One of the most striking and impressive qualities of human life is our ability to adapt. Many factors can cause us to change, such as the end of a relationship to the death of a veritable friend. Though change rarely occurs from the intrusion of a few words; in the case of Henrik Ibsen's A Doll's House we witness the complete contradictory. The title of the play, A Doll's House is a reminiscence of a small plush doll, which does not move nor talk. Dolls are inanimate figurines used to amuse the bored and in this context they are used to metaphorically represent the main character Nora. As people play with dolls to escape means of reality, Nora lives in a false reality with herself acting as nothing more than a plastic playmate for her husband Torvald.
Comparably, as a doll does not have an opinion, neither does Nora as she often tries to alter herself, cloaking her true feelings to make her owner (Torvald) a happier person. The theme of this play circulates around the central fact that Nora, despite her unequal role to her male counterpart is not a victim of circumstances but rather responsible for her own predicament. By acting as nothing more than a puppet with Torvald as her puppet master, Nora eternalizes her life to be a game of dressing up Barbie. Just as the little children's dolls we once had, we find Nora corresponding to several of those qualities. .
Not surprisingly as soon as the first act evolves we find Nora imitating doll like qualities. Torvald often criticizes Nora about her spendthrift ways and how she always attempts to find "some new way of wheedling money out of [him]" (pg 4). By criticizing her, Torvald effectively makes Nora seem as a lesser individual, thus creating the image of a puppet master and his doll. Just as the puppet image that Torvald has created out of her, Nora acts accordingly swallowing everything Torvald states without any opinion. Torvald's criticism grows as he further criticizes Nora for her indulgence of macaroons (a chewy cookie made with sugar and egg whites).