Torvald is shallow enough to be a mere foil for the character of Nora.

Unfortunately, he is depicted with enough detail to appear a very plausible

type of man, typical of many contemporary heads-of-the-family. He is a well-
constructed social product, a proud specimen of a middle-class husband.
Because Nora has been so sheltered all her life, Torvald represents all the
outside world she knows. Not only does he stand for the world of men and
the world of business which has no place in her house-bound life, but he
represents society at large, including all the community and legal ethics
which do not concern her and religious ethics in which she has had no
training. Ironically Ibsen sets up Torvald according to the same
representation. For the author, Torvald stands for all the individual-denying
social ills against which Ibsen has dedicated all his writing.

As a victim of his narrow view of society, Torvald inspires sympathy rather

than reproach. When a man mistakes appearances for values, the basic
blame must be attributed to his social environment. Ibsen, however, drives
home the loathsome qualities of such a character by attributing to him a
personal decadence. Implying that Torvald considers Nora merely an
ornamented sex object, the author shows how he maintains amorous
fantasies toward his wife: he dresses her as a Capri fisher girl and encourages
her to dance in order to arouse his desires. As Torvald reinforces her girlish
and immature ways, Ibsen implies an incest relationship, for Nora is made to
observe that she was merely transferred from her father's tutelage to that of
her husband without any change in her emotional life. It is with this final
touch of perversion that Ibsen makes the character of Torvald thoroughly
reprehensible to the audience.