Nora: It was tonight, when the wonderful thing did not happen; then I saw you were not the man I had thought you were;.
I have waited so patiently for eight years; for, goodness knows, I knew very well that wonderful things don’t happen every day. Then this horrible misfortune came upon me; and then I felt quite certain that the wonderful thing was going to happen at last. When Krogstad’s letter was lying out there, never for a moment did I imagine that you would consent to accept this man’s conditions. I was so absolutely certain that you would say to him: Publish the thing to the whole world. And when that was done;.
When that was done, I was so absolutely certain, you would come forward and take everything upon yourself, and say: I am the guilty one;.
That was the wonderful thing which I hoped for and feared; and it was to prevent that, that I wanted to kill myself;.
But you neither think nor talk like the man I could bind myself to. As soon as your fear was over – and it was not fear for what threatened me, but for what might happen to you – when the whole thing was past, as far as you were concerned it was exactly as if nothing at all had happened. Exactly as before, I was your little skylark, your doll, which you would in future treat with doubly gentle care, because it was so brittle and fragile. Torvald – it was then it dawned upon me that for eight years I had been living here with a strange man, and had borne him three children. Oh, I can’t bear to think of it! I could tear myself into little bits!
From A Doll’s House, Act III
Reprinted from Dover Thrift Editions
(As read by Dean Temple for the February 9, 2006 podcast)