Mrs. Linden. I need somebody to mother, and your children need a mother.
Here the idea is not so disguised as to be unrecognisable. Krogstad is a culprit and an outlaw. If Mrs. Linden offers to live for him, it is certainly chiefly from the instinct of maternity. But in this natural feeling there is also a tinge of the mystic idea of the sinner’s redemption through disinterested love. In The Lady from the Sea, Ellida wishes to return to her birthplace on the sea, Skjoldvik, because she believes there is nothing for her to do in Wangel’s house. At the announcement of her resolution her stepdaughter, Hilda, evinces a profound despair. Then for the first time Ellida learns that Hilda loves her; there is then born in her the thought that she has someone to live for, and she says dreamily: ‘Oh, if there should be something for me to do here!’ In Rosmersholm Rebecca says to Kroll (p. 8):
So long as Mr. Rosmer thinks I am of any use or comfort to him, why, so long, I suppose, I shall stay here.
Kroll (looks at her with emotion). Do you know, it’s really fine for a woman to sacrifice her whole youth to others, as you have done.
Rebecca. Oh, what else should I have had to live for?
In The Pillars of Society there are two of these touching self-sacrificing souls—Miss Martha Bernick and Miss Hessel. Miss Bernick has reared the illegitimate child Dina, and has consecrated her own life to her (p. 52):
Martha. I have been a mother to that much-wronged child—have brought her up as well as I could.
Johan. And sacrificed your whole life in so doing.
Martha. It has not been thrown away.
She loves Johan, but as she sees that he is attracted by Dina she unites the two. She explains herself in regard to the incident in an exceedingly affecting scene with Johan’s half-sister (p. 95):