In A Doll’s House, people are (or were, if no longer living) afflicted with diseases. Ibsen uses illness as a catalyst for various characters’ decisions and actions. In fact, a few characters’ diseases or illnesses create burdens for other family members; these family members must then grapple with the consequences of that disease or illness.
The fundamental cause of Nora’s dilemma is her husband Torvald’s illness resulting from the disease of workaholism. In fact, the entire premise of the play rests on Nora’s crime, which she committed in order to obtain funds for his recovery. As she explains to her friend Mrs. Linde, Torvald overworked himself and
fell dreadfully ill, and the doctors said it was necessary for him to go south...It cost about two hundred and fifty pounds.
She forged her late father’s signature to gain the necessary money to take Torvald to Italy. After...
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convalescing there for one year, Torvald returned home well and has enjoyed perfect health ever since.
Unfortunately, Krogstad discovers Nora’s crime and attempts to blackmail her. He notes that her father died on September 29 but that his signature on a bond was dated October 2. He points out to Nora that Torvald’s poor health drove her to act without considering the consequences.
Your mind was so taken up with your husband’s illness, and you were so anxious to get the money for your journey, that you seem to have paid no attention to the conditions of our bargain.
When Krogstad asks Nora why she did not ask her father for the money, she replies,
Papa was so ill. If I had asked him for his signature, I should have had to tell him what the money was to be used for; and when he was so ill himself I couldn’t tell him that my husband’s life was in danger.
Therefore, illness upon illness blocks the truth; Nora cannot reveal to her sick father the real reason why she needs so much money. She fears that divulging the truth about Torvald’s illness would further exacerbate her father’s illness (which could have resulted from disease—Ibsen never reveals the cause). Nora defends her actions with these extenuating circumstances.
Is a daughter not to be allowed to spare her dying father anxiety and care? Is a wife not to be allowed to save her husband’s life?
She believes that the illnesses of two loved ones justify her crime. Despite Krogstad’s threats, Nora tries to deny that her perfectly constructed domestic world will be destroyed when her crime is exposed.
Two other characters, however, illustrate how disease and illness indeed lead to unavoidable consequences. For example, Mrs. Linde pragmatically chose to marry a rich man in order to help her family. Nora asks her, “Is it really true that you did not love your husband? Why did you marry him?” Mrs. Linde admits that she entered a loveless marriage with a wealthy man because her mother was ill, leaving her to support her mother and two younger brothers:
I did not think I was justified in refusing his offer.
Most significantly, moral disease manifests itself in a physical ailment. The character Dr. Rank is physically marred as a result of his father’s moral failings. Nora explains to Mrs. Linde that he
suffers from a very dangerous disease. He has consumption of the spine, poor creature. His father was a horrible man who committed all sorts of excesses; and that is why his son was sickly from childhood
Ibsen does not state exactly what Dr. Rank’s father did but implies that the man engaged in depraved acts, resulting in his son’s illness. Does Dr. Rank’s affliction result from his father’s venereal disease? Or is it a punishment for his father’s behavior? In his final visit, Dr. Rank laments to Nora that he cannot avoid
pay[ing] this penalty for another man’s sin? Is there any justice in that? And in every single family, in one way or another, some such inexorable retribution is being exacted—...My poor innocent spine has to suffer for my father’s youthful amusements.
As Shakespeare notes in The Merchant of Venice, “The sins of the father are to be laid upon the children.” Similarly, Ibsen demonstrates that disease and illness consign the relatives of sick persons to negative fates.