Engstrand. Oh, you will though, all the same. I know a man that’s taken others’ sins upon himself before now, I do.
Manders. Jacob (wrings his hand). You are a rare character.
In A Doll’s House the idea develops itself with great beauty. Nora confidently expects that her husband, on hearing of her forgery, will assume the blame, and she is resolved not to accept his sacrifice (p. 76):
Nora. I only wanted to tell you that, Christina; you shall be my witness.... In case there were to be anybody who wanted to take the ... the whole blame, I mean ... then you will be able to bear witness that it is not true, Christina. I know very well what I am saying; I am in full possession of my senses, and I say to you, Nobody else knew anything about it; I alone have done everything.... But a miracle will come to pass even yet ... but it is so terrible, Christina! It must not happen for anything in the world!
In the deepest excitement she looks for the expected miracle, the renewal of Christ’s act of salvation in the narrow circumstances of a small village—‘I am the Lamb of God, who taketh away the sins of the world.’ And, since the miracle does not come to pass, there takes place the immense transformation in her nature which forms the real subject of the piece. Nora explains this to her husband with the greatest clearness (p. 116):
...The thought never once occurred to me that you could allow yourself to submit to the conditions of such a man. I was so firmly convinced that you would say to him, ‘Pray make the affair known to all the world’; and when that had been done ... then you would, as I firmly believed, stand before the world, take everything upon yourself, and say, ‘I am the guilty person.’ ... That was the miracle that I hoped and feared. And it was to hinder that that I wanted to put an end to my life.
In The Wild Duck the idea of the sacrificial lamb recurs no less than three times, and is the moving force of the whole piece. The infringement of the forest laws, of which the elder Ekdal was convicted, was not committed by him, but by Werle:
Werle. ... I was quite in the dark as to what Lieutenant Ekdal was doing.
Gregers. Lieutenant Ekdal seems to have been in the dark as to what he was doing.