Helmer: Why, Nora, what a thing to say!
Nora: Yes, it is so, Torvald. While I was at home with father he used to tell me all his opinions and I held the same opinions. If I had others I concealed them, because he would not have liked it. He used to call me his doll child, and play with me as I played with my dolls. Then I came to live in your house. I mean I passed from father's hands into yours. You settled everything according to your taste; and I got the same tastes as you; or I pretended to. I don't know which--both ways perhaps. When I look back on it now, I seem to have been living here like a beggar, from hand to mouth. I lived by performing tricks for you, Torvald. But you would have it so. You and father have done me a great wrong. It's your fault that my life has been wasted. . .
Helmer: It's exasperating! Can you forsake your holiest duties in this way?
Nora: What do you call my holiest duties?
Helmer: Do you ask me that? Your duties to your husband and children.
Nora: I have other duties equally sacred.
Helmer: Impossible! What duties do you mean?
Nora: My duties toward myself.
Helmer: Before all else you are a wife and a mother.
Nora: That I no longer believe. I think that before all else I am a human being, just as much as you are--or, at least, I will 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. I had been living here these eight years with a strange man, and had borne him three children. Oh! I can't bear to think of it. I could tear myself to pieces!I can't spend the night in a strange man's house.
Fui ver “Boneca”, adaptação do Nuno Cardoso do texto de Ibsen. Mais uma vez chorei. Estou velha. Agora dá-me para chorar no teatro e no cinema, eu que nunca verti uma lágrima em público, que sempre tive a decência espartana de saber chorar sozinha e em silêncio. Para não incomodar ninguém. A cena final, porém, desconcertou-me. No final, não é Nora quem fala, não é ela que abandona o lar, o marido, os filhos, a maravilhosa felicidade doméstica. De onde lhe vem a coragem e a lucidez? A personagem, parece, parece-me, dá lugar ao autor. É Ibsen quem nos fala através dela. É ele que nos mostra um caminho, uma alternativa. Nora continua com Torvald, na sua casa de bonecas, obediente e feliz, um pardalito tonto, uma máscara que se enterrou para sempre na carne.
