When Karen, however, defends her course as an abstract ideal of "every human being to continue its life through the race," and appeals to her mother to understand, Mrs. Borneman retreats with, "I wash my hands of it, Karen. I don't dare to think that far...." It was her motherhood that had forced upon her the courage to overlook the law, and not any desire to throw over the old to set up a new law. The glory of the new vision means nothing to her in comparison with her husband's suffering to which she herself has added. She is the promise of a new type--the awakened mother. As for the play as a whole, it appears to me that Mr. Bergström has tried to say too much in the slight space of one short play, for he has two distinct themes--the right of woman to love and life, and the relationship between marriage and children. The first is the chief theme, which is worked out in the story of Karen; the second is too important to be employed as a subsidiary thread, and instead of adding richness to the first it rather clutters and confuses it with unnecessary baggage. Mrs. Borneman pities one of her sons because he cannot afford to have children on his slender salary, and feels that her other son is not justified in blindly bringing child after child into the world, depending upon the rest of the family for their maintenance. She asks her husband: "So it is not enough for two people to live together in mutual love?" "No, Cecilia, that has nothing to do with marriage. What is so inconceivably glorious about marriage is that, through it, God has delegated His own creative power to us simple human beings--that He has made us share His own divine omnipotence." The poor professor is made consistent to the point of absurdity, and the main issue befogged, when he cries out to Karen: "And yet I could have forgiven you everything--your wantonness and your defiance--if you had taken the consequences and had a child! If you had had ten illegitimate children--better that than none at all! But you have arrogantly defied the very commandments of nature, which are nothing but the commandments of God!" Perhaps this matter was included for the sake of Karen's reply: "Do you think I am a perfect monster of a woman, who has never felt the longing for a baby? Not me does your anger hit, but that society which will not regard it as an inevitable duty to recognize the right of every human being to have children--as a right, mark you, and not as a privilege reserved for the richest and the poorest. There are thousands of us to whom the right is denied--thousands of men as well as women. But we, too, are human beings, with love longings and love instincts, and we will not let us be cheated out of the best thing that life holds!"