The main similarity between the two women is that their respective authors chose to initially present them in misleading ways. At first, Nora Helmer appears childish, shallow, and obsessed with money in a very revolting manner. Her husband's condescending and placating treatment of her is understandable and perfectly excusable while the audience still believes that Nora is ridiculously materialistic. However, when it is revealed that Nora is scrimping every penny in order to pay off the debt that she took out to save her husband's life and is unable to tell him about it, she suddenly becomes a mature, selfless, and brave individual.
Likewise with Daisy Buchanan, the author sets up the audience to believe something incorrect about her. In chapter one, Nick Carraway, the main character of The Great Gatsby, says that her gaze promised that "there was no one in the world she so much wanted to...
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see. That was a way she had." Daisy is frequently described as having magical and hypnotic qualities, as though her charm and beauty ensnared anyone whom they came into contact with.
Daisy Buchanan appears to be a lovely, enchanting, and rather unintelligent person. Many of her lines imply immaturity, stupidity, or, at best, thoughtlessness. Yet the audience comes to learn that all this about Daisy is merely a front that she puts on to make life with a difficult husband easier. At one point, when talking about her daughter, Daisy tells Nick that she hopes that "she’ll be a fool — that’s the best thing a girl can be in this world, a beautiful little fool.”
This line simultaneously betrays Daisy's true feelings about her marriage and her real nature. Daisy is a solemn, cynical person who has thought at such great length about the dismal options in her life that she chooses to never think about them again.
Both Ibsen and Fitzgerald compare their leading women to children, to beautiful playthings, and then reveal the immense inaccuracy in those assumptions. Although the characters of Daisy and Nora are different in many ways (Nora, for instance, does the brave thing and chooses to leave her husband while Daisy does not), they are similar in one main respect. Both women are treated like objects and eventually revealed to be, in reality, a great deal more than that.