ACT I

In Act I of A Doll's House we are introduced to Nora and Helmer. They are a married couple and have three children and live in a small Norwegian village. Helmer treats Nora as a plaything and doesn’t respect her. Because of that I feel Nora treats her children the way she is treated. She treats her children as if they were dolls. There was a part in the play when her children returned from outside with the nanny and Nora says that she would love to take off the children’s outside things because is fun. She also calls her children, mostly her youngest, “little dollies.” This shows the relationship between the Helmer family members.
Nora is very discreet with the things she does. For example, in the first act she is eating macaroons, her husband Helmer forbids her to eat sweets, so she snacks on them real quick then they hides them and wipes her mouth to talk to Torvald. Helmer is very against debt and borrowing money. When he is bedridden from an illness Nora is forced to borrow money to save his life. She did this all behind his back. She took out a huge loan to take him to Italy for a warmer climate to cure him and he thinks that her father gave them the money. Her father died and she is now paying off a loan from Kragstad, a worker at Helmer's bank. She forged her fathers signature to get his money after he died and now Krogstad knows and is holding it against her. Krogstad is a lawyer at Helmer's bank and is fired for forging something and not admitting it. Mrs. Linde is a good friend of Nora's and wants Krogstad's job.
Helmer has to fire Krogstad because of his illegal doing and is explaining this to Nora. He tells her that he has corrupted his whole family and ruined his life. He says that it is bad for a man to do that, but for a woman with kids it is worse because not only is she corrupted but so are her children. After hearing this Nora really cannot tell Helmer about what she has done. She is also fearing that because her husband is firing Krogstad, that Krogstad will tell Helmer what she did. All because Helmer sent him a letter firing him and Nora tries to get Helmer to get the letter back, but he won't do. This makes Helmer seem really not caring over his wife's feelings. How will this situation play out? We will find out in Act II.