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I have been performing tricks for you, Torvald. That’s how I’ve survived. You wanted it like that. You and Papa have done me a great wrong. It’s because of you I’ve made nothing of my life.
Nora speaks these words, which express the truth that she has gleaned about her marriage, Torvald’s character, and her life in general, to Torvald at the end of Act Three. She recognizes that her life has been largely a performance. She has acted the part of the happy, child-like wife for Torvald and, before that, she acted the part of the happy, child-like daughter for her father. She now sees that her father and Torvald compelled her to behave in a certain way and understands it to be “great wrong” that stunted her development as an adult and as a human being. She has made “nothing” of her life because she has existed only to please men. Following this -realization, Nora leaves Torvald in order to make something of her life and—for the first time—to exist as a person independent of other people.
