In the play A doll’s House, Henrik Ibsen depicts the concept of entrapment. Nora Helmer, the protagonist of the play, is confined in her domestic life where she lives with her naivety and the dominance of her husband Torvald Helmer. The detailed and realistic stage set metaphorically represents a perfectly pretty yet inanimate doll’s house where Nora lives like a doll, oblivious to the fact that this entrapment is hindering her from further development in life.
Ibsen uses a static stage set as a symbol to visually represent Nora’s confinement in her restricted household. The static stage set supports the extended metaphor of a “doll” that Ibsen uses to depict her as a mere puppet that knows nothing other than its own house because she is always in the same place. Ibsen…show more content… With the extended metaphor, the house is represented as a doll house where Nora is confined in. Also, Nora’s action of changing into costumes like “a Neapolitan fisher-girl’s dress” for her husband enhances the quality of a confined doll house that the fixed stage set presents. Nora playing dress-ups for Torvald, provokes an image of a doll constantly changing its costume to impress its owner, again underlining her status as a doll. However, Nora is unaware of her passive voice and feels content with her life in the house as evidenced by Ibsen’s use of positive diction to depict Helmers’ house: “furnished comfortably.” Nora does not see the need to extend her life since she knows only the perfect life from her perspective that is completely isolated from the real world outside. Therefore,