housewife, the conventional table-cloth on the bourgeois table, the obvious corruption of bourgeois marriages, noble women who would be ruined by their contact with bad men, if it were not that they are the strong women who shake off the weak men, but who, in consequence of their unnatural behaviour, are changed into neutral beings in their flight before marriage, just as Daphne, in olden time, was changed into a laurel when on her flight before the god. Hitherto Ibsen’s writings have had two sides which are directly opposed to one another: the one negative, pessimistic, direct, which served as so many leaves in the school-book of the _bourgeoisie_ as the class of society which is the ruling class, but which is, by reason of its moral bankruptcy, doomed to immediate destruction. The scene of action is always an imaginary one, with a cosmopolitan colouring; it is not Ibsen’s fault if, on the Continent, his characters are looked upon as essentially Norwegian, he tried, to the best of his limited power, to render them cosmopolitan. The other side of his writings is quite positive, quite creditable as regards its starting-point and its aim: the glorification of woman as a vessel of good, as a saviour of society, as the conscience of man. Then came _The Wild Duck_, which contained the most characteristic personalities upon the most ricketty foundation. One wondered what the old man was about.--Gregers Werle, who runs with moral precepts into the dwellings of day-labourers; and the lies of life, which also have their moral significance--it was Ibsen himself who held judgment upon Ibsen. And like a visage, reflected and distorted in muddy water, the figures of Gina and Hedvig glide past like so many poor, tormented, guilty or guiltless people with no ideals, no moral trumpets. A couple of years later _Rosmersholm_ appeared. It startled the whole circle of flattering women and their flatterers. No more censuring of society, no more glorification of woman! The bourgeois centre no longer takes the first place, it fades into a decorative background; the entire space is absolutely filled by two people, a man and a woman, who are engaged in a battle against one another. The man is a noble creature, weak but refined; the woman is a plebeian by birth and soul, coarse-grained and selfish, one whom nature has designed for a criminal. Here we also have a weak man and a strong woman, but the lights and shadows fall quite differently. There is one thing which the author throws into the balance in the woman’s favour, and that is that the woman is brave and fit for life, while the man is cowardly and unfitted for it. The next to appear was _The Lady from the Sea_. People were astonished and asked what it was. “It is a piece in praise of true marriage,” replied Ibsen’s women admirers, and they wept.