Helmer, in his sleek reasonableness, is an excellent type of meanness, and his character is brought out in a consummately artistic way. It exasperates Nordau that this man, who comes so near his standard of sound-mindedness, should inspire in audiences all the world over, especially in the female element, a sense of aversion, apparently without any effort on the part of the author. Helmer has a keen eye for the main chance. His reputation and his position have his first consideration. He trembles at the idea of fighting the world without them. His love of his wife is the quintessence of selfishness. He loves her in the two only ways which Nordau thinks reasonable in a human being, as a companion, as a pleasant thing to toy with; and as the female of his race, at such periods when he, as the normal man of Nordau, is actuated by animal impulses—for example, under the influence of champagne. Of the pure love for a woman which in a man’s heart remains as a spring of living water, giving him a pang of joy each time his thoughts revert to her, and which casts a rosy tint of poetry over life, nay even over death—of such love Helmer is as incapable as Nordau’s normal man. Nora yearns for the higher, nobler love, and her lack of experience in character-study has left her in doubt, though in hope, regarding her husband. The moment comes when she gains certitude; and when Helmer reveals himself in his Philistine hideousness, her spirit revolts. Though of course exaggerated for the sake of dramatic effect, she is a good type of an intelligent and emotional Norwegian woman. Norwegian girls receive a great deal of instruction, and as they have no professions to prepare for, their education is more literary and artistic than that of the men. They read voraciously the Norwegian modern writers, and sympathize consequently more than the men with the extreme nationalists. They are often strongly possessed by the _Aand_—that indefinable yearning for all that is great and noble—in Norwegian culture already alluded to. They have a fair knowledge of foreign literature, and read a great many English novels. With their admiration for English pure love, for English home life, grafted on the grand aspirations which the new _Aand_ fosters, they may well appear uncanny and troll-like to the prosaic German. We trust that the struggle between the Norwegian and the German cultures, of which we have endeavoured to give an idea, will make it easier for students of Ibsen to understand his characters. It is in _The Doll’s House_ where the two inimical cultures are most clearly personified, the old Norwegian culture being represented by the uncompromising, impulsive, and intense Nora, and the imported German culture by the pedantic, commonplace, and animal Helmer.