*Excerpt from Act Three*

**NORA:** I must stand on my own feet if I am ever to understand myself and the world around me. That is why I can no longer stay with you.

**HELMER:** Nora! Nora!

**NORA:** I am leaving at once. Kristine will give me shelter for tonight.

**HELMER:** Have you lost your senses? You shall not do this—I forbid it!

**NORA:** It is useless for you to forbid me anything now. I shall take only what belongs to me. I want nothing from you, neither now nor ever again.

**HELMER:** But this is madness!

**NORA:** Tomorrow I shall go back to my own home—to my father's house, I mean. It will be easier for me there to find something useful to do.

**HELMER:** You are blind to reality—and utterly inexperienced!

**NORA:** Then it is time that I gained some experience, Torvald.

**HELMER:** You are leaving your home, your husband, and your children... What will people say?

**NORA:** I do not care. I only know that this is what I must do now.

**HELMER:** But it is shameful! You are neglecting your most sacred duty!

**NORA:** What do you consider my most sacred duty?

**HELMER:** Must I tell you? Is it not your duty to your husband and your children?

**NORA:** I have another duty—one just as sacred.

**HELMER:** Impossible! What duty is that?

**NORA:** My duty to myself.

**HELMER:** Before anything else, you are a wife and a mother.

**NORA:** I no longer believe that. I believe that before anything else I am a human being, just as you are—or at least I shall try to become one. I know perfectly well that most people will agree with you, Torvald, and that the books all say the same. But I can no longer be satisfied with what people say or what books declare. I must think things through for myself and discover what is true.

**HELMER:** Your place is here—in your home. And for everything you wish to understand, you have an infallible guide: your religion.

**NORA:** Oh, Torvald, I hardly know what religion really is.

**HELMER:** What?

**NORA:** I know only what Pastor Hansen taught me when he prepared me for confirmation. He told me that religion was this, and that, and the other. When I leave all this behind and am alone, I shall examine that question too. I want to find out whether what Pastor Hansen taught me is true—or at least whether it is true for me.

**HELMER:** It is unheard of for a young woman to speak like this! Very well, if religion cannot guide you, then let me awaken your conscience. Surely, as a human being, you must have some sense of right and wrong—or have you not?

**NORA:** That is not so easy to answer. I simply do not know. I am completely bewildered. The only thing I know is that I think very differently from you. And now I have discovered that the law is something quite different from what I believed it to be, so I am no longer convinced that it is just. Can it really be true that a woman has no right to spare her dying father great suffering or to save her husband's life?

**HELMER:** You speak like a child. You do not understand the society you live in!

**NORA:** No, I do not. But I intend to find out. I must discover who is right—society or I.

**HELMER:** You are ill, Nora. You have a fever. I believe you have completely lost your reason.

**NORA:** Never have I seen things so clearly or so rationally as I do tonight.

**HELMER:** So clearly and so rationally that you choose to leave your husband and your children?

**NORA:** Yes.

**HELMER:** Then there can be only one explanation. You no longer love me.

**NORA:** That is true.

**HELMER:** Nora, how can you say such a thing?

**NORA:** It is not easy for me, Torvald, because you have always been kind to me. But what can I do? I do not love you anymore.