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Support the Monkey! Tell All your Friends and Teachers |
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Support the Monkey! Tell All your Friends and Teachers |
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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-nightHELMER 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 inexperienceNORA I must try to gain experience, 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. |
