Marriage Counseling in Literature
Torvald and Nora are husband and wife. They have three
children. Nora is a housewife and Torvald is making a career in banking. They
are apparently a happy couple. They face ups and down slowly and their
relationship disintegrates without any obvious major flaw.
We read the play and trace the events that caused a loving,
lovely wife to abandon her caring and careerist husband. It may help in saving
a marital relationship.
1. Secrecy and Suspense
If either of the spouses is fond of keeping secrets to give
a surprise, it definitely is going to hurt sooner or later.
Opening line of the act
Nora: Hide that Christmas tree away, Helen. The children
mustn't see it before I've decorated it this evening.
The opening dialogue reveals the character of Nora. The Nora
is in the habit of hiding the things. She is prone to keep the things secret .
Since it is a trait of her character she is not only hiding the things from
children but also from the husband.
Symbolically, she herself is a Christmas tree and she hides
her character from her husband, children and friends.
Surprises are good, lest you don't have to pay for it.
It reminds us a story by O. Henry "The gift of the
Magi". Magi sells her long lustrous hair to buy a chain of a golden watch
for Jim, while Jim sales his watch to buy a set of combs for his beloved Magi.
To surprise each other they sold the only two precious things in their house.
Some people are not apt to handle a surprise, suspense or
secret. The spouse should avoid to keep anything secret between them. This
relationship needs absolute transparency. May be both of them would undergo a turmoil,
but it might save their marriage.
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2. Avoid to call pet names
Helmer, the husband of Nora arrives home from the office and
found his wife busy in opening parcels of the gifts she has bought from shops.
Despite the fact that Helmer does not like the overspending
habits of his wife, he calls her by lot of pet names like skylark, squirrel and
squander-bird.
A lot of pet names should ring a danger bell in your ears.
Quinine is always sugar- coated.
Excessive polite persons are dangerous.
They are not newlywed couple. Nora is already mother of two
children. Any wife should be proud of being called by so many pet names by her
husband. A wise wife would be suspicious.
3. Debts may ruin a relationship:
Helmer believes "a home that is founded on debts and
borrowings can never be a place of freedom and beauty".
Wrong act for a right cause does not justify the action.
Nora borrowed money for the treatment of her husband. Helmer needed a change of
weather to recover from an ailment. Nora
borrowed the money from a crook Krogstad by forging documents.
Nora has acted just against the philosophy of her husband.
She knew very well how much her husband hated borrowing money.
If we know Nora we cannot overrule the possibility that she
herself was interested in a tour to Italy. It was her long awaited cherished
dream.
Even if she went with the pious objective to save the life
of Helmer, she did the folly of hiding the fact from the husband.
Her husband remained under the impression that she has
inherited money from deceased father.
Helmer was a lawyer and a banker. He could have arranged financing.
What tempted Nora to manage finances on her own. It is illegal for a wife to
borrow money without the knowledge of her husband.
4. One lie leads to another
Nora accepts that she wants money in the gift. She always
needs money to pay the installments to Krogstad.
Later, Helmer, while returning home saw Krogstad depart. He asks Nora if there was any visitor
and she declines. Helmer says ""A songbird must have a clean beak to
sing with, otherwise she will start twittering out of tune."
Helmer is of the view ''an atmosphere of lies contaminates
and poisons every corner of the home. Every breath that the children draw in
such a house contains the germ of the evil."
5. Fruitless Efforts
Helmer reminds her how Nora tried to surprise him on
Christmas by making flowers which were later ruined by a cat, before she could
gift them on Christmas.
Helmer says those were the most boring three weeks of his
life when Nora shut her up in a room to prepare surprise gift for him. But Nora
did not find it boring, despite the fact all her efforts remained fruitless.
Nora has her obsessions and she is self centered also. She
does not care if her husband suffers a boredom so far as she enjoys making
flowers. For her, making flowers is more important than providing a company to
her husband.
Helmer says "You simply wanted to make us happy , and
that's all that matters".
But that's not all that matters, obviously. Fruitless
efforts to make marriage work does more harm than good.
6. Female friends of wife
They are a potential threat to marriage. Mrs. Linde, who is a
childhood friend of Nora is frequently visiting Nora's home. She becomes
jealous of her happy life. She is also an ex lover of Krogstad, and now has a
plan to rejuvenate her relationship. Helmer hates Krogstad and has removed him
from bank job. Nora, innocently or foolishly shares her secret with her best
friend. Later, when Krogstad writes a letter to Helmer, disclosing the secret
of Nora, Mrs. Linde stops him from withdrawing the letter, though she knew it
would destroy the marriage of her best friend.
Shakespeare says " Frailty, thy name is woman", That
frailty might be jealousy also.
When Nora suggests her to take a break, Mrs. Linde retorts
"I have no papa to pay for my holidays, Nora". The spite is evident.
7. Money matters
Most of the girls would prefer a rich husband. Ideally, they
would circumvent the truth to sound as if of high morale.
Mrs. Linde ditched penniless Krogstad to marry a man who was
well off, so that he would take care of her aged mother and two minor brothers .
8. We owe each other
Nora has an argument " he is so proud of being a
man-it'd so painful and humiliating for him to know that he owed anything to
me. It'd completely wreck our relationship."
Nora does not cut on luxuries of her husband or needs of her
children, but cut expenses on her cloth to pay installments. She also earns
money by copying.
"It was almost like being a man"- she says.
She is not satisfied with her role of wife and mother. It
gives her pleasure to act like man, to earn money. It serves her egocentric
need of an identity.
9. Guilt destroys the fun
The whole story is fabricated on the lie told by Nora. Nora
is constantly suffering from a guilty conscience.
10. Jealous husbands are not necessarily loving husband.
In Act 2 Nora says to her friend "Torvald is so
hopelessly in love with me that he wants to have me all to himself".
A possessive husband is no guarantee of true love.
Nora represents the entire generation of women who are sick
of being possessed. The protection or security promised by husband doesn't come
cheap. Women feel a loss of identity in their traditional role model. A husband
as a companion should help in her search. Only a insecure husband would say
what Helmer says "I shall watch over like a hunted dove which I have snatched unharmed from the claws of
falcon."
Helmer had conditioned the mind of Nora by constantly
comparing her with bird and squirrel. In his opinion, no woman was more than
that.
When he reads the letter of Krogstad his true character is
revealed. It is an eye opener for Nora. Helmer loves his own reputation more
than he loves Nora. Nora was crestfallen, she imagined that her loving and
caring husband would take the blame of forgery to save her.
When this realisation precipitates, she takes her
decision."I must stand on my own feet if I am to find out truth about
myself and about life."
Nora walks out from stage and also from the life of Helmer.
Related Topics
© Vipin Behari Goyal
Advocate, Rajasthan High Court, Jodhpur, India
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