Hauptmann's men and women are
themselves. No trick of speech, no lurking similarity of thought unites
them. The nearer any two of them tend to approach a recognisable type,
the more magnificently is the individuality of each vindicated. The
elderly middle-class woman, harassed by ignoble cares ignobly borne,
driven by a lack of fortitude into querulousness, and into injustice by
the selfishness of her affections, is illustrated both in Mrs. Scholz and
Mrs. Kramer. But, in the former, bodily suffering and nervous terror have
slackened the moral fibre, and this abnormality speaks in every word and
gesture. Mrs. Kramer is simply average, with the tenacity and the
corroding power of the average.
Another noteworthy group is that of the three Lutheran clergymen: Kolin
in _Lonely Lives_, Kittelhaus in _The Weavers_, and Spitta in _The Rats_.
Kolin has the utter sincerity which can afford to be trivial and not
cease to be lovable; Kittelhaus is the conscious time-server whose
opinions might be anything; Spitta struggles for his official
convictions, half blinded by the allurements of a world which it is his
duty to denounce. Each is wholly himself; no hint of critical irony
defaces his character; and thus each is able, implicitly, to put his case
with the power inherent in the genuinely and recognisably human.
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