Page:The Journal of English and Germanic Philology Volume 18.djvu/617

 The Family in Bjtfrnson's Tales 613 Dag, 1893), such as Fru Collett usually depicted. This latter type often shares, as in Fru Collett's novels, the more en- lightened ideals of the day and has come more or less into contact with the cultural elements of city life (bymennesker), as portrayed, for instance, in Mors Hinder (1892) or in Absa- lon's Ear (1894). In Fiskerjanten (1867-68) both types of family are represented (cf. Petra's family in the little fishing town with Signe's family or the more extreme case of 0degard's family), and upon the social and cultural ideals of these two types the dramatic conflict is based. The general attitude of the individual members of the family towards one another varies according to the traditional or to the more enlightened social ideals which the family holds. In the peasant family, for instance, the mother yields to traditional authority and is thus forced to find her way out of her difficulties by means of natural sagacity and common sense, while in the more progressive and cultural type of family she seeks to overrule her oppressor with those weapons with which the enlightened ideals of a new era have furnished her. But in either case 14 the fundamental principle involved is a sympathet- ic understanding and unselfish love between the individual members of the family, and especially between mother and child. Bj^rnson's sympathy for the father under the unfor- tunate conditions of social tradition is very little in evidence. 15 c) The Child and the Father Inherited tradition has made the father an administer of force and as such the child naturally fears him. By reason of the child's extremely sensitive nature a more or less artificial barrier is created between the two. The child cannot feel his father to be his true friend and the more delicate and sensitive the child is, the more does it seek the love and protection that the mother affords. Thus, for instance, Bj^rnson says of little Trond (Trond, 1856): "With his father he didn't talk very much and was indeed somewhat afraid of him; for when his 14 These two types of family, so plainly discerned in Bj0rnson's tales, shall, however, in the following analysis not be sharply differentiated from each other since it is not desirable to force the psychological aspects of the individual char acters into sharply defined categories of this nature. 16 A notable exception to this, however, is the father in Stfiv.