Just as it was providential that one of the house-wives of the
sewing-bee in _Pillars of Society_ should have been a stranger to the
town, so it was the luckiest of chances (for the dramatist's
convenience) that an old school-friend should have dropped in from the
clouds precisely half-an-hour before the entrance of Krogstad brings to
a sudden head the great crisis of Nora's life. This happy conjuncture of
events is manifestly artificial: a trick of the dramatist's trade: a
point at which his art does not conceal his art. Mrs. Linden does not,
like the dames of the sewing-bee, fade out of the saga; she even,
through her influence on Krogstad, plays a determining part in the
development of the action. But to all intents and purposes she remains a
mere confidant, a pretext for Nora's review of the history of her
married life. There are two other specimens of the genus confidant in
Ibsen's later plays. Arnholm, in _The Lady from the Sea_, is little
more; Dr. Herdal, in _The Master Builder_, is that and nothing else.
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