Somewhere between 3 and 4 stars, closer to later. Ibsen writes about moral dilemmas like no one else. Here it is dilemma of whether to tell someone a truth that might ruin their life.

And Ibsen seems to have such magical ability to make characters real in your mind's eye in no time. It needs novelists hundreds of pages to develop characters. Not Ibsen. You could know exactly how they are going to act. Some readers seem to think that predictability is a bad thing in fiction. It isn't altogather IMO. I am inclined to think that only bad artists depend on shocks. Ibsen's genuis is in showing that how inevitable the fates of his characters is.

It seems that if we suffer too big a breach on our trust in one quarter, it affects our ability to trust in all quarters. In this case, Ekdal ended up suspecting even his innocent little daughter of having malign intentions.