The growth of Nora and Kristina Linde in a doll's house A doll's house by Henrik Ibsen, is a play written ahead of its time. In this play Ibsen addresses the prevailing social norms by presenting two strong-willed women. Both Kristina and Nora chose the men they married through an intellectual rather than emotional process: Kristina gave up the man she loved (Nils Krogstad) to provide economic security for her mother and two younger brothers; Nora married Torvald Helmer at a time when she could have prosecuted her father for bad if not simply illegal financial activities.1 It is not clear whether she married him out of gratitude or to influence him at the time of the decision, but I doubt it. this timing was a mere coincidence; if Nora married Torvald Helmer to save her father, we have reason to doubt whether she was ever as empty a "doll" as she claimed to be. Neither woman knew how to convey her thoughts and feelings to the man she loved: When Kristina broke up with Nils Krogstad, she believed she was sparing him pain by mercilessly ending the relationship and, necessarily, crushing the love he bore her. He was very wrong. By making him believe she had abandoned him for a richer man, she pushed him into crime. When he comes to visit Nora, she has been alone for three years and has learned to support herself. Furthermore, she has become so aware of her own motives and such an understanding of his that she comes to town with the deliberate intent of talking to her now widowed lover, and is so beyond the social concept of what a woman should do and say during courtship that the discussion about love and marriage can begin with him. The audience can see that he has...... half of the paper ......2. The best description of this subplot and love story is Davies (1982:33-34). Works cited and consulted: Brandes, Georg. 1964. Henrik Ibsen. A critical study. New York: Benjamin Blom. Reprint of the 1899 edition.Clurman, Harold. 1977. Ibsen. New York: Macmillan.Davies, H. Neville. 1982. "Not Just a Bang and a Moan: The Inconclusiveness of Ibsen's A Doll's House." Critical Quarterly 24:33-34.Heiberg, Hans. 1967. Ibsen. A portrait of the artist. Coral Gables, Florida: University of Miami.Henrik Ibsen, A Doll's House. Dover Thrift Edition, 1992 Koht, Halvdan. 1971. Life of Ibsen. New York: Benjamin Blom. Meyer, Michael. 1971. Ibsen. A biography. Garden City, NY: Doubleday and Company.Northam, John. 1965. "Ibsen's Hero's Quest." Ibsen. A collection of critical essays. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall.