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I think Nora made the right decision in separating from Torvald but not from her children.  The previous was a need, the following was irresponsible and cold.  I understand that she simply could not live with this man anymore, but she should not have left so abruptly with not even a goodbye to her children.  However, knowing Nora and her character, it isn't really her to think about how others feel.  By her abandoning them, they will face endless consequences of loss and separation.

No, the best decision would have been for her to take responsibility for her actions, accept her faults, and then ultimately enact the change herself. If she really needs to find herself, she needs a way to do that while being held accountable for her children. As mentioned before, she completely abandons her kids and in any time period that's not right.

I think that Nora made the right decision to leave Torvald, but made a mistake by living his children. Like people say, there’s no better teacher than the mother. By living them she renounces the chance to have the right to be a mother. Although she had a point that saying that she was not ready to be a mom because she was still a child, she still didn’t take the right approach to her decision.

Although Nora said she no longer loved Torvald, I didn't get the impression that she tried very hard to save the marriage. It must have been a pretty sudden shock for Torvald when Nora told him she was leaving and didn't love him anymore. Why didn't she at least try to rekindle the love between herself and Torvald? There must have been something she could have done instead of hastily deciding to just leave and attempt to start over. She could have started over without leaving - maybe she and Torvald could have stayed in separate rooms/corners of the house. Nora leaving was unfair to the children as well - they did nothing wrong, yet they are being punished. It is admirable that Nora asserted her independence, but I believe she went about it in the wrong way.

I think that Nora's abrupt abandonment of her marriage is not as surprising as it may seem. In the beginning Nora tells of how she borrowed money for Torvald's well-being, on the surface this is seen as an act of kindness, however, for Nora to borrow money when she knows it is the one thing that her husband despises and to borrow the money from a man like Krogstad is taking a HUGE chance on her marriage. I cant help but think that anyone who loved their husband would find other less confrontational ways of finding money, and anyone who was worried about the destruction of their marriage would not be able to go through with taking such a risk.

We know from the beginning that Nora does not love Torvald she loves the money and herself and I think that is why she leaves. She knows that in order to raise her children and be a good mature wife and woman she needs to leave and learn how to fix herself.

The only thing that I see wrong with Nora leaving is that in a way she is leaving her children to be poisoned by society the same way she and everyone else was. If she was being a good mother she would take them with her and teach them what she realized and how not to end up in the same predicament.

In reply to #1: The ending of The Doll's House marks it as a then modern day tragedy: There is no good ending. And that was part of Ibsen's point.

The Doll's House makes vividly clear that--human rights versus womens's right aside for the moment--women in that era had no legal rights and no rights to personhood outside of the auspice of a male figure, be it husband or father.

The tragedy is that if Nora wanted to continue the independence she had developed for herself in secret while her husband was unaware of her actions (symbolized by the macaroons), then she would have to abandon part of herself--her children. If she wanted to preserve her connection to her chlidren, she would have to abandon a different part of herself--her autonomy of thought, choice and behavior. No choice in the end could have possibly been the right one or the good one--and that is part of Ibsen's message to his society: A tragedy was enveloping all womanhood and all motherhood..and that is the direct connection to the human rights Ibsen expressed concern for: No human being should be tragically bound nor bound in tragedy.