In the play, Nora starts out as a doll and a plaything. She pretends to be less intelligent than she actually is. She plays along with the role Torvald has given her. She rejoices over trivial joys, such as macaroons, or other seemingly meaningless things. She acts like a small child to fool Torvald in a sense. She thinks she is happy, and feels that everything is normal, but this soon changes.
Nora begins to realize by the end of the play, that she has not been happy pretending to be something she is not. She begins to feel dissatisfied with her extreme dependence on Torvald. She is sick of being treated like a doll. Once she puts away her mask, she is able to see how unhappy she truly is. She realizes what she must do to regain her self and her own independence. She realizes that Torvald doesn't love her in the way that she thought he did, and that she too doesn't love him how she would like to.
At the end of the play, audiences are given the opportunity to interpret Nora's motives in playing dumb throughout the play. I believe that her motives lie in the fact that she did not want Torvald to ever suspect her of her forgery. She was also locked into this role by Torvald, who forced her to act this way because of the way he treated her. The play sends a powerful message about how relationships of the time were conducted, and probably spurred a great deal of thought about women and relationships at the time (388).
