Torvald does not want a wife who challenges his decisions. Throughout the play, Torvald refers to Nora as a possession rather than his wife. He calls her names and puts her down whenever she begins to voice her opinion. This can be seen when Nora's forgery is brought up in their final confrontation when he calls her disrespectful words like "featherbrained woman," "incompetent child," and "blind' (Ibsen, 810). Nora expects Torvald to be grateful that she has saved his life, but this does not happen. In fact, Torvald does not want to even hear Nora's opinions because he assumes they are all irrelevant. This is proven where Nora goes to voice an opinion and Torvald says "oh the worries that you couldn't possibly help me with" (Ibsen, 771). Ibsen shows the differences in gender roles as Torvald plays the dominant and controlling role in his relationship with Nora. .
Symbolism in A Doll's House comes from the language Ibsen uses to portray gender inequalities in the Victorian Era. In the analysis of Ibsen's play, feminist Julia Kristeva analyzes Ibsen's play and uses his lines to draw conclusions about the exploitation of women. Kristeva brings up several points about the symbolism in the conversations Nora and Torvald have. Kristeva recites Torvald's line to Nora when he says "is that my little lark twittering out there?" (Ibsen, 786). She states that this line shows a big "symbolic concept of language" (Kristeva). In the quote, "my" refers to possession, "little" refers to dependency, and "lark" refers to name-calling. Kristeva argues that "the symbolic language is the language of power, associated with patriarchy, such expressions, 'my' and 'little' are the preferably adopted lexemes of the male gender" (Kristeva). The exploitation of women derives from Ibsen's use of words to show that language was a tool used to display dominance.