738 THE DRAMA 



cern is hopelessly bankrupt. The wife's cheek is bankrupt in the 

 bloom of youth, and her heart bankrupt in the flowers of thought. 

 The husband's breast is bankrupt in victorious courage, bankrupt in 

 every glowing spark that was struck of old; bankrupt, bankrupt is 

 the whole concern ; though they two entered life as a first-class firm of 

 love. 



Then does Ibsen teach that because " falling in love," though it be 

 never so many fathom deep, gives no sure promise of wedded happi- 

 ness, therefore the element of passion should be ignored in marriage ? 

 I cannot tell. But this is certain, that he lays the stress of his repre- 

 sentations not upon the truth that being " in love " is essential to an 

 ideal marriage, but upon the other truth that it is not enough for an 

 ideal marriage. 



He seems always to represent " love," in the romantic sense, in its 

 misleading and delusive character. Johan Tonnesen is in love, and in 

 consequence he does not " so much as see " Martha Bernick who had 

 been tried and found as true as steel, and who was made to be the 

 companion of his life ; and he marries a girl of whom he knows noth- 

 ing. Torvald Helmer is in love note that in love after many 

 years of married life, still thrilled by the same magnetic influence, 

 still finding in Nora's society the same unreasoning and unanalyzable 

 delight which first drew him to her. And therefore he thinks himself 

 a model husband, when really his relations with his wife have never 

 risen above mere organic attraction, and have never been human at 

 all. Rebekka "West is in love, and her love leads her into depths of 

 treachery and cruelty that make " Rosmersholm " one of the most 

 appalling of Ibsen's dramas; and Rosmer himself is in love, and his 

 love drives him to leap with Rebekka into the dark pool below the foss. 

 And lastly, Ellida is in love, and in her the untamed, pre-human 

 nature of love, as Ibsen conceives it, comes out in its full significance. 

 Like the heaving of the sea to the moon, like the craving of the 

 stranded mermaid for the deep ocean, unreasoning, and not to be 

 reasoned with, dark and deep and wild, this elemental drift and up- 

 heaval of our nature must be tamed and mastered, that our relations, 

 one with another, may be sober, well-considered, and human. 



And is this all ? Does Ibsen know that in considering marriage in 

 this sober, human, rational style, he is leaving out the specific element 

 in it, and dealing with it only as typical of all human relationships ? 

 Does he ignore the truth that in the ideal marriage the bell-note rings 

 from first to last, and that all else is dominated and glorified by it ? 

 Does he know that it is only that " love " which has its roots far down 

 beneath our humanity that can raise marriage, as such, into a truly 

 human relationship ? I will not answer for him. There are indica- 

 tions, deep rather than numerous, especially in " The Doll's House " 



