And worst of all, she, who throughout the play declares herself unconvinced of guilt or stain, at the close of the first act becomes quite mawkishly sentimental over Heine’s pretty line, “May God forever keep you so fair, and sweet, and pure.”
Because Karen exhibits these painful inconsistencies, she is no less possible or real or worthwhile. We who know many women emerging in diverse odd shapes from the travail of awakening have discovered just as inconsistent a combination of precipitation and reaction; and thus will it ever be until we have at length worked out our way to the most serviceable harmony. It is for this very reason that Karen is interesting: she is no superwoman, but our own imperfect sister.
Of the other characters there is but one deserving special comment—Karen’s mother, who to me is the most remarkable person Bergström has here created. She confesses to her husband that she has known for three years that Karen had been living in Paris with Strandgaard, but had kept the knowledge to herself because it had been too late to interfere, and because she did not regard the calamity as others would have in her place. From a terrible and bitter experience with another daughter, Gertrude, who had gone insane through the abrupt breaking off of a long engagement which had aroused primitive passion and left it unfulfilled, Mrs. Borneman had reached a revolutionary conclusion:
“... from that day I have—after a careful consideration—done what I could to let our children live the life of youth, sexually and otherwise, in as much freedom as possible. The result of your educational method, my dear Kristen, is our poor Gertrude, who is now confined in an insane asylum, as incurable. The result of my method is Karen, I suppose. I don’t know if it is very sinful to say so, but I feel much less burdened by guilt than I should if conditions were reversed.”
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: