A Doll's House

It's Christmas Eve, and young wife Nora Helmer has just finished her shopping. Her husband Torvald has recently been promoted in his job at the local bank, which has afforded the couple more luxuries this year. On returning home, however, Torvald chides his wife for being overzealous with her festive spending. And when Nora's old school friend Kristine arrives at the house unexpectedly, Nora reveals a dark secret she's been keeping from her husband for years.

When the couple was first married, Nora took out a well-intentioned but illegal loan from a bank employee named Krogstad, so that Torvald could travel to Italy to recover from illness. Nora has been working to pay it off ever since. Now, Krogstad has learned that Torvald intends to fire him from the bank. Enraged, he blackmails Nora into helping him save his job. If she refuses, he will make her shameful debt public. With this threat hanging over her, Nora's world starts to unravel, and she is forced to reevaluate her role as both a mother and a wife.

Henrik Ibsen's three-act play deals with female fulfillment and individuality and, as such, caused much controversy when it was first released in Victorian Copenhagen.