d tells her, "I pretend to myself that you are my young bride...that, for the first time, I am alone with you - quite alone with you, as you stand there young and trembling and beautiful" (Ibsen 106).
After Nora risks her reputation and that of the family by secretly acquiring money to help Torvald, her illusions come crashing down. Up to this point, she sacrificed herself completely; thinking in the same circumstances Torvald would do the same for her. When she realizes this is not true, she understands she can never be herself with Torvald or get him to see her as a woman with her own ideas and opinions. He tries to plead with her once she informs him of this, but she is completely disillusioned. As Shafer (62) says of Torvald's efforts, "Nothing he says penetrates her devastating realization that the miracle she was waiting for in ecstasy and terror-the proof that Torvald's love for her was capable of a sacrifice equal to hers for him-has been nothing but illusion." Nora becomes an individual from this baptism by fire, so-to-speak. She abandons her "doll's house" and its oppression and inequality between the sexes (Ibsen 104). The illusions and disillusionment of Nora were used by Ibsen to demonstrate the limiting and oppressive nature of patriarchy and marriage on women. As Meyer (454) observes of the action in the play, "Marriage was revealed as being far from a divine institution...an automatic provider of absolute bliss." Recognizing this, Nora heads off into the dark night.
In Arthur Miller's Death of a Salesman, illusions and disillusionment pervade the play on a significant level. Willy is an ol
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