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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 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 consciencefor 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 from you 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 blow threatened 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 thenHELMER 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?- That was the miracle that I hoped for and dreaded. And it was to hinder that that I wanted to die. |
