Page:The Journal of English and Germanic Philology Volume 18.djvu/616

 612 Sturtevant chivalrous instincts are aroused, which lead him to take sides with his mother against an authority of brute force. Somewhat different, however, is the effect of the father's presumptuous authority upon the daughter. If woman is regarded as the social inferior to man, the daughter's sense of individual independence is crushed from the outset, and even when the traditional view of woman's social inferiority is abandoned, the daughter inherits from woman's former state of moral slavery an attitude of suspicion towards the unselfish motives of the male sex in general. The effect of this attitude upon the daughter is not clearly traceable in Bjo'rnson's tales, but it plays a very important part in the psychology of Fru Collett's novels. This was, in fact, the immediate cause of the tragedy in Amtmandens Dtftre, for Sophie's lack of faith in a noble character can be directly traced to her inborn suspicion that her lover's intentions were nothing more than masculine insolence founded upon the conventional right of man's suprem- acy over woman. The remedy for such injustice in the home involves first of all an assumption of equal rights and a single standard of morals for both man and woman. The lamentable results of a double standard of morals and of the father's lack of moral responsi- bility for the child's welfare may be seen in the moral degenera- tion of the father's character. Hereditary disease of both body and soul can in all Bjp'rnson's tales be traced directly to the father's wayward life. The woman, therefore, has a new and most formidable foe to combat in the hereditary instincts of her child. In the great struggle against this social disease Bj0rnson's main thesis consists of a new system of moral education (formu- lated in Det Flager), which consists in openly acquainting the youth with all the facts pertaining to sex and to hereditary disease. b) Bjjrnson's Family Types The traditional and the 'modern' ideals as regards woman's social status are represented in Bjo'rnson's prose tales by two more or less sharply defined types of family. First, there is the peasant type (cf.'Synnjve Solbakken, 1857, Arne, 1858, En Glad Gut, 1859-60) and secondly the more progressive and modern type of patrician character (cf. Magnhild, 1877, Stjv 1882, En