for Nora never imagined Torvald could submit to that man’s conditions. She expected him to say proudly, “publish the thing to the whole world,” and come forward to take the guilt upon himself. This expected sacrifice was the “wonderful thing” she had awaited, and to prevent it, she planned suicide.
Torvald says he is willing to toil for her day and night, bear any suffering, “but no man would sacrifice his honor for the one he loves.” “It is a thing hundreds of thousands of women have always done,” Nora quietly points out. She tells him that after his fear was over—”not the fear for what threatened me, but for what might happen to you”—and she became once more his little skylark, his doll, whose fragility demanded “doubly gentle care” in the future, she then realized that for eight years “I had been living with a strange man and had borne him three children.” She cannot bear to think of this humiliation, Nora says, and will leave him without accepting money to live on and without communicating.
Torvald begs her to say when they can live together again. Nora sighs. “Ah, Torvald, the most wonderful thing of all would have to happen,” she answers. They must both be so changed that “our life together would be a real wedlock.” She turns to go, leaving Torvald, face in hands, repeating her name. Then he rises as a hope flashes across his mind. “The most wonderful thing of all—?” he murmurs. There is a noise of a door slamming shut.
