Chapter 12

Nora.

[Shrieks.] Ah——!

Helmer.

What is this? Do you know what is in this letter?

Nora.

Yes, I know. Let me go! Let me pass!

Helmer.

[Holds her back.] Where do you want to go?

Nora.

[Tries to break away from him.] You shall not save me, Torvald.

Helmer.

[Falling back.] True! Is what he writes true? No, no, it is impossible that this can be true.

Nora.

It is true. I have loved you beyond all else in the world.

Helmer.

Pshaw—no silly evasions!

Nora.

[A step nearer him.] Torvald——!

Helmer.

Wretched woman—what have you done!

Nora.

Let me go—you shall not save me! You shall not take my guilt upon yourself!

Helmer.

I don’t want any melodramatic airs. [Locks the outer door.] Here you shall stay and give an account of yourself. Do you understand what you have done? Answer! Do you understand it?

Nora.

[Looks at him fixedly, and says with a stiffening expression.] Yes; now I begin fully to understand it.

Helmer.

[Walking up and down.] Oh! what an awful awakening! During all these eight years—she who was my pride and my joy—a hypocrite, a liar—worse, worse—a criminal. Oh, the unfathomable hideousness of it all! Ugh! Ugh!

[Norasays nothing, and continues to look fixedly at him.

Helmer.

I ought to have known how it would be. I ought to have foreseen it. All your father’s want of principle—be silent!—all your father’s want of principle you have inherited—no religion, no morality, no sense of duty. How I am punished for screening him! I did it for your sake; and you reward me like this.

Nora.

Yes—like this.

Helmer.

You have destroyed my whole happiness. You have ruined my future. Oh, it’s frightful to think of! I am in the power of a scoundrel; he can do whatever he pleases with me, demand whateverhe chooses; he can domineer over me as much as he likes, and I must submit. And all this disaster and ruin is brought upon me by an unprincipled woman!

Nora.

When I am out of the world, you will be free.

Helmer.

Oh, no fine phrases. Your father, too, was always ready with them. What good would it do me, if you were “out of the world,” as you say? No good whatever! He can publish the story all the same; I might even be suspected of collusion. People will think I was at the bottom of it all and egged you on. And for all this I have you to thank—you whom I have done nothing but pet and spoil during our whole married life. Do you understand now what you have done to me?

Nora.

[With cold calmness.] Yes.

Helmer.

The thing is so incredible, I can’t grasp it. But we must come to an understanding. Take that shawl off. Take it off, I say! I must try to pacify him in one way or another—the matter must be hushed up, cost what it may.—As for you and me, we must make no outward change in our way of life—nooutwardchange, you understand. Of course, you will continue to live here. But the children cannot be left in your care. I dare not trust them to you.—Oh, to have to say this to one I have loved so tenderly—whom I still——! But that must be a thing of the past.Henceforward there can be no question of happiness, but merely of saving the ruins, the shreds, the show—— [A ring;Helmerstarts.] What’s that? So late! Can it be the worst? Can he——? Hide yourself, Nora; say you are ill.

[Norastands motionless.Helmergoes to the door and opens it.

Ellen.

[Half dressed, in the hall.] Here is a letter for you, ma’am.

Helmer.

Give it to me. [Seizes the letter and shuts the door.] Yes, from him. You shall not have it. I shall read it.

Nora.

Read it!

Helmer.

[By the lamp.] I have hardly the courage to. We may both be lost, both you and I. Ah! Imustknow. [Hastily tears the letter open; reads a few lines, looks at an enclosure; with a cry of joy.] Nora!

[Noralooks inquiringly at him.

Helmer.

Nora!—Oh! I must read it again.—Yes, yes, it is so. I am saved! Nora, I am saved!

Nora.

And I?

Helmer.

You too, of course; we are both saved, both of us. Look here—he sends you back your promissory note. He writes that he regrets and apologises,that a happy turn in his life——Oh, what matter what he writes. We are saved, Nora! No one can harm you. Oh, Nora, Nora——; but first to get rid of this hateful thing. I’ll just see—— [Glances at the I.O.U.] No, I will not look at it; the whole thing shall be nothing but a dream to me. [Tears the I.O.U. and both letters in pieces. Throws them into the fire and watches them burn.] There! it’s gone!—He said that ever since Christmas Eve——Oh, Nora, they must have been three terrible days for you!

Nora.

I have fought a hard fight for the last three days.

Helmer.

And in your agony you saw no other outlet but——No; we won’t think of that horror. We will only rejoice and repeat—it’s over, all over! Don’t you hear, Nora? You don’t seem able to grasp it. Yes, it’s over. What is this set look on your face? Oh, my poor Nora, I understand; you cannot believe that I have forgiven you. But I have, Nora; I swear it. I have forgiven everything. I know that what you did was all for love of me.

Nora.

That is true.

Helmer.

You loved me as a wife should love her husband. It was only the means that, in your inexperience, you misjudged. But do you think I love you the less because you cannot do without guidance? No, no. Only lean on me; I will counsel you, and guide you. I should be no true man if thisvery womanly helplessness did not make you doubly dear in my eyes. You mustn’t dwell upon the hard things I said in my first moment of terror, when the world seemed to be tumbling about my ears. I have forgiven you, Nora—I swear I have forgiven you.

Nora.

I thank you for your forgiveness.

[Goes out, to the right.

Helmer.

No, stay——! [Looking through the doorway.] What are you going to do?

Nora.

[Inside.] To take off my masquerade dress.

Helmer.

[In the doorway.] Yes, do, dear. Try to calm down, and recover your balance, my scared little song-bird. You may rest secure. I have broad wings to shield you. [Walking up and down near the door.] Oh, how lovely—how cosy our home is, Nora! Here you are safe; here I can shelter you like a hunted dove whom I have saved from the claws of the hawk. I shall soon bring your poor beating heart to rest; believe me, Nora, very soon. To-morrow all this will seem quite different—everything will be as before. I shall not need to tell you again that I forgive you; you will feel for yourself that it is true. How could you think I could find it in my heart to drive you away, or even so much as to reproach you? Oh, you don’t know a true man’s heart, Nora. There is some thing indescribably sweet and soothing to a manin having forgiven his wife—honestly forgiven her, from the bottom of his heart. She becomes his property in a double sense. She is as though born again; she has become, so to speak, at once his wife and his child. That is what you shall henceforth be to me, my bewildered, helpless darling. Don’t be troubled about anything, Nora; only open your heart to me, and I will be both will and conscience to you. [Noraenters in everyday dress.] Why, what’s this? Not gone to bed? You have changed your dress?

Nora.

Yes, Torvald; now I have changed my dress.

Helmer.

But why now, so late——?

Nora.

I shall not sleep to-night.

Helmer.

But, Nora dear——

Nora.

[Looking at her watch.] It’s not so late yet. Sit down, Torvald; you and I have much to say to each other.[She sits at one side of the table.

Helmer.

Nora—what does this mean? Your cold, set face——

Nora.

Sit down. It will take some time. I have much to talk over with you.

[Helmersits at the other side of the table.

Helmer.

You alarm me, Nora. I don’t understand you.

Nora.

No, that is just it. You don’t understand me; and I have never understood you—till to-night. No, don’t interrupt. Only listen to what I say.—We must come to a final settlement, Torvald.

Helmer.

How do you mean?

Nora.

[After a short silence.] Does not one thing strike you as we sit here?

Helmer.

What should strike me?

Nora.

We have been married eight years. Does it not strike you that this is the first time we two, you and I, man and wife, have talked together seriously?

Helmer.

Seriously! What do you call seriously?

Nora.

During eight whole years, and more—ever since the day we first met—we have never exchanged one serious word about serious things.

Helmer.

Was I always to trouble you with the cares you could not help me to bear?

Nora.

I am not talking of cares. I say that we have never yet set ourselves seriously to get to the bottom of anything.

Helmer.

Why, my dearest Nora, what have you to do with serious things?

Nora.

There we have it! You have never understood me.—I have had great injustice done me, Torvald; first by father, and then by you.

Helmer.

What! By your father and me?—By us, who have loved you more than all the world?

Nora

[Shaking her head.] You have never loved me. You only thought it amusing to be in love with me.

Helmer.

Why, Nora, what a thing to say!

Nora.

Yes, it is so, Torvald. While I was at home with father, he used to tell me all his opinions, and I held the same opinions. If I had others I said nothing about them, because he wouldn’t have liked it. He used to call me his doll-child, and played with me as I played with my dolls. Then I came to live in your house——

Helmer.

What an expression to use about our marriage!

Nora.

[Undisturbed.] I mean I passed from father’s hands into yours. You arranged everything according to your taste; and I got the same tastes as you; or I pretended to—I don’t know which—both ways, perhaps; sometimes one and sometimes the other. When I look back on it now, I seem to have been living here like a beggar, from hand to mouth. I lived by performing tricks for you, Torvald. But you would have it so. You and father have done me a great wrong. It is your fault that my life has come to nothing.

Helmer.

Why, Nora, how unreasonable and ungrateful you are! Have you not been happy here?

Nora.

No, never. I thought I was; but I never was.

Helmer.

Not—not happy!

Nora.

No; only merry. And you have always been so kind to me. But our house has been nothing but a play-room. Here I have been your doll-wife, just as at home I used to be papa’s doll-child. And the children, in their turn, have been my dolls. I thought it fun when you played with me, just as the children did when I played with them. That has been our marriage, Torvald.

Helmer.

There is some truth in what you say, exaggeratedand overstrained though it be. But henceforth it shall be different. Play-time is over; now comes the time for education.

Nora.

Whose education? Mine, or the children’s?

Helmer.

Both, my dear Nora.

Nora.

Oh, Torvald, you are not the man to teach me to be a fit wife for you.

Helmer.

And you can say that?

Nora.

And I—how have I prepared myself to educate the children?

Helmer.

Nora!

Nora.

Did you not say yourself, a few minutes ago, you dared not trust them to me?

Helmer.

In the excitement of the moment! Why should you dwell upon that?

Nora.

No—you were perfectly right. That problem is beyond me. There is another to be solved first—I must try to educate myself. You are not the man to help me in that. I must set about it alone. And that is why I am leaving you.

Helmer.

[Jumping up.] What—do you mean to say——?

Nora.

I must stand quite alone if I am ever to know myself and my surroundings; so I cannot stay with you.

Helmer.

Nora! Nora!

Nora.

I am going at once. I daresay Christina will take me in for to-night——

Helmer.

You are mad! I shall not allow it! I forbid it!

Nora.

It is of no use your forbidding me anything now. I shall take with me what belongs to me. From you I will accept nothing, either now or afterwards.

Helmer.

What madness this is!

Nora.

To-morrow I shall go home—I mean to what was my home. It will be easier for me to find some opening there.

Helmer.

Oh, in your blind inexperience——

Nora.

I must try togainexperience, Torvald.

Helmer.

To forsake your home, your husband, and your children! And you don’t consider what the world will say.

Nora.

I can pay no heed to that. I only know that I must do it.

Helmer.

This is monstrous! Can you forsake your holiest duties in this way?

Nora.

What do you consider my holiest duties?

Helmer.

Do I need to tell you that? Your duties to your husband and your children.

Nora.

I have other duties equally sacred.

Helmer.

Impossible! What duties do you mean?

Nora.

My duties towards myself.

Helmer.

Before all else you are a wife and a mother.

Nora.

That I no longer believe. I believe that before all else I am a human being, just as much as you are—or at least that I should try to become one. I know that most people agree with you, Torvald,and that they say so in books. But henceforth I can’t be satisfied with what most people say, and what is in books. I must think things out for myself, and try to get clear about them.

Helmer.

Are you not clear about your place in your own home? Have you not an infallible guide in questions like these? Have you not religion?

Nora.

Oh, Torvald, I don’t really know what religion is.

Helmer.

What do you mean?

Nora.

I know nothing but what Pastor Hansen told me when I was confirmed. He explained that religion was this and that. When I get away from all this and stand alone, I will look into that matter too. I will see whether what he taught me is right, or, at any rate, whether it is right for me.

Helmer.

Oh, this is unheard of! And from so young a woman! But if religion cannot keep you right, let me appeal to your conscience—for I suppose you have some moral feeling? Or, answer me: perhaps you have none?

Nora.

Well, Torvald, it’s not easy to say. I really don’t know—I am all at sea about these things. I only know that I think quite differently fromyou about them. I hear, too, that the laws are different from what I thought; but I can’t believe that they can be right. It appears that a woman has no right to spare her dying father, or to save her husband’s life! I don’t believe that.

Helmer.

You talk like a child. You don’t understand the society in which you live.

Nora.

No, I do not. But now I shall try to learn. I must make up my mind which is right—society or I.

Helmer.

Nora, you are ill; you are feverish; I almost think you are out of your senses.

Nora.

I have never felt so much clearness and certainty as to-night.

Helmer.

You are clear and certain enough to forsake husband and children?

Nora.

Yes, I am.

Helmer.

Then there is only one explanation possible.

Nora.

What is that?

Helmer.

You no longer love me.

Nora.

No; that is just it.

Helmer.

Nora!—Can you say so!

Nora.

Oh, I’m so sorry, Torvald; for you’ve always been so kind to me. But I can’t help it. I do not love you any longer.

Helmer.

[Mastering himself with difficulty.] Are you clear and certain on this point too?

Nora.

Yes, quite. That is why I will not stay here any longer.

Helmer.

And can you also make clear to me how I have forfeited your love?

Nora.

Yes, I can. It was this evening, when the miracle did not happen; for then I saw you were not the man I had imagined.

Helmer.

Explain yourself more clearly; I don’t understand.

Nora.

I have waited so patiently all these eight years; for of course I saw clearly enough that miracles don’t happen every day. When this crushing blowthreatened me, I said to myself so confidently, “Now comes the miracle!” When Krogstad’s letter lay in the box, it never for a moment occurred to me that you would think of submitting to that man’s conditions. I was convinced that you would say to him, “Make it known to all the world”; and that then——

Helmer.

Well? When I had given my own wife’s name up to disgrace and shame——?

Nora.

Then I firmly believed that you would come forward, take everything upon yourself, and say, “I am the guilty one.”

Helmer.

Nora——!

Nora.

You mean I would never have accepted such a sacrifice? No, certainly not. But what would my assertions have been worth in opposition to yours?—Thatwas the miracle that I hoped for and dreaded. And it was to hinderthatthat I wanted to die.

Helmer.

I would gladly work for you day and night, Nora—bear sorrow and want for your sake. But no man sacrifices his honour, even for one he loves.

Nora.

Millions of women have done so.

Helmer.

Oh, you think and talk like a silly child.

Nora.

Very likely. But you neither think nor talk like the man I can share my life with. When your terror was over—not for what threatened me, but for yourself—when there was nothing more to fear—then it seemed to you as though nothing had happened. I was your lark again, your doll, just as before—whom you would take twice as much care of in future, because she was so weak and fragile. [Stands up.] Torvald—in that moment it burst upon me that I had been living here these eight years with a strange man, and had borne him three children.—Oh, I can’t bear to think of it! I could tear myself to pieces!

Helmer.

[Sadly.] I see it, I see it; an abyss has opened between us.—But, Nora, can it never be filled up?

Nora.

As I now am, I am no wife for you.

Helmer.

I have strength to become another man.

Nora.

Perhaps—when your doll is taken away from you.

Helmer.

To part—to part from you! No, Nora, no; I can’t grasp the thought.

Nora.

[Going into room on the right.] The more reason for the thing to happen.

[She comes back with out-door things and a small travelling-bag, which she places on a chair.

Helmer.

Nora, Nora, not now! Wait till to-morrow.

Nora.

[Putting on cloak.] I can’t spend the night in a strange man’s house.

Helmer.

But can we not live here, as brother and sister——?

Nora.

[Fastening her hat.] You know very well that wouldn’t last long. [Puts on the shawl.] Goodbye, Torvald. No, I won’t go to the children. I know they are in better hands than mine. As I now am, I can be nothing to them.

Helmer.

But some time, Nora—some time——?

Nora.

How can I tell? I have no idea what will become of me.

Helmer.

But you are my wife, now and always!

Nora.

Listen, Torvald—when a wife leaves herhusband’s house, as I am doing, I have heard that in the eyes of the law he is free from all duties towards her. At any rate, I release you from all duties. You must not feel yourself bound, any more than I shall. There must be perfect freedom on both sides. There, I give you back your ring. Give me mine.

Helmer.

That too?

Nora.

That too.

Helmer.

Here it is.

Nora.

Very well. Now it is all over. I lay the keys here. The servants know about everything in the house—better than I do. To-morrow, when I have started, Christina will come to pack up the things I brought with me from home. I will have them sent after me.

Helmer.

All over! all over! Nora, will you never think of me again?

Nora.

Oh, I shall often think of you, and the children, and this house.

Helmer.

May I write to you, Nora?

Nora.

No—never. You must not.

Helmer.

But I must send you——

Nora.

Nothing, nothing.

Helmer.

I must help you if you need it.

Nora.

No, I say. I take nothing from strangers.

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