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Leanora Tapper ’24

Half head, half-butterfly, rainbow background.

Finding Independence

 

My father and I have never had a strong relationship, and for as long as I can remember, I’ve always dreamed of the day that I could break away from his controlling grasp on my life. Growing up being the oldest child and the only daughter, my father always had a strange way of treating me. Regardless of him loving me unconditionally, his ignorance, ruthless behavior, and relentless attempts of harsh discipline only got in the way of us becoming close. Deep down, I always knew that he loved me, but his bitter and compassionless attitude only made it difficult for me to open up to him, not to mention show him daughterly love and affection.

The strain on our relationship only fueled my habit of seeking comfort in the lives of fictional characters that I read or watched in my favorite books and movies. I would often find myself connecting to main protagonists using their storylines as the blueprint to my own life. This addiction continued through my freshman year of high school when I began reading A Doll’s House by Henrik Ibsen. I was quickly fascinated and swept up by the world of Nora Helmer, and I knew that she and I shared the same destiny.

In my junior year of high school, this sense of entrapment got worse when my college admissions process started. Scared between choosing the path of pursuing my talents or choosing an academic field, I sought out my parents’ opinions. To my surprise, I was shut down by my father, who made it clear that there was nothing to even question because he was going to choose which schools I would audition for and show interest in. He hadn’t even asked me for my input and made it clear that he was going to take charge of what was meant to be my future. I pled on many occasions for him to listen to me and understand how important this was for me, but as he always did, he just ignored me and claimed that I was too immature and young to make such a big decision in my life. It was completely hypocritical of him because he would constantly get on me about growing up and taking charge, yet refused to let me figure out my college process on my own. Different than most of the times when he would completely shut me out, this no longer was about a petty disagreement or harsh discipline—this was my future, and he was pushing me to the side as if I did not matter in what would occur in my career. I was being trapped, held under my father’s force.

Similarly, in A Doll’s House, Nora Helmer, a stay-at-home mother, was also entrapped. Bound by societal expectations of how women were meant to behave, Nora was forced to put her husband’s needs over her own, so they appeared to be the ideal couple. Nora’s husband, Torvald, was also completely unaware of how she felt, which only added to her suffering since she longed to be treated as an equal and not his inferior. It wasn’t until she almost risked her own future that Nora realized that she had been prioritizing her husband’s protection over herself. As a result, she decided to leave her husband, along with her children. Although Nora and I don’t share the most obvious things in common, I did connect with her feeling of being trapped by someone who didn’t understand her. She longed to live a life where she didn’t feel like she was suffocating under her husband’s control, and I longed for the same thing except with my father. Both my father and Torvald were blinded by their ignorance and pride, therefore resulting in their inability to treat the women in their lives as equals.

*

By the start of quarantine in the spring of 2020, my relationship with my father continued to suffer as a result of our disagreements towards my college process. The stress of getting accepted into my top school no longer bothered me, and that left my father more worried than he was supposed to be. As the rejections began to pile on top of each other, he faced the repercussions of pushing me into following his plan, rather than my own. I’d already bottled up my anger far too long and felt ready to pop at any moment. I knew by the time I received my last rejection from the school he really wanted me to attend, he would place all the blame on me instead of comforting or reassuring me that everything was going to be alright. Soon enough, the decision arrived, but to my surprise, it was an acceptance. By that time, I’d been accepted to Purchase for a while and was confident that I wanted to attend, but when this acceptance came in, he completely ignored the plan I’d made for myself. He was now focusing on me going to the school of his choice and had no plans of sending me to Purchase, no matter how much I wanted to go. Once again, my father was completely icing me out of my own life and keeping me under his control, even though I was far too mature and grown up. At that moment, I felt exactly as Nora did when she was arguing with her husband—ignored, misunderstood, and belittled by someone who did not know her and refused to listen. That is when it hit me. Nora left, and I now needed to do the same. I quickly thought of my mother, who lived in New Jersey, and did what anyone else in my situation would do. I packed as quickly as possible and bolted out the door, bound for New Jersey. Then just as Nora wrote a letter explaining her departure to her husband, I crafted a long text message to my father explaining my reasons for leaving. I knew from that moment on why I always felt that Nora and I had a connection. We were two of the same. Two emotionally drained women who dreamed of an independent life away from the toxic men who could care less to understand them or their needs.

*

Months later, after adjusting to my new home, I had some time to reflect, and I came across many new plays. Weirdly enough, one of them happened to be A Doll’s House Pt 2. In the sequel, Nora returns home to her family fifteen years later where she is greeted by the old maid, Torvald, and her daughter, Emmy. She soon realizes how her choice to leave was not as favorable as she thought it was. Although she prospered as an independent woman while spending time away from Torvald, she forgot the fact that she abandoned her daughter, who was only a toddler at the time. Similarly, I did the same thing and left my brothers with my father. I was sure that things would be better since I would be able to thrive on my own with my mother and away from my toxic father, but I did not realize that I was abandoning my other family and leaving them to fend for themselves without me by their side. Nora and I made the same mistake, and although we benefited from our choices greatly, it wasn’t the most effective decision. Nora realizes that she could have been more communicative to Torvald about what she wanted and understands that she only made assumptions about how he would react, similar to how I was not as communicative with my father as I could be. Although my father didn’t listen to me before, I also could have been a bit more patient and understanding, given how much older he is than me, and his set mentality on life.

Originally, I attached myself to Nora’s story because I felt as though we were connected through similar fates. We both desired love, but also longed for a life with individuality and freedom; yet, we were too trapped by the expectations that were held for us. In the end, we both chose to leave and escape a life that would not allow us to prosper as the women we wanted to be. It wasn’t until we faced the repercussions of our choices that we realized that we also could’ve done better in trying to express ourselves. My father will forever be the man that I grew to occasionally despise in my youth, but I cannot abandon him and expect all my issues to magically disappear. My experiences with my father and reading both A Doll’s House plays have taught me not to run away from my issues but to put my feelings aside and deal with the issues that come to me head-on.

—Leanora Tapper