Essays on Scandinavian Literature, Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen [best ebook reader ubuntu txt] 📗

Ernst had died in that very hour.

The king's bosom friend, the Minister of the Interior, Gran, who is largely responsible for his liberalism, and whose whole policy it has been to rejuvenate and revitalize the monarchy, is challenged and shot by his old teacher, the Republican Flink; and the king himself, convinced of the futility of all his efforts to realize his idea of a democratic monarchy, commits suicide.

As a piece of sanguinary satire on royalty as an institution "The King" is most interesting--that is, royalty logically and speculatively considered, without reference to its historical basis and development. To me the postulate that it had its origin in a kind of conspiracy (for mutual benefit) of the priest and the king seems shallow and unphilosophical. Björnson's fanatical partisanship has evidently carried him a little too far. For surely he would himself admit that every free nation is governed about as well as it deserves to be--that its political institutions are a reflection of its maturity and capacity for self-government. A certain allowance must, indeed, be made for the _vis inertiæ_ of whatever exists, which makes it exert a stubborn and not unwholesome resistance to the reformer's zeal. This conservatism (which may, however, have more laudable motives than mere self-interest) Björnson has happily satirized in the scene before the Noblemen's Club in the third act. But, I fancy, it looks to him only as a sinister power, which for its own base purposes has smitten humanity with blindness to its own welfare. Though not intending to enter into a discussion, I am also tempted to put a respectful little interrogation mark after the statement that the republic is so very much cheaper than the monarchy. If the experience of the two largest republics in the world counts for anything, I should say that in point of economy there was not much to choose.

Strange as it may seem, Björnson did not intend "The King" as an argument in favor of the republic. In his preface to the third edition he distinctly repudiates the idea. The recent development of the Norwegian people, has, he says, made the republic a remoter possibility than it was ten years before (1875). But he qualifies this statement with the significant condition, "If we are not checked by fraud." And I fancy that he would have a perfect right to justify his present position by demonstrating the fraud, trickery, if not treason, by which Norway has during the last decade been thwarted in her aspirations and checked in her development. That preface, by the way, dated Paris, October, 1885, is one of the most forceful and luminous of his political pronunciamientos. It rings from beginning to end with conviction and a manly indignation. His chief purpose, he says, in writing this drama was, "to extend the boundaries of free discussion." His polemics against the clergy are not attacks upon Christianity, though he contends that religion is subject to growth as well as other things. The ultimate form of government he believes to be the republic, on the journey toward which all European states are proceeding fast, or slow, and in various stages of progress. There is something abrupt, gnarled, Carlylese, in his urgent admonitions and appeals for fair-play. The personal note is so distinct that I cannot read the play without unconsciously supplying the very cadence of Björnson's voice.

A further attempt to extend the boundaries of free discussion is made in the two dramas, "Leonarda" (1879) and "A Glove" (1883), which both deal with interesting phases of the woman question, and both wage war against conventional notions of right and wrong. The former elucidates the attitude of society toward the woman who has been compromised (whether justly or not), and the latter its attitude toward the man. I confess there is something a trifle hazy in his exposition of the problem in "Leonarda;" and I am unable to determine whether Leonarda really has anything to reproach herself with or not. In her conversation with the bishop in the second act, she appears to admit that she has much to regret. She begs him "help her atone for her past." She practically throws herself upon his mercy, reminding him that his Master, Christ, was the friend of sinners. But in the last act she appears suddenly with the halo of martyrdom. General Rosen, who has been the cause of her social ostracism, turns out to be her husband, whom she has divorced on account of his dissipated habits, and now keeps, in the hope of saving him, on a sort of probation. She believes that without her he would go straight to perdition, and from a sense of duty she tolerates him, not daring to shirk her responsibility for the old reprobate's soul. Truth to tell, she treats him like a naughty boy, punishing him, when he has been drunk, with a denial of favors; and when he has been good, rewarding him with her company. I suppose there are men who might be saved by such treatment, but I venture to doubt whether they are worth saving. As for Leonarda, she has apparently no cause for encouragement. But she perseveres, heedless of obloquy, as long as her own affections are disengaged. She presently falls in love, however, with a young man named Hagbart Tallhaug, who has insulted her and is now engaged to her niece, Agot. Hagbart is the nephew of the bishop of the diocese, who, after much persuasion is induced to receive Agot, on condition that her aunt will remove from the district and demand no recognition from the family. Having been informed of these conditions, Leonarda calls upon the bishop, uninvited, and vainly remonstrates with him. The young people are, however, unwilling to accept happiness on the terms offered by his reverence. At this point a new complication arises. Hagbart who had loved in Agot a kind of reflection of her aunt's character and manner, being now thrown into the company of the latter, discovers his mistake and transfers his affection to Leonarda. Exactly wherein the newness of Leonarda's type consists we are not fully informed, but we are led to infer that she represents a purer and truer humanity than the women bred in the traditions of feudalism, with their hypocritical arts and conventions. She is not meant to be seductive, but radiant, ravishing.

There is a candor in her speech, and an almost boyish straightforwardness, for which she is not indebted to nature but to the stanch idealism of her creator. She is, however, on that account no less impressionable, no less ready to respond to the call of love. She struggles manfully (or ought I not, in deference to the author's contention, to say "womanfully") against her love for Hagbart, and at last has no choice but to escape from the cruel dilemma by accepting the bishop's demand. Though she cannot conquer her affection for the young man, she believes that he will, in the course of time, return to Agot, as soon as she is out of his way. The author evidently believes the same. It is a hard lot to be a man in these later dramas of Björnson.

With a slight violation of the chronological sequence I shall discuss "A Glove" in this connection, because of its organic coherence with "Leonarda." They are the obverse and reverse of the same subject--the cruelty of society to the woman of a blemished reputation, and its leniency to the man.

To those who worship the conventional ideal of womanly innocence "A Glove" will seem a very shocking book, for it fearlessly discusses, and, what is more, makes a young girl discuss--the standards of sexual purity as applied to men and women. The sentiments which she utters are, to be sure, elevated and of an almost Utopian idealism; and the author obviously means to raise, not to lower, her in the eyes of the reader by her passionate frankness.

The problem of the drama is briefly this: Society demands of women an absolute chastity, and refuses to condone the least lapse, either before or after marriage. But toward men it is indulgent. It readily overlooks a plenteous seed of wild oats, and would regard it as the sheerest Quixotism to judge the bridegroom by the same standard of purity as it does the bride. It is easy enough, and perhaps also legitimate, to exclaim with Björnson that this is all wrong, and that a man has no right to ask any more than he gives. As a mere matter of equity a wife owes her husband no more fidelity than he owes her, and may exact of him, if she chooses, the same prematrimonial purity that he exacts of her. But questions of this kind are never settled on the basis of equity. The sentiments by which they are determined have long and intricate roots in the prehistoric past; and we are yet very far from the millennial condition of absolute equality between the sexes. According to Herbert Spencer there is a hereditary transmission of qualities which are confined exclusively to the male, and of others which are confined to the female; and these are the results of the primitive environments and conditions which were peculiar to each sex. Even the best of us have a reminiscent sense of proprietorship in our wives, dating from the time when she was obtained by purchase or capture and could be disposed of like any other chattel. Wives, whose prehistoric discipline has disposed them to humility and submission (I am speaking of the European, not the American species, of course), have not yet in the same degree acquired this sense of ownership in their husbands, involving the same strict accountability for affectional aberrations. And for this there is a very good reason, which is no less valid now than it was in the hoariest antiquity. A husband's infidelity, though morally as reprehensible as that of the wife, does not entail quite such monstrous consequences. For if she deceives him, he may ignorantly bring up another man's children, toil for them, bestow his name and affection upon them, and leave them his property. One can scarcely conceive of a more outrageous wrong than this; and it is in order to guard against such a possibility that society from remote ages has watched over the chastity of women far more jealously than over that of men. It is as a result of this vigilance of centuries that women have, among civilized nations, a finer sense of modesty than men, and a higher standard of personal purity. Men are, as yet, as Mr. Howells remarks, "imperfectly monogamous;" and Björnson is, no doubt, in the main right in the tremendous indictment he frames against them in the present drama.

It may be expedient to give a brief outline of the action. Svava Riis, the daughter of prosperous and refined parents, becomes engaged to Alf Christensen, the son of a great commercial magnate.

Her father and mother are overjoyed at the happy event; she is herself no less delighted. Her _fiancé_ has an excellent reputation, shares her interest in social questions, and supports her in her efforts to found kindergartens and to ameliorate the lot of the poor. Each glories in the exclusive possession of the other's love, and with the retrospective jealousy of lovers, fancies that he has had no predecessors in the affection of the beloved. Alf can scarcely endure to have any one touch Svava, and is almost ill when any one dances with her.

"When I see you among all the others," he exclaims, "and catch, for instance, a glimpse of your arm, then I think: That arm has been wound about my neck, and about no one else's in the whole world. She is mine! She belongs to me, and to no one, no one else!"

Svava finds this feeling