This is a fair statement of Ibsen’s problem and his solution of it.  In the poem he solves it by the aid of two characters, two diagrams we may say.  Diagram I. is Peer Gynt, a man who is always striving to make himself the centre round which others revolve, who never sacrifices his Self generously for another’s good, nor surrenders it to a decided course of action.  Diagram II. is Solveig, a woman who has no dread of self-committal, who surrenders Self and is, in short, Peer’s perfect antithesis.  When Peer is an outlaw she forsakes all and follows him to his hut in the forest.  Peer deserts her and roams the world, where he finds his theory of Self upset by one adventure after another and at last reduced to absurdity in the madhouse at Cairo.  But though his own theory is discredited, he has not yet found the true one.  To find this he must be brought face to face in the last scene with his deserted wife.  There, for the first time, he asks the question and receives the answer.  “Where,” he asks, “has Peer Gynt’s true self been since we parted:—­

     “Where was I, as myself, as the whole man, the true man? 
      Where was I with God’s sigil upon my brow?”

And Solveig answers:—­

     “In my faith, in my hope, in my love.”

In these words we have the main ethical problem solved; and Peer’s perception of the truth (vide Mr. Wicksteed’s remarks quoted above) is the one necessary climax of the poem.  We do not care a farthing—­at least, I do not care a farthing—­whether Peer escape the Button-Moulder or not.  It may be too late for him, or there may be yet time to live another life; but whatever the case may be, it doesn’t alter what Ibsen set out to prove.  The problem which Ibsen shirks (if indeed he does shirk it) is a subsidiary problem—­a rider, so to speak.  Can Solveig by her love redeem Peer Gynt?  Can the woman save the man’s soul?  Will she, after all, cheat the Button-Moulder of his victim?

The poet, by giving Solveig the last word, seems to think it possible.  According to Mr. Archer, the Ibsen of to-day would know it to be impossible.  He knows (none better) that “No man can save his brother’s soul or pay his brother’s debt.”  “No, nor women neither,” adds Mr. Archer.

Is Peer’s Redemption a romantic Fallacy?

But is this so? Peer Gynt was published in 1867.  I turn to A Doll’s House, written twelve years later, and I find there a woman preparing to redeem a man just as Solveig prepares to redeem Peer.  I find in Mr. Archer’s translation of that play the following page of dialogue:—­

     Mrs. Linden:  There’s no happiness in working for oneself, Nils;
     give me somebody and something to work for.

     Krogstad:  No, no; that can never be.  It’s simply a woman’s
     romantic notion of self-sacrifice.

     Mrs. Linden:  Have you ever found me romantic?