Page:The Journal of English and Germanic Philology Volume 18.djvu/622

 618 Sturtevant viz., the principle of enforced authority. Naturally she suffers a reaction from the bondage under which she was held by her arrogant husband and, therefore, after his death she in turn seeks to exert full authority over her son. But in her arbitrary and dictatorial methods she adopts the same weapons as did her husband, except that instead of applying physical force she makes her son's happiness contingent upon her own will. Her modern theories of education are thus applied in exactly the same way as the traditional parental authority, and she thereby prevents Rafael from understanding the purpose of her actions and the inspiring force of a mother's love which animates her; exactly as was the case, for instance, between Torbj^rn and his father. So too Arne is, like Rafael, "oprjzfrets s0n. " His whole life is centered upon the desire to escape from the narrow hum-drum life of a Norwegian village and he too has inherited certain weaknesses of character from his father. But his mother, simple peasant woman that she is with no 'modern' ideals of moral or cultural education, is far more successful than Kirsten Ravn in reforming her son. Her tact and fine sympathy for Arne's failings break the boy's spirit of rebellion and keep alive in the boy's heart the fundamental instinct of love which in Rafael's case is marred by a misunderstanding of his mother's attitude of authority. Yet we see in Arne's mother a peasant provincialism direct- ing the course of mother-love. She takes advantage of her boy's secret love affairs in order to make his escape from her impossible. Kirsten Ravn, on the other hand, magnanimously renounces her son's love when he severs his connections with her. Her mistakes are due to an artificial standard of life and not, as in the case of Arne's mother, to a desire to further her own happiness. Her methods fail, but not on that account does she, like the self-centered peasant woman, have recourse to deceit or subterfuge. In spite of her false code of moral education, Kirsten Ravn's steadfast devotion to the higher ideal of renunciation finally results in Rafael's redemption, while Arne's soul never realizes its intense longing to expand and grow, but is forced back again into those narrow limitations which his mother's self-centered love had set for him, howbeit not without a certain degree of spiritual recompense.