Herman Bang was one of the group of writers representing the advent of modern literature in Denmark. Words such as realism and naturalism are associated with this movement, but Herman Bang was the impressionist par excellence. His novels contain very little by way of authorial comment, but leave readers to pick up the countless hints as to what is really going on.
Social criticism was also a feature of the new movement, and although Bang avoids taking a political stance, his criticism of a society in which social class, snobbery and insensitivity are dominant features is plain to see. Ida Brandt is a victim of this society, brought up on the fringes of the wealthy landowning class, but never quite a part of it and never quite accepted by some of the nurses with whom she subsequently works and who think that, as she has money, she is merely taking up a job that someone else could do with. Good looking and gentle, generous and kind, not endowed with the sharpness to understand what is actually going on around her, she is the outsider, the obvious victim. And victim she is.