Because of her holiness and simplicity, we may be worldly wise and live in towns. She gives us bread, and gives us prayers. She is the contented one. She is our steady, beating heart. For woman is an inner and more sacred consciousness, a temple within our souls, a place of refuge from the outside world.
Woman is a church.
Coming into her presence we lift our hats and compose our souls. Russia also is a church, a holy place where the Western may smooth out a ruffled mind and look upon the beauty of life. Ibsen was symbolical. He meant that the commercialised man was saved from damnation by the peasant girl behind him. Woe for Europe when it has brought all her ' peasants to the towns, when the Solveigs are no more and Holy Russia has vanished away.